Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for January 03, 2016

Hee, Hee!

Wait, Brad.

Just Wait til Karen and Greg FORCE You, after You’re Married to Toni for a bit, to “Adopt” this little Storm Trooper as a sort of twisted plot device.

Life as You’ve known it, will have ended….,

LOL!!! It’s amazing how many people agree with Shannon, but her excuse is she’s a little kid.

As for me, the older I get, the longer my list of resolutions. And the fewer I seem to accomplish.

Happy, healthy New Year to all…

Shannon, pumpkin, Christmas was roughly a week ago. Why do you want more stuff?

@brdshtt:The one that dies with the most stuff, is still dead and therefore cannot enjoy all of the stuff that he has accumulated.

Ok, I get how they are supposed to convey she is young, but is she gonna have a speech impediment her whole life? At the age of 5 I was able to say Brad easily

Why is this little brat calling her dad “Bwad”? Sounds disrespectful. Is that how he’s raising her?

Shannon looks older in today’s strip. Don’t tell me Team Evans is actually going to let her age!

As for the “Bwad”, she does know how to say his name properly … it is not a speech impediment. That affectation was consciously adopted back on May 31, 2010:

Number 5: Get a whole closet of “Roobeers”.

When I was a young lad, I had two friends who were twin brothers. They were around 11 and they pronounced their R’s as W’s. They eventually outgrew this.

See a speech therapist.

She’s going to make someone very unhappy some day.

The Evans’ are using an old Chevy Chase/Emily Latella motif for this episode.

Shannon, the way to achieve all that is to snag some doofus like Brad who’ll work himself to death trying to make you happy without getting anything but vague promises and the occasional snuggle or kiss on the cheek in return.

I’ve known several selfish little girls boys, but none with Shannon’s baseless sense of entitlement. She’s not cute, not funny, and not remotely affectionate; she’s an obnoxious jackass and parasite, and someday the little tick needs to get popped. (And here’s betting that if she doesn’t Real Soon Now, by the time she’s sixteen she’s going to weigh 200lbs, and have badly dyed aqua hair, a nose ring, and a tramp stamp over her butt. And will wonder why she can’t seem to get a date.)

Brad, please, please, please wake up and either get Toni to marry you NEXT WEEK, including the word “obey” in her vows, or dump her and Shannon. And tell Shannon exactly why she’s not going to see you anymore ever again.

You know that old saw about milk and a cow? It applies to guys and support as well as girls and sex.

You, Brad, are a support slut, and you deserve exactly the same respect that Toni would get if she stood on Main Street in lingerie holding a sign saying “Ten bucks take it or leave it.”

[shakes head at the idea that the desire to have stuff is somehow uniquely American.]

What is uniquely American, or Western, anyway, is the idea that you can actually get stuff without being a member of a ruling class.

However, in order to buy, buy, buy you generally have to work, work, work. Understanding this is called “the work ethic”, and it’s generally regarded as a good thing.

In places that do not reward the work ethic, you still work yourself to the bone, but only get what your owner (or increasingly these days, your government) thinks you should have.

Alternatively, if you are female, you can get married to some guy who does.

I commend to you Kipling’s "Gods of the Copybook Headings:

“In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrewAnd the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was trueThat All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make FourAnd the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more."[Kipling’s “market” here is not the free market of healthy commerce; it’s more like “common opinion”, aka, “wishful thinking”.]

Finally, there’s American style welfare, but that’s outside the scope of this comic.

Perfect.

Shannon has improved her behavior a LOT since her first introduction. She is even drawn in a nicer way. No more angry eyebrows. I’m sure knowing Bwad has helped her.

Brad corrects her mispronunciation of words but not the way she says his name. Strange…

Preview of Coming Attractions: Bwad the Dad! (Oops – wait a minute; he’s already there…)

If you go around thinking to yourself or saying to others that you don’t need to improve…you do.

Sounds like the beginnings of a young Tiffany.

Shannon’s resolutions to improve herself should include not biting people. Karen and Greg’s resolutions to improve the strip should include not having Brad and Toni adopt Shannon, ever. I suspect that neither resolution will be kept, of course.

Is it just me, or has Shannon grown a little, physically (i.e. a bit taler, etc.)? Her face seems more well defined, etc.

2nd Question – What’s happened to “Luann Againn” over the last 2 days? It was missing for 01/01 & 01/02. It showed up today, but we’ll have to see if it shows up Monday 01/04 and beyond….

Brad is so good for Shannon, I love this relationship.

Shannon is not asking anyone to give her these things, they are her goals for herself. She wants to BUY Disneyland, not have it given to her. It is mature of her to have goals for herself.

My new years resolution is the same as every year. Not to have any new years resolutions. Strangely, I seem to be able to keep that one..

I think that Shannon is the result of a one night stand for Ann Eiffel with Toni’s brother.

