Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for April 10, 2024

WE GOT US A SUSPECT !!!

You two have been so obsessed with this nonsense that you’re not thinking straight!

Why don’t you ask him?!

Did you Walt?

Do I sense a Law and Order situation here?

Order the Uriah Pert Prune Whip special….

From the Comics Curmudgeon:

“You know, after all these years, I still experience the joy of discovery from reading the newspaper comics. Or, well, at least sometimes I read something like today’s Gasoline Alley, sigh heavily, and then Google “gasoline alley family tree” in hopes of making sense of it, but then am just a little bit charmed when I find a graphic like this:

Wallet Family Tree

That comes from a page on Hobbylark dot com that also includes an annotated timeline of important events in the strip lore, such as “Wilmer admits to being a sap, a wart, and a drip, but claims the Army did a job on him!” (November 20, 1945), “Corky and Hope move into a new apartment – landlord is Pert!” (May 6, 1954), and “Melba decides to take advantage of leap year to move Rufus along towards a wedding” (July 5, 1976, and yet somehow Melba is now the mayor and still hasn’t sealed the deal). Anyway, from this documentation I have confirmed that Sheezix and Corky are brothers, and Corky runs the diner (in fact, according to that timeline, 1950 was the “year of the Diner”). And because Corky has decided to embrace the town name change, that means that the coming Gasoline Alley vs. Electric Acres civil war will literally pit brother against brother, so I guess I’m finally coming around to being interested in it."

One of the comments on CC referred to a 9/19/1991: Seattle Times article titled “Gasoline Alley Amended After ‘Racist’ Complaints”:

The syndicate for the comic strip Gasoline Alley has removed several strips in response to an article in the Seattle Times that reported some readers find the current story line offensive in its racial stereotyping.

The changes mean the story line has been condensed by three weeks, said Evelyn Smith, Tribune Media Services managing editor.

Smith said the editors felt the story “ambled along” anyway and “could benefit from tightening.” But also, she said, the editors took a “closer look” at the humor and, though they still didn’t personally find it offensive, “we certainly had our consciousness raised by someone else’s opinion that maybe it was.”

The strips feature Teeka, an Asian Pacific Islander, and her citizenship classes, and the jokes primarily turn on the new immigrants’ mispronunciation of English and misunderstandings of basic aspects of American life.

In a recent informal Times poll, 60 percent of respondents found the Teeka strips not offensive, while 40 percent, including almost all the respondents who identified themselves as Asian American, found them offensive.

The strips that were eliminated had been among those scheduled to run over the next several weeks. One of the strips would have had Teeka, confused after being told to call 911 to report a mugger, saying, “I can’t! Is no eleven on dial!” Another had Mr. Vu, a Vietnamese immigrant, rescuing their citizenship teacher by karate-chopping the mugger; when the mugger protested his rights were violated, Mr. Vu said: “Yeah! I punch his rights out!”

Gasoline Alley author Jim Scancarelli agreed to the changes, Smith said, although he still believes the strips were sensitively handled and positive.

Better line up the picketers and protestors in the parking lot!