Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for August 28, 2021

Leaning on the fourth wall in regards to comic strip time.

age is only relative, right?

It appears that Luann has been reading our comments here and decided to kick at the 4th wall…

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.

Truer words were never said, Luann!!

Luann. Wait until you figure out your age! Remember the old adage? “Never trust anyone over 30!”

Finally a prescient comment from Luann!

It’s true, time passes so fast, that when we realize we are no longer young, but it seems like yesterday, when we were

And the objective/reason for this arc is…. what? Confess it eludes me.

Any another arc with promise fritters away in a maudlin moment.

I have to give G+K kudos for a CLEVER end to the week!

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re still in college when you enter your geriatric years, Luann.

The fourth wall just got sledgehammered.

I expect to live the ret of m life and never see LuAnn graduate from college.

Nancy is actually the one breaking the 4th wall…

Will Luann be a college student for the next 20 years or more? I think she will be.

Yes it HAS taken Luann forever to age. It’s time for her to graduate from kid to young adult.

I think today’s joke will be here in the comments section seeing how many times “breaking the 4th wall” will be mentioned…

Maybe fast forward the strip, LuAnn married, had four kids, divorced, Bern, still single….

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.

Cue the Frank Sinatra tune…….“When I was 17 it was a very good year……..”

How meta can one get?

Nancy woman don’t say there ages. Plus age is just relative.

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.

Turn back the time

Well, I suppose she did spend the first twenty years or so of this comic’s run in high school…

She’ll still be in college when I’m ancient. That’s for sure!

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! :-)

I got news for you, Luann.

It has taken forever for you to age!

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.

Nice mother-and-daughter moment.

Get it in gear, Luann.

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. ;/

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 ♡♡♡.

Love the subtle 4th wall break there. Well played, Greg!

Nancy is experiencing what I feel on the few occasions I remember what my real age is.

Luanne… you are a cartoon character… they usually don’t age…. blame the cartoonist

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.”

Well, it took a couple decades for Luann to graduate high school.

I think the Luannverse is a strange Brigadoon, with unusual time warps.

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.

The days go by slow, but the years go by fast.

Ha! That is the first time that I remember the characters almost breaking the fourth wall in this comic strip.

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%.

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?

Luann is right! It took 35 years for Luann to go from 13 years old to 20 years old!

I don’t think people here understand what breaking the fourth wall means. At no time did either character address the audience directly.

Not so much taken you forever to age, Luann, more like taking you forever to mature.

True that!

Are we being prepared for a grandbaby?

Luann is saying this as someone who spent about 12 years being 15 years old.

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.

my mind says I’m still 30, my body says my mind is nuts.

She meant to say “mature”.

Well LuAnn, physical age doesn’t have much to do with that.

Cracking the fourth wall and the time barrier!

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 / …..

Have they started making the mom’s lips fuller or is it just me that she looks different now?

Yeah, about that, haven’t you been in cillege for like ten years or so ? Are you really that dumb?

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’.

Is there any comic strip that the characters age correctly?

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? ;)

What Nancy means is that Luann has not yet matured.

I love the tongue in cheek regarding aging. Well done

Hey! Leave that fourth wall alone!

Leave it to time to make an old man out of me

Things take longer from some than for others.

Hmm. How many years can you be a teenager, then a college student?

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)

Such are the travails of the comic strip character..

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!

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!

“Old age is the one disease you don’t look forward of being cured of.” Bernstein in Citizen Kane

One day you’re a young woman in college and the next your a guest in Gasoline Alley. Oh what a world.

Comic time is different from cosmic time. Ask Mary Worth or Dagwood & Blondie or Snuffy Smith or………

Luann is 49 in Luann time the strip is been going for 36 years. Nancy would have to be in mid 70’s

Whoa! Meta!

How long since Mom had her lips “plumped”? They look like balloons.

She just might still be in college for so long, K.E.’s kid will have inherited the duty of writing the strip.

As time goes in the Luanniverse I will be ancient while Luann is still in college.

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?

You were 13 for 47 years, so, yeah, I could see that happening!

Age is relative….a bad relative!

36 years to age about 6 years?

“I’m not as good as I once was but I’m as good once as I ever was” toby kieth

Heh heh…this is what I was getting at yesterday…

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…

A little self-referential humor every now and then is the spice of life. The spice must flow!

This feels like a lead-in to a big farewell. Are we losing another comic strip? Is Greg Evans retiring?

Youth is wasted on the young.

I think the comic is poking fun at … itself

" Old age is the one disease you don’t look forward to being cured of." Citizen Kane

I’ve gotta stay here.But there’s no reason why you folks shouldn’t go out into the lobbyuntil this thing blows over.

That’s a pretty good inside joke there. Just picked up on that.