This is a major arc issue hinted or implied because of Toni’s responsibility, and Bwad’s wonderful fatherhood ability, but with the wedding plausibly coming up this year, that might be covered. As I always say with this strip, “stay tuned.”

Implausible, you have a good point about the Shannon adoption idea. It would end up causing her teams. The speculation though is because most nearly every interaction of Bead and Shannon has Brad displaying noticeably strong “fatherly” skills.

Implausible, you have a good point about the Shannon adoption idea. It would end up causing her teams. The speculation though is because most nearly every interaction of Bead and Shannon has Brad displaying noticeably strong “fatherly” skills.

“Not necessarily – some folks enjoy the process of acquiring said stuff and the novelty/elation of having the item wears off as soon as they obtain it. Then, to maintain that feeling, they must be constantly in the process of acquiring new things.”I assume this is what motivates the billionaires who have so much more than they could rationally need.

“Has the comic ever hinted that Shannon would ever be adopted?”The closest thing was when Brad, reluctant to take Shannon Christmas shopping, as I recall, suggested he might not have passed the fatherhood test. (Though later Brad was more and more inclined to take her places—and she loves him.)

Insofar as we know, Shannon and Jonah are happy together. That’s irrelevant, of course, since the True Believers think Brad and Toni are such wonderful parents (they certainly aren’t, but there’s no telling the Believers that), and they just can’t wait for that wonderful couple to have kids of their own. I suspect that Jonah will therefore land an acting job with a show that is booked to tour Spain, Hawaii, Peru, Washington D.C., and other parts of the earth from which characters don’t return, so Shannon’s adoption will be yet another deus ex machina plot maneuver.

“Team Evans could have Jonah run away/imprisioned/killed/give up, but that would only cause emotional stress on Shannon for having her father bail on her.” I don’t recall ever seeing Shannon’s father, or Shannon saying anything about him.

“You should completely give up and let your family members “adopt” your kid, because you aren’t good enough!**GoComics majority opinion”.I don’t think so. As I suggested, we have never even met Shannon’s dad, so we have no indication of whether or not he cares for her. Her mother did bail out and he did not, so you may have a point, but Brad and Toni are the ones we see Shannon with. And you my recall, when she first appeared on the scene, she was a regular hellion, aka brat. She never is that any more.

“It’s the by-product of Brad/Toni being so boring together’.Here we go again, but one may recall that Tolstoy, I believe began a story with the observation that happy marriages [read relationships] are all the same… Very hard to write about peace or happiness in a vivid way.

By that statement, it’s heavily hinted that the DeGroots will adopt both Prudence and TJ. They both need families, and the DeGroots have welcomed them both.

There’s an idea … Prudence and TJ get married and written out of the strip.

All the True Believers feel deeply that Jonah is an unfit father because he leaves Shannon with a baby sitter (Toni) so often. “So often” means, of course, whenever he has to work, which is exactly what all other single parents in the world do, but never mind. I just think it’s ironic that when (not if) B&T adopt Shannon, and they both have shifts at their respective fire stations, then they too will leave Shannon with a sitter (Luann), and the Believers will think it’s adorable.

Wow, I’ve never seen anyone here go to such lengths to defend a character who, come on now, was clearly meant by the strip’s creators to be portrayed as a dud and as a lousy parent. You should go to Pearls Before Swine and post a long dissertation about how Rat has a spotless heart of gold and is always a really great guy. That would be entertaining.

Hmmm, maybe. It could fit, but I still think she will be close to Bwad and Toni.

Its not the time, it’s the quality of the time that counts. I know many kids who have mom around all the time who are rotten, and many more who were raised in single parent or otherwise unusual households (myself included) who turned out all right (myself included—yes me too -:).

See, Brad/Bwad has done major things to help Shannon turn into a wonderful, much less bratty little girl.

Toni’s idea of child care is to let your ward bite somebody, don’t discipline or scold her or even tell her it’s wrong, then come home to your boyfriend so that the two of you can laugh about it together. Mom of the Year material, she is!

She seems to be like Odie (the dog from Garfield) If you recall, Odie used to belong to someone else, but over time that owner appeared less and less, and finally disappeared altogether, leaving Jon as Odie’s owner. It was never made official or anything though,the owner just stopped appearing.This is what will happen to Shannon. Her father doesn’t even get so much as a passing mention nowadays (whe’s the last time he even made an appearance?) and Toni cares for her to the point where she has to have Luann occasionally babysit Shannon.At some point, readers will just realize her dad hasn’t been mentioned in years and never will be again. All so Brad+Toni can experience child-rearing without the benefit of getting to conceive one themselves. Poor Brad is gonna be a virgin for the rest of his life.

Shannon should check in with Ralph from “Mother Goose & Grimm.”

Resolving to improve is silly when you are already flawless.

