Let’s see. This strip started on March 17, 1985 and Luann was presumed to be about 12 at that point. She graduated from high school June 18, 2014, so that means it took approximately 29 years for her to age six years.
So using that as a rough guide, she is now around 20, and should graduate college somewhere around 2030.
And if Nancy is 50 now, that means she was 42 when the strip started.
All of this makes me wonder what year it is in the Luannverse.
A not so subtle reference to the decades Luann spent in grade and high school in this strip before she and the others rightly began to age a bit more in step with reality. That said, she’s got to be somewhere around 50 or so now.
Sweet moment between Nancy and Luann ♡. This comes with a small break in the fourth wall that shows Luann’s self-awareness of being a teenager in a comic strip for over 35 years. I love Luann’s sense of humor and irony and she looks so confused and happy when her mother cuddles her ♡♡♡.
I like Nancy’s expression in comment in panel 3. In blunt translation it would be: “Yeah, in a lot of ways you have not changed since 1985, you still do not clean up your room, you are uncertain of your future and you still argue with Bern on a daily basis though she has not been hanging around the house so much in the past month or so, is she busy with classes at Mooney already?”. It almost seems like Nancy is conflicted about becoming an empty nester if Luann does finally vacate Casa DeGroot someday, but as Luann said; that could be an eternity, literally….. Nice strip today.
If G&K wanted to go “Truman Show” on us, they could have Luann look out into the 4th panel (add my post to your 4th panel count Brdshtt) and say; “It is almost like my life is drawn up on a daily basis for the amusement of others.”
They say your kids grow up fast. Eventually they do. But in the first six months after my daughter was born I spent two-and-a-half years changing her diapers.
Years fly when you get older, and that makes sense…. When Luann was, say in fifth grade, a year was 10% of her life, but for her mom it was about 2.5%.
Very clever way of telling us – that Luann & gang -will be in college for the next 30 years. (age 50 minus age 20 equals 30 years). Luann graduated high school in 2014 ….so it has been 7 years already.
Yesterday, when I was young / The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue /I teased at life as if it were a foolish game /The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame /The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned / I always built to last on weak and shifting sand / I lived by night and shunned the naked light of the day / And only now I see how the years ran away / …..
Maybe they are taking my suggestion of doing a time jump and switch it to them dealing with their kids? For instance Tiffany’s shy bookish daughter has a crush on Gunther’s jock son.
I’ve heard of the 4th Wall but never paid attention to it, so all the helpful references have taught me something new; I get that all the time here. One of the reasons I love the strip and all us old farts and fartesses. (lol). One commenter noted that since the characters are aging a little faster as the main characters move on through school, work, life the strip is closer to real life. I hope it always stays on the other side of the 4th wall. but this is a really good way to cover so many subjects. Now back to the usual shenanigans’.
This arc marks the second time that Nancy has complained about the “downside” of being a “working stiff.” (The first time was when she came home complaining of achy feet)
What’s curious is that at neither time, did Luann “volunteer” to take some of the burden off Nancy by pitching in and working at the Fuse. That’s too bad really, as it would have had Luann meeting new people. Plus put her in close proximity to Twit. I mean, “Tiff.”
So. In the end, Nancy pulls herself out of the doldrums while imparting a bit of “folksy wisdom.” Good for her.
Now that it appears that this arc is ending, “whom” will We visit next week?
Bernice and Nil, where Nil decides he’s had quite enough of Bernice?
Brad and Toni, where Toni comes with yet another reason NOT to have a baby?
Back to Tiffany, where Stef chooses Dez as a roommate, and Tiffany meets her new annoying roommate? But at no time does it occur to Tiff that she can say to Heck with this and remain living at the mansion?
A desperate, beleaguered Gunther, running from door to door, begging “folks” to hide him from an overly aggressive Bets, as though this was 1940’s France and the Gestapo were swarming the streets?
Punk using a sleeping Les’ leg as a scratching post? ;)
OK, as everyone has already pointed out – I think it’s cool the way Greg Evans has presented this fourth wall thing. Very funny – and thoughtful. (Maybe she lives on Jupiter – see Ripley’s strip today)
At least we know why money is always tight for the DeGroots, I started counting up how much it must have cost to raise LuAnn up to now. No wonder Nancy had to go back to work!
Well, Luan is at least 36 (cartoon started in 1985), so she is fairly old for a college student. She probably will not graduate at this rate for at least another 10 years?
Namrepus over 3 years ago
Leaning on the fourth wall in regards to comic strip time.
