Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 12, 2017

These Frazz comics are getting harder to follow.

They don’t use light houses anymore when they have GPS and shore sensors. Lights out and the horn is blowing…

I don’t get it either…..

Yeah…. this one’s kinda fuzzy.

But before I go on and have to give a spoiler alert….

Night…. yes, due to shipboard technology, a lot of lighthouses have been decommissioned and sold, or merely fallen into disrepair…. but there are hundreds of them even here in the US that are still in use.

So…. back to my explanation…

STOP here if you want to puzzle it out, and skip my attempt. OTOH I could be dead wrong anyway, so what the heck, read on:

“What onshore” makes no sense…. it’s just Caulfield’s smart-alecky retort to “What on Earth.”

I wondered about the blue box on the left… but it’s only the back of his chair.He’s not pulling the yellow cord out of it, but past it.

Took me a while to realise the light house in the middle panel is only to illustrate his point…. they’re not on a field trip.

OK…. apparently, something Mrs. Olsen said IN CLASS was unclear….

so he’s going to use a halogen work-light and an airhorn to bring it to her attention instead of raising his hand like anybody else in the room would do.

You know… I usually like Caulfield.

But sometimes Mallet’s mythological “perfect student” is writ too large…. or at least, too large for his britches.

Once again, Susan, thanks…That makes sense now….It is more understandable when read across the top. I was reading it up to down….And for the record, yes, Michigan and the Lakes alone have scores of working lighthouses…

I’ve just started reading this comic again after a hiatus, and it seems to have ceased making any sense at all.

BTW, a few years ago, I took a walk down under the George Washington Bridge one night, and was quite surprised to discover that the Little Red Lighthouse (real name: Jeffrey’s Hook) was a working lighthouse.

Make sure you read this Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right.

@Jan Bickley – Thank you. I was reading it wrong. Sometimes Jef’s panel order is confusing.

But it still doesn’t explain how Caulfield is able to darken the room in the last panel.

A bit of over-stretch for small return

I think part of the confusion is the way you have to read the panels. Omit the middle one and read as you normally would. Makes it a LITTLE clearer.

There’s a picture opposite me

Of my primitive ancestry

Which stood on rocky shores

and kept the beaches shipwreck free – TMBG

@janbickley, yes that makes a bit more sense, thank you. but it’s still a bit unclear. Is it putting the spotlight on something to see it clearer?

The problem is that, when you create something, you don’t always see what someone else will have trouble understanding, the point is so obvious to you. I once taught a folk dance class at an adult education community school and wrote my own instruction handouts for each of the dances I taught. Before I gave them out, I had someone at my day (real) job try to follow them so I could see what I had to correct.

Years from now, Caulfield will be whining that the system failed him.

The order that the panels were to be read wasn’t clear, either, which made it less clear.