Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for April 14, 2009

“Foot-of-Terror”? Remind me not to call him if I’m ever in trouble…

Petey, he’s in his own little world, which unfortunately breaks into yours at times.

Hang around me much longer and you’ll find out all about advanced placement.

Great use of the silent penultimate panel.

Ernesto’s powers are actually working! Petey’s falling asleep. Me too.

I love the little glowing marks around Ernesto in the second panel, and how they’re fading away in the third.

@Sarah Jane

Great call. That beat panel is amazing … you can feel his enthusiasm fading.

http://www.cafepress.com/uh_oh_baby

The “Uh Oh Baby” T-shirts now available!

I’m wearing mine right now!

Too bad Petey’s not violent, then he could “Advance Place” his oxford…

LOL - way to go Richard, you are making Ernesto more and more repellent.

People here have said that Ernesto is indeed “for real,” but I still refuse to believe it. ;)

(Whether he is real or not, I’ll say something I know to be true: This is a fabulous comic!)

If you scrubbed out Ernesto’s words in his balloons, and added in the right words, leaving Petey’s alone, it would look like Ernesto was trying to sell Petey insurance… The intensity! The self-importance!

Petey’s socially stunted enough that I figured he WAS Advanced Placement.

Pied-a-terror (too much trouble right now to get the accent on the “a”) is in fact a pun. The original word is pied-a-terre, meaning “foot on the ground”. It’s a word used by pretentious people who had a small apartment to stay in, which was not their main home, whenever they dropped in to the city (maybe one day a month?).

Makes sense? I’m afraid maybe not… But it’s true - doesn’t that count?

Trust me, Ernesto, your “pied” isn’t the only thing striking “terror” in me…

Good call, RinaFarina! I wonder how many others caught the pun?

“Pied-á-terre” can also be translated as “temporary quarters”.

“Pied-á-terreur” = foot of terror …? I wonder if that somehow is related to “Manos – The Hands of Fate”?