Templo S.U.D. over 3 years ago
age is only relative, right?
Brdshtt Premium Member over 3 years ago
It appears that Luann has been reading our comments here and decided to kick at the 4th wall…
beb01 over 3 years ago
Luann is breaking the 4th wall here since she is already 50 years old in real time. 13years Luann time and 36 years since the start of the strip.
lvlax over 3 years ago
Truer words were never said, Luann!!
AnyFace over 3 years ago
Tyge over 3 years ago
Luann. Wait until you figure out your age! Remember the old adage? “Never trust anyone over 30!”
Finally a prescient comment from Luann!
Black76Manta over 3 years ago
It’s true, time passes so fast, that when we realize we are no longer young, but it seems like yesterday, when we were
Prescott_Philosopher over 3 years ago
And the objective/reason for this arc is…. what? Confess it eludes me.
Tyge over 3 years ago
Any another arc with promise fritters away in a maudlin moment.
lvlax over 3 years ago
I have to give G+K kudos for a CLEVER end to the week!
capricorn9th over 3 years ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re still in college when you enter your geriatric years, Luann.
Need coffee over 3 years ago
The fourth wall just got sledgehammered.
Uncle Kenny over 3 years ago
I expect to live the ret of m life and never see LuAnn graduate from college.
Argythree over 3 years ago
Nancy is actually the one breaking the 4th wall…
Willow Mt Lyon over 3 years ago
Will Luann be a college student for the next 20 years or more? I think she will be.
kenhense over 3 years ago
Yes it HAS taken Luann forever to age. It’s time for her to graduate from kid to young adult.
Brdshtt Premium Member over 3 years ago
I think today’s joke will be here in the comments section seeing how many times “breaking the 4th wall” will be mentioned…
alasko over 3 years ago
Maybe fast forward the strip, LuAnn married, had four kids, divorced, Bern, still single….
Homeboy1865 over 3 years ago
It’s almost as if Luann knows she’s a comic strip character. I wonder if she stays up to 12 a.m. to see what she’s doing that day.
Airman over 3 years ago
Cue the Frank Sinatra tune…….“When I was 17 it was a very good year……..”
legaleagle48 over 3 years ago
How meta can one get?
Joe1962 over 3 years ago
Nancy woman don’t say there ages. Plus age is just relative.
Kymberleigh over 3 years ago
Let’s see. This strip started on March 17, 1985 and Luann was presumed to be about 12 at that point. She graduated from high school June 18, 2014, so that means it took approximately 29 years for her to age six years.
So using that as a rough guide, she is now around 20, and should graduate college somewhere around 2030.
And if Nancy is 50 now, that means she was 42 when the strip started.
All of this makes me wonder what year it is in the Luannverse.
Rhetorical_Question over 3 years ago
Turn back the time
Queen Wolfen over 3 years ago
Well, I suppose she did spend the first twenty years or so of this comic’s run in high school…
reedkomicks Premium Member over 3 years ago
She’ll still be in college when I’m ancient. That’s for sure!
coshima over 3 years ago
Given I started reading Luann when I was in high school, and now I’m older than her mom…yeah, it IS taking her forever to age! :-)
Cheapskate0 over 3 years ago
I got news for you, Luann.
It has taken forever for you to age!
BlitzMcD over 3 years ago
A not so subtle reference to the decades Luann spent in grade and high school in this strip before she and the others rightly began to age a bit more in step with reality. That said, she’s got to be somewhere around 50 or so now.
PeterPirate over 3 years ago
Nice mother-and-daughter moment.
Get it in gear, Luann.
Baarorso over 3 years ago
Trust me Luanne-as the years go by, time seems to go faster and faster and you’re a senior citizen before you know it. ;/
Aladar30 Premium Member over 3 years ago
Sweet moment between Nancy and Luann ♡. This comes with a small break in the fourth wall that shows Luann’s self-awareness of being a teenager in a comic strip for over 35 years. I love Luann’s sense of humor and irony and she looks so confused and happy when her mother cuddles her ♡♡♡.
TwilightFaze over 3 years ago
Love the subtle 4th wall break there. Well played, Greg!
