Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for November 27, 2023

At least the Gunther and Bets has been put to rest. I hope to enjoy the Skydiving story but I fear that Nancy may prevent it from happening.

Pull the ripcord Mr. D.

Am I seeing things, or has Frank dropped some poundage?

Playing all this week! “Geronimo!” OR “Luann takes a dive!”

Yay, back to whether Luann will actually go skydiving, or not.

She’ll see Piro again…maybe she’ll realize that there’s no real spark there, be exhilarated by the experience and go on to new things in her life…new career interests, maybe a new relationship with someone who isn’t weird (Piro) or not interesting to her (Gunther). But please, not the return of Quill…

Luann will go tandem, and I am sure she will scream as she leaves the plane

It’s sweet that Nancy is concerned. I wonder if this will lead Frank and Nancy to decide to also try skydiving. They kind like to show they’re still full of surprises from time to time.

Aw, just go Skydiving WITH Luann, Nancy.

Take Bernice with you.

You might have a wonderful time, and make Frank feel bad for not going. ;-)

I wouldn’t watch “Top Gun” unless I wanted to lose my lunch.

Pull that ripcord Frank your chances of survival are better.

Calvin: “Mom, can I learn to jump out of a plane?”

Mom: “Why don’t you just play chicken on the railroad tracks? That’s a cheaper way to toy with death, I’m sure…”

Calvin: “Mom’s so practical!”

In th last picture Nancy’s got her phaser set on ‘stun’

Nap time, Frank..

Yes, Skydiving is back! The Starr Cousins are back!

Would Frank Degroot go skydiving for the rush?

It’s interesting how an offhand remark from Luann last week segued into this new arc.

BTW, there’s a plug below the strip labelled “Duckling To Swan: Luann Through The Years”. Do you consider Luann a “swan”; I don’t. Toni is, but not Luann.

You can’t avoid getting stung by a bee, but you don’t have to jump out of an airplane.

So we are going sky diving after all. I had hoped not, but common sense, as they say, is not so common. And of course this leaves the fate of Bets and Gunther ‘up in the air’…

When getting stung by a bee, risk is only as great as your allergic reaction and access to medical treatment. An equipment failure skydiving is terminal and you have a lot of seconds to contemplate your certain demise.

No thanks, I’ll take my chances with the bee.

Did Nancy frightened Frank? Or Will Frank pay for the skydiving expenses?

Frank works at a non-specified job, that includes packing parachutes for skydiving?

Any fool can jump out of a plane for free. You are paying to do it safely, Nancy. Not too risky.

Don’t fall for it, Luann, even if your Mom thinks it’s plane stupid.

YAY! We’re going to get the Skydiving arc! =)

Looks like Frank has done some research, he’d probably like to try skydiving too. Maybe he’ll end up joining the group and it will become a father-daughter experience? Probably not, but let’s hope he can calm Nancy down. I want to see Luann experience strong emotions, continue to follow Tara and Piro in their adventures and become more happy and bold. Finding ways to get out of the routine that seems to depress her more every day.

Most people will get stung by bees in their life Frank. Most won’t die from it. You’re not making a strong argument

Well… she is 19…. Legally an adult.

Not sure how odds are calculated for that. A bee sting will kill someone with an allergic reaction. But most people don’t have the allergic reaction and never report, “Hey, I was stung by a bee,” to the CDC, so it is impossible to calculate the odds. More people are killed by bees each year than die in sky-diving accidents, but millions and millions (and perhaps another millions if you add being stung on different days) are stung each year and the number skydiving is much, much, much smaller.

I hope Bet’s gets put to rest permanently.

I did it when I was almost 18

People rarely get hurt their first jump. It’s when you think you’ve got it that you get it.

Nancy always has been the brains and common sense of the family.

I remember doing that when I was in college. The trick is to do it first and THEN tell you folks about it. I was proud when our son sent us a video of him wing-walking on a biplane — after the fact, of course! My response and that of my wife were somewhat different. My (at the time) 84-year-old father was all up for the three of us going out and doing it together.

He has a point. 12.8% of murders are by family members

I was standing in a line on the tarmac to get on the plane, and asked the guy in front of me how long it took him to get over the sick feeling before the jump. He responded it took him about 45 jumps. I knew then that that was my last jump. No way did I want to go through 35 more jumps like that to determine if I liked the sport.

Shouldn’t that have been “.. or greater than by your spouse” (the Queen Bee)?

Finally, a new arc that doesn’t involve romance.

Ok, that actually made me laugh, loudly. The change in expression, and especially the posture, really good!

Sure, cause everybody wants to learn how to skydive in December.

Someone needs to inform Mom that skydivers usually exit from a door and not from an ejection seat.

Well I had to look that up. Go for it Luann!

SKYDIVING STATISTICS At a rate of 0.006 skydives fatalities per 1,000, that’s 1 fatality in every 167,000 jumps. This means it’s more likely you’ll die from a lightning strike, dog bite, wasp sting, bike accident, choking or a motor vehicle crash than skydiving.

When I did a tandem dive, my ears whistled the whole time down, and I got Charlie horses in both my legs when I hit the ground. Totally worth it!

Luann is an adult, cut the apron strings already, Nancy!