Wow. Shannon’s self-confidence has so improved under the steadying tutelage of he favorite “Bwad” that she now teeters on arrogance….

Ann Eiffel’s illegitimate kid, Shannon has no likable qualities and should be sent to military school as soon as she is old enough.

OK, for 2016 I resolve not to call people “True Believers”. It was meant merely to denote people who seem to accept all of Team Evans’ decisions without question. I’ll be more guarded in my terminology, lest it come across as contemptuous.

I meant the warm, loving, fatherly type relationship between Shannon and Brad over the last couple years. That is a major thing. Having kids doing seemingly small things consistently constitutes major things, at least in my mind as a parent. I think that GE et. al, have that point in mind. How it will all work out remains to be seen. But Jonah is not presented very charitably as a dad, although he is quite a handsome devil. I really think Toni should put her foot down with him. The way the relationship is portrayed it seems they accept that he is not around or involved a lot, and she is always portrayed as doing the kinds of consistent things that would help a child develop and grow emotionally. There have been quite a few comments on that as a matter of fact. So a conclusion that Brad’s (see I did not say Bwad, this time) influence on her is justified I would say.

However, I still hold to what I had to say about the widespread belief that B&T should adopt Shannon because Jonah is unfit and B&T would be great parents. I maintain that neither one of those things has been shown to be true.

Jonah doesn’t actually have a job, so the “overworked single parent” thing doesn’t apply. That fact has been remarked upon by Toni, so it isn’t merely reader conjecture. And for a guy without a real job to drop his kid off with his sister (overnight no less) on a regular basis without advance notice, to the point where Toni routinely relies on Luann to babysit just to get some time away from Shannon, makes him a pretty damn neglectful parent. And how about the quality time he DID spend with her (until Brad got her away from him): Halloween. Yes he would take her trick-or-treating, but then bring her an adult party where he would leave her in a bedroom the whole time by herself. Does that sound like the actions of a good parent?And Toni doesn’t WANT to babysit, she feels obligated to look after Shannon because of guilt and family responsibility. She’s too good a person to say no, and Jonah takes advantage of that. And she’s well past the point of “babysitting.” What Luann does for Shannon is babysitting; Toni is practically raising her.

Jonah isn’t an overworked single parent that simply doesn’t have time to spend with his kid. He simply doesn’t want to spend time with her due to his lifestyle. Look at his reaction the last time we saw him: he was all too happy to ditch Shannon the second he was given an out. If he were simply too busy to see her normally, wouldn’t he have wanted to take advantage of the time he had?He may not be a “horrible” parent, but there’s plenty of evidence to support calling him a neglectful or absentee one.

Except it’s not a “work party”, it’s just a party. You’re adding in stuff not supported by the text. If this were about him working so much he can’t spend time with Shannon, Toni wouldn’t be calling him irresponsible all the time for it.

I’m speculating that the reason Brad and Toni’s wedding has been put off for so long (we have to wait till 9/11) is that there will be some intervening events wherein Shannon becomes adoptable. The wedding will then involve Shannon as well as Brad and Toni…….just a thought…….. Because the Evans’ have so many plot arcs, it will take a year to get through all these turns of events. As Pipe Tobacco said, Brad is definitely showing good ‘father’ skills.

Yeah, I do think there’s a bit of the Tethercat Principle at work here. But in the absence of a statement from Team Evans: I’m gonna go with Occam’s Razor. We see Shannon in Toni’s care all the time (even when it’s incredibly inconvenient for her) so it’s simplest to assume she’s being pawned off on Toni on a regular basis.And Brad thinks Jonah is a bad parent (hell, Toni does too) so of course they wouldn’t complain about it. And notice how Shannon is getting better behaved the longer she’s around Brad? In the past other posters have stated that Shannon’s behavior was a classic symptom of a neglected child.Simplest hypothesis.

I agree with Implausible that the reason we so often see Shannon with Toni and Brad is that those two characters are basically not interesting, so it is necessary for them to have a kid to interact with. That’s why it’s almost inevitable that they will adopt Shannon ASAP. It’s not because Jonah has been shown to be a bad parent, but because it’s rather a necessity to have a B&T plot that isn’t boring (now that Dirk has been taken out of the picture).

The unlikable, unwanted kid. The unfair burden for the not yet married Brad and Toni. Sounds too autobiographical, a confrontation with guilt hiding behind the mask of forced humor. No, Shannon does not belong in this comic strip, she’s just the ghost of youthful mistakes, a rear view mirror of poor choices. Forget the past. Move on. Toni and Brad have their own babies to make.

Shannon has to be the most boring character in this strip.