Jason Allen over 3 years ago
Nancy is experiencing what I feel on the few occasions I remember what my real age is.
kraftjeff over 3 years ago
Luanne… you are a cartoon character… they usually don’t age…. blame the cartoonist
TampaFanatic1 over 3 years ago
I like Nancy’s expression in comment in panel 3. In blunt translation it would be: “Yeah, in a lot of ways you have not changed since 1985, you still do not clean up your room, you are uncertain of your future and you still argue with Bern on a daily basis though she has not been hanging around the house so much in the past month or so, is she busy with classes at Mooney already?”. It almost seems like Nancy is conflicted about becoming an empty nester if Luann does finally vacate Casa DeGroot someday, but as Luann said; that could be an eternity, literally….. Nice strip today.
If G&K wanted to go “Truman Show” on us, they could have Luann look out into the 4th panel (add my post to your 4th panel count Brdshtt) and say; “It is almost like my life is drawn up on a daily basis for the amusement of others.”
Ellis97 over 3 years ago
Well, it took a couple decades for Luann to graduate high school.
MsPony over 3 years ago
I think the Luannverse is a strange Brigadoon, with unusual time warps.
LawrenceS over 3 years ago
They say your kids grow up fast. Eventually they do. But in the first six months after my daughter was born I spent two-and-a-half years changing her diapers.
STACEY MARSHALL Premium Member over 3 years ago
The days go by slow, but the years go by fast.
Zeno2099 over 3 years ago
Ha! That is the first time that I remember the characters almost breaking the fourth wall in this comic strip.
Skeptical Meg over 3 years ago
Years fly when you get older, and that makes sense…. When Luann was, say in fifth grade, a year was 10% of her life, but for her mom it was about 2.5%.
Skeptical Meg over 3 years ago
So let’s say Luann’s mom was 30 when Luann was born.
When mom was 40, Luann was 10. She was 4 times as old as Luann.
When mom was 45, Luann was 15. She was only 3 times as old as Luann.
When mom turns 60, Luann will be 30. She will be just twice as old as Luann.
When will Luann catch up?
leighabc123 over 3 years ago
Luann is right! It took 35 years for Luann to go from 13 years old to 20 years old!
Rand al'Thor over 3 years ago
I don’t think people here understand what breaking the fourth wall means. At no time did either character address the audience directly.
Pointspread over 3 years ago
Not so much taken you forever to age, Luann, more like taking you forever to mature.
joegeethree over 3 years ago
True that!
myfb1955 over 3 years ago
Are we being prepared for a grandbaby?
tremaine53 over 3 years ago
Luann is saying this as someone who spent about 12 years being 15 years old.
tutibug5 over 3 years ago
Very clever way of telling us – that Luann & gang -will be in college for the next 30 years. (age 50 minus age 20 equals 30 years). Luann graduated high school in 2014 ….so it has been 7 years already.
dalemcginnis over 3 years ago
my mind says I’m still 30, my body says my mind is nuts.
well-i-never over 3 years ago
She meant to say “mature”.
rshive over 3 years ago
Well LuAnn, physical age doesn’t have much to do with that.
Yakety Sax over 3 years ago
Cracking the fourth wall and the time barrier!
David Huie Green LoveJoyAndPeace over 3 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLVLGEZaHDU
or the Roy Clark English version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQIAcztYjbc
Yesterday, when I was young / The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue /I teased at life as if it were a foolish game /The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame /The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned / I always built to last on weak and shifting sand / I lived by night and shunned the naked light of the day / And only now I see how the years ran away / …..
ST Joe River Premium Member over 3 years ago
Have they started making the mom’s lips fuller or is it just me that she looks different now?
wongo over 3 years ago
Yeah, about that, haven’t you been in cillege for like ten years or so ? Are you really that dumb?
ILK over 3 years ago
Maybe they are taking my suggestion of doing a time jump and switch it to them dealing with their kids? For instance Tiffany’s shy bookish daughter has a crush on Gunther’s jock son.
luann1212 over 3 years ago
I’ve heard of the 4th Wall but never paid attention to it, so all the helpful references have taught me something new; I get that all the time here. One of the reasons I love the strip and all us old farts and fartesses. (lol). One commenter noted that since the characters are aging a little faster as the main characters move on through school, work, life the strip is closer to real life. I hope it always stays on the other side of the 4th wall. but this is a really good way to cover so many subjects. Now back to the usual shenanigans’.
montylc2001 over 3 years ago
Is there any comic strip that the characters age correctly?
Mordock999 Premium Member over 3 years ago
Hmm.
This arc marks the second time that Nancy has complained about the “downside” of being a “working stiff.” (The first time was when she came home complaining of achy feet)
What’s curious is that at neither time, did Luann “volunteer” to take some of the burden off Nancy by pitching in and working at the Fuse. That’s too bad really, as it would have had Luann meeting new people. Plus put her in close proximity to Twit. I mean, “Tiff.”