At an airport near us a skydiving plane cashed on landing killing the pilot and co-pilot. All the jumpers landed safely. That leads me to conclude that jumping out mat be safer than staying in.

PS, I have used that skydiving company.

I went skydiving when I was 18. My friend was a few months younger than me, and his mother wouldn.t sign the permission waiver because she told him it was like signing his death certificate! So we had to wait until his birthday, which was in November. We took the course, but while we were training, it started to snow. So we had to come back in the Spring to do our jump. Back then, there wasn’t tandem jumps, it was static line, like the Army, where the line opens the chute. We still had a dummy rip cord for practice. He and I went from 2800 feet, and the instructor and one other student in the “advanced class” went up to 10,000. When I jumped, I never even went for my ripcord. After we landed, a truck picked us up, and we went to get the “advanced” student. He was hanging from a flagpole in front of a firehouse! That was the only time we did that. We also went bungie jumping. Of the two, I would skydive again before I went bungie jumping again!

Luann needs to be honest with herself – is she going skydiving because she really wants to or because she’s trying to keep up with Tara for Piro’s attention?

Indeed!

If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving may not be for you.

I’m beginning to comprehend why some elderly people skydive once. They figure it would be a great achievement if they survive and a heck of a way to got if they don’t!

Death rates: last year: 0.28 fatalities per 100,000 jumps

Air Force rules:1. Never jump out of a perfectly good airplane.2. If you do, and your parachute has problems, we’ll be happy to give you a free exchange.

And this is exactly where Ann❤️Eiffel steps in and exactly why Ann❤️Eiffel is so important to the Shoog Daddies. And this strip which is spinning in a clockwise swirl (in the Northern Hemisphere) down the porcelain tube. Dearest Ann❤️Eiffel is the very ❤️ of this comic. No wonder we ALL ❤️ Ann❤️Eiffel. And The❤️Count. Later, gators… places to go and people to dupe. TTFN… Count❤️… OUT!

I have rarely noticed Dad give a smile plus the period-dash side eye punctuation meaning, “Burn…” or when the recipient of a burn, with a frown, hurt moment of “Touche.”

From where does Luann get her blonde hair?

sky diving / parachuting is dangerous regardless of what the comic says. If you do it other than a one time tandem demo jump, you will get hurt eventually. I know from personal experience. I have 35 jumps and I hit my head on landing one time that it rang like a bell. Nobody I know that jumps has ever gone injury free and I have seen people killed. Still, you are going to be pretty safe on a tandem jump with a license skydiver with a couple of hundred jumps under their belt as long as you follow instructions.

My idea of getting a “rush” isn’t to jump out of a plane and risk my body becoming a bag of a zillion bone fragments.

OMG. She was serious about skydiving.

I mean we all know that even if the skydiving trip happens, we readers will never get to actually see it, right?

Skydiving goes against my survival instinct. Why would anyone willingly jump out of a airplane thousands of feet in the air? No, thanks.

About 100 people in the U.S. die each year from bee stings. Some people are allergic to the bee venom, but most are not.

Why? Didn’t you read the script for the last two weeks?

My daughter went tandem skydiving with a friend when she was about 25. Told us about it afterward. She got two thrills for the price of one when the main chute failed to open and they had to go to the reserve. That was the end of that hobby. On the other hand, my brother has about 600 jumps. I’ll stick to paragliding

Like others calling for violence here with the last dorm room confrontation, I would opt for a strip of Stefanie (or is it Stephanie? Whatever.) taking a skydiving course. To impress Kip with her adventurousness and thrill seeking. I don’t want to see her hit the ground though. She is not worth the pain stars and breath to yell “AHHHHH!” as she is rescued by Comic Physics falling into a well-placed tree. I don’t think Greg relies on comic physics for a laugh, just magical realism like Puddles driving a car in a dream. He does good dream shots. Bets could save Stuffie at the last moment in a display of comic physics 101. Or Stef could dream of Fear of Flying. Not that she is any Erica Jong. More like Erica Wrong.

Probably not the best analogy Frank.

If you do enough low-probability-of-death things (like making Nancy mad, for example), you wind up dead

But getting stung by a bee (usually) isn’t fatal. There’s no EpiPen for a chute that doesn’t open.

So we went through all that rigmarole just to return to status quo …. Gunther firmly planted under Bets’ thumb …. but with no audience …. yet.

Okay, I’ve been waiting for the parental objections….

It will end with Luann’s getting stuck in a tree,and Fireman Brother Brad getting her down with the hook and ladder

Why is Frank Degroot answering for Luann Degroot? Did he already approve?

This looks and reads like a Sunday comic.

Mebbe they’ll use Maxwell parachutes. They’re good to the last drop

Luann, see if Dad wants to skydive with you.

i was curious about the cost (to train and then do an actual jump); looks like it could be on average ~$300 for ground training leading to a 1st tandem jump e.g. attached to an experienced instructor.

And over at Baby Blues Zoe is about to cut her toddler sister’s hair. That is going to be WAY better than this storyline.

Easy there, Frank! Your snarking is way more dangerous for you than skydiving….

There’s a difference, which is crucial here, between “odds” and “frequency.”