“There are plenty of ways to show Jonah being a bad parent, but he is instead shown to be a typical single parent.”So you think Jonah’s behavior is typical of single parents, eh? Interesting. I beg to differ.“I don’t understand why being a single parent means you should have your kid taken from you.”It doesn’t mean that. Being an irresponsible dud, however, very often does.@luannfan1212:“Haha. Love Rat, but he is not meant to be a sympathetic character, in fact entirely the opposite. He is the hidden troll in all of us.”Exactly my point. Jonah was not meant to be a sympathetic character either.

I’ve never argued that he should have Shannon taken away. I really don’t like the idea of her becoming Brad and Toni’s surrogate daughter, if only for the fact that it smacks of a cheap attempt to give Brad a daughter without the ickiness of conceiving one. “Nephewism”, as TV Tropes calls it, really annoys me, especially when the strip itself claims to be a semi-realistic look at the lives of teens/young adults. You can’t be G-Rated and realistic at the same time, not when dealing with people that age.But anyway, I’m not saying Shannon should be adopted. Might it happen? Yes (though like I said before, they’ll probably just give her the odie treatment instead of making it official), but I don’t like the idea.

But I most certainly DO think that Jonah is an absentee father who seems to have no relationship whatsoever (or desire to HAVE a relationship) with his own kid, and there has been no evidence otherwise presented within the strip itself. Shannon herself, when straight-up asked if she likes spending time with him, didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the notion. When given the chance to spend time with her and being given an out, Jonah turned tail and left without even saying a word to the girl. She treats Brad and Toni like her parents to the point where she’s honestly confused by being told that “Happy Father’s Day” should be directed at Jonah and not Brad.None of this means that Toni/Brad are good parents. But it DOES mean that Jonah ISN’T.These are the facts, as presented by the strip itself. And nothing has been shown in the strip that contradicts them, nor has any interview with the authors revealed a different interpretation. By all indications, Shannon’s dad simply isn’t there for her, and has no real desire to be. Believe otherwise if you like, but remember that there is NO EVIDENCE to support that view.

I don’t think “they don’t even mention Jonah anymore” helps your argument as much as you think it does. It sounds to me like they (Toni/Brad or Greg/Karen, take your pick) have basically written him off altogether.

> Shannon only bites mean people.>So that makes it OK????

> I am not a “true believer” just accept what they produce because it is their strip, they do it their way. Unquestioning acceptance of whatever Team Evans produces is just what I meant by “True Believers”. I shall word it differently in the future, but that’s what I’m referring to.

Nah. Jonah might still have some sort of backstory that we don’t know about yet, but this isn’t about “needing babysitting help.” This is about a guy who is all too happy to let someone else take care of the parenting duties that he should be doing. That’s what this guy is about — at least from what we have seen of him so far. And who knows? Maybe his backstory is that he did do something horrible. We don’t know.

@DavidHuieGreen“Shannon doesn’t have self esteem problems. Just hard headedness and a closed mind. Typical of some children.”.

Closed?How so?She’s a see bit childish, but some children ARE childish.WHODATHUNK?Anyhoo, I like her.

“stop being a dk and micro-inspecting my every post for something to attack.".Duck?Deck?Dock?Hmmmm

“Americans on average work twice as much as Europeans but get far less in payment. So hard work equals working poor in this country these days.”.So we’re a bit slower.Or Europe is going under.After all, they have to import people to do the work.Oops, that applies to us too, doesn’t it?We bring in people to do the dirty, low wage jobs and the hard-thinking-required jobs which pay well but require real educations..Never mind.

“I still maintain that her new maturity is her getting older.”.Could be, but not everybody who vets older matures. I have a 40-year-old nephew who is still emotionally 5.Development stopped at that time due to family trauma.Shannon is doing well, even if any think it’s only because her creator made her so.

“Ah you’re right…I must have always misread that line. Well good catch, I’ll admit that Jonah may be goofing off here. Not enough to sway me that he should lose his kid, but it moves the line a bit for sure.”.I agree that deserves careful consideration when I remember what happened to my nephew..I figure the father will either drift further away or decide to daddy-up and be there for her..We shall see.

> Ann is faking it>In the last strip, we see both Toni and Shannon telling Brad that Shannon bit Ann. In the second strip we see that Ann’s finger was drawn as if it’s definitely been bitten. Which hand Shannon bit is apparently a continuity mistake.

[SPOILER ALERT]--Stuck in a rut...

Good-night, all.

@Argythree“Actually, none of the above. The decisions about where jobs will be created are made in the boardrooms of international corporations whose loyalties lie with either their largest investors, or with their Chief Operating officers, and not with a particular country.”.None of the above?They don’t import people?We don’t import people?.Really, a company should try to give best return on investment to its shareholders..You are free to do otherwise if you can get investors.The improved standard of living for furrenurs may sound bad to those who think their needs don’t matter, but they can make the difference between life and death to them..We need more compassion.

Nah, I still think that Jonah has a thing or two to learn about good parenting.

I feel ya Shannon…

Ask Tricky Dick Nixon.