So. In the end, Nancy pulls herself out of the doldrums while imparting a bit of “folksy wisdom.” Good for her.
Now that it appears that this arc is ending, “whom” will We visit next week?
Bernice and Nil, where Nil decides he’s had quite enough of Bernice?
Brad and Toni, where Toni comes with yet another reason NOT to have a baby?
Back to Tiffany, where Stef chooses Dez as a roommate, and Tiffany meets her new annoying roommate? But at no time does it occur to Tiff that she can say to Heck with this and remain living at the mansion?
A desperate, beleaguered Gunther, running from door to door, begging “folks” to hide him from an overly aggressive Bets, as though this was 1940’s France and the Gestapo were swarming the streets?
Punk using a sleeping Les’ leg as a scratching post? ;)
w16521 over 3 years ago
What Nancy means is that Luann has not yet matured.
harf59 over 3 years ago
I love the tongue in cheek regarding aging. Well done
Miles VanDelay over 3 years ago
Hey! Leave that fourth wall alone!
DondiDoo over 3 years ago
Leave it to time to make an old man out of me
brick10 over 3 years ago
Things take longer from some than for others.
donwestonmysteries over 3 years ago
Hmm. How many years can you be a teenager, then a college student?
dv1093 over 3 years ago
OK, as everyone has already pointed out – I think it’s cool the way Greg Evans has presented this fourth wall thing. Very funny – and thoughtful. (Maybe she lives on Jupiter – see Ripley’s strip today)
Call me Ishmael over 3 years ago
Such are the travails of the comic strip character..
DanielDrummond over 3 years ago
At least we know why money is always tight for the DeGroots, I started counting up how much it must have cost to raise LuAnn up to now. No wonder Nancy had to go back to work!
Squoop over 3 years ago
I still have plenty of vigor at 66 thank you, and didn’t appreciate all the references this week to a 50-yr-old as being ancient!
salttsea over 3 years ago
“Old age is the one disease you don’t look forward of being cured of.” Bernstein in Citizen Kane
salttsea over 3 years ago
One day you’re a young woman in college and the next your a guest in Gasoline Alley. Oh what a world.
ChazNCenTex over 3 years ago
Comic time is different from cosmic time. Ask Mary Worth or Dagwood & Blondie or Snuffy Smith or………
Joe1962 over 3 years ago
Luann is 49 in Luann time the strip is been going for 36 years. Nancy would have to be in mid 70’s
Decepticomic over 3 years ago
Whoa! Meta!
Call me Ishmael over 3 years ago
How long since Mom had her lips “plumped”? They look like balloons.
Caldonia over 3 years ago
She just might still be in college for so long, K.E.’s kid will have inherited the duty of writing the strip.
Chuck374 over 3 years ago
As time goes in the Luanniverse I will be ancient while Luann is still in college.
SKYSWIM over 3 years ago
Well, Luan is at least 36 (cartoon started in 1985), so she is fairly old for a college student. She probably will not graduate at this rate for at least another 10 years?
STACEY MARSHALL Premium Member over 3 years ago
You were 13 for 47 years, so, yeah, I could see that happening!
MuddyUSA Premium Member over 3 years ago
Age is relative….a bad relative!
bryan42 over 3 years ago
36 years to age about 6 years?
mfought over 3 years ago
“I’m not as good as I once was but I’m as good once as I ever was” toby kieth
txmystic over 3 years ago
Heh heh…this is what I was getting at yesterday…
Dragoncat over 3 years ago
I’m 51, but people say I’m older than I look. I’ve even been told that I look like a Teenybopper.
I must be doing something right. I just wish I knew what it was…
Sisyphos over 3 years ago
A little self-referential humor every now and then is the spice of life. The spice must flow!
FunnyPageLover over 3 years ago
This feels like a lead-in to a big farewell. Are we losing another comic strip? Is Greg Evans retiring?
The Pro from Dover over 3 years ago
Youth is wasted on the young.
pontiac59 over 3 years ago
I think the comic is poking fun at … itself
salttsea over 3 years ago
" Old age is the one disease you don’t look forward to being cured of." Citizen Kane
198.23.5.11 about 3 years ago
I’ve gotta stay here.But there’s no reason why you folks shouldn’t go out into the lobbyuntil this thing blows over.
CaptainX_99 about 3 years ago
That’s a pretty good inside joke there. Just picked up on that.