Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for November 16, 2021

Jack is rude

Everyone knows about you and Nil, Bernice! Time to do your crazy dance.

Oh, boy. Crazy Bernice again.

T paraphrase Hank Hill, “That girl girl aint right.”

Bernice, in the 3rd panel, doesn’t even look like herself. I wonder if Evans is doing any of the art work, any more.

Jack that is harsh.

I think Jack’s “hook up” meant meet up. Bernice’s definition of the word differs. Their words got lost in the translation.

Bernice sure can’t get a break when having a breakdown.

Sheesh—that girl’s gotta get a grip!

Isn’t it amazing? Two weeks ago, Bernice was Ms. “I have all the answers” to Luann, and now she falls apart over her own issues.

The “glass house” analogy comes to mind …

Nil tells his buddy, Jack. Jack is not jealous, therefore Jack does not have any romantic interest in Bernice. Green light for Bernice.

Aww, what a cute little . . . plush toy . . . he has . . . with him?

Err. . . .

Come on, Bern; quit tossing your mind into the gutter like that.

Nothing wrong with Jack, but Nil is going to get an earful, and then again, Bernice is being anal again!!!

Do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. (I got to use that twice here in a week!)

Nil is going to hear about this conversation?

Ooo.

Looks like Nil tells his Buddy Jack everything.

And while Bernice is hem-hawing on the seriousness of the “relationship,” Nil ain’t.

Back in the day, Bernice was happy to well the World about her affection for Zane.

But with Nil, she appears to want to keep things quiet.

That does not bode well for Nil.

Bernice is acting like a 14 or 15 year old high school girl. “Who told you about us? Nil? He’s suppose to keep quiet about us!” Meanwhile she and Nil put themselves on display for anyone who passes by. Time to grow up, Bernice.

Half way to becoming that crazy lady with 27 cats

Bernice, it’s not “private” if you’re making out in the park. Want private? make out in your bedroom. Just lock the door.

And…there it is!

Bernice and Nil really need to come up with a place to make out that isn’t full of dog poop.

I love it when Bernie is wigging out! Wait until she sees the billboard down at the end of the block with her and Nil on it…

It seems odd that if Jack was taking his dog for a walk that he would carry it in his arm. And unleashed. I don’t know how the law would interpret that but I think it would vio;ate the leash law since Max could wiggle out of his arm at any moment.

I would venture a guess that Bernice was waiting there for Nil.

Jack’s gesturing to the whole aprk in the last panel is hilarious. Not sure what Bernice was thinking about making out in an open space next to a path.

So Jack isn’t that bright after all? I mean if you’re steppin’ in dog poop, you should take a hard right or left and change … the subject.

That’s one happy looking pup…….

Nil has proven to be a better friend than Bernice. He talks with Jack and he don’t treat him like a potential enemy, he believes in him! Bernice doesn’t believe in Luann, but that’s not the fact here. The very wrong thing is Bernice’s complexes about her private life and her feelings. I love the way Jack indicates she and Nil meet in a public area and Bernice falls into her fear of losing control of her mind with Nil.

Shut up, Bernice! You talk too much!

“Hook up”? Nil and Bern are not making whoopie in the park..

Moron

Instead of spending a ton of money to be a shrink, I think she should spend it on seeing one!!!

That’s why Bernice can never find true love.

Can we have a story about that dog? I’d rather have a story about that dog.

neu·rot·ic /n(y)o͝oˈrädik/ having, caused by, or relating to neurosis. Similar:Bernice anxious nervous tense highly strung jumpy

Horrors!

Cue one of 5 songs for playing, and I don’t know which one:

1) Kiss you all over (Exile) or 2) R*** Me (Nirvana), 3) I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston), 4) Just When I needed you Most (Randy Van Warmer) and 5) Alone Again, Naturally (Gilbert O’Sullivan). You may substitute the Dolly Parton version of 2 or 4.

Busted! The shameless hussy…..

Guys talk stupid

By “hook up”, I’m guessing Jack meant " meet to exchange notes" and Bernice outed herself!

to be fair ‘hook up’ does imply more than tonsil hockey

Berniece sounds like a twelve year old here. This is certainly not going to impress Jack.

He said/she said rears its’ ugly head. This week’s arc is the death of BerNil, pure & simple.

I thought June 5 and July 23-24 were a few of the best strips with Bernice and Nil. He’s more intelligent than he looks and Bernice is attracted to that too.

To do or not to do? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to make out in private or suffer the gazes and wagging tongues of the dog park? Aye! There;s the rub.

(With apologies to Will S.)

“…we makeout and… stuff..tee-hee…”

What we have here is an extreme sophistication gradient. Jack is deliciously naive while Bernice is neurotically urbane.

I remember when my husband and I were dating, we went for a walk in the park near my house. We stopped and sat down on a park bench, and just leaned against one another, enjoying one another’s presence. We closed our eyes.

And then we heard a tiny little voice saying “Wake up, old people, wake up!”

A little girl, maybe four years old, was in front of us. She was on a tiny bicycle with training wheels and tassels on the handlebars, wearing elbow and kneepads and a helmet. Cuter than the dickens. I have no idea who she was, and I never saw her again. Her parents were trailing behind, and appeared mortified, but she was adorable.

Mind you, I was 23 at this point. But if you’re four, that’s pretty old.

The authors really seem to regret moving the characters out of junior high. The readers don’t need to see two characters getting physical; it’s perfectly possible to depict relationships without going behind the bedroom door, and the readers can make their own assumptions. But instead the authors go down this juvenile road of “tee hee hee, they’re kissing,” and “ohmygaw, we weren’t doing IT!” Coming from adults, this behavior just comes across as pathological.

Now-a-days “hook up” can mean anything from “meet,” to date exclusively, to move in together. It’s generational. 8^ (

For someone who is that naive and ultra-neurotic about love and relationships and basically every other social interaction in life, making out in a public park seems out of character and a bit of a stretch. Maybe it’s the thrill of doing something she’s never done before. But, sheesh, she’s going to get an ulcer or a brain aneurysm in the process.

GnK are spending a lot of ink on various “hook up” scenarios lately. Luann and Quill. Tiffany and Gunther’s “night of the salamander.” Bets and Gunther. Luann and Bernice’s prurient interest in Gunther and Bets. Stefi and Kip. Bernice’s interest in Jack’s supposed overnight stay in Luann’s room.

And yet commenters still criticize GnK about the lack of sexual activity in their characters. BAH!

She kind of reminds me of what I was like in college before I came out. Go on dates in public with guys, yet still be afraid people I know would find out. It’s a funny behavioral contradiction…doing what you want openly in public, but still wanting it to be a secret.

I used the term “hook up” (to mean meet) when talking with my kids. My youngest son told me to NEVER use that term—that the meaning had changed and it meant to have sex. So there’s ANOTHER term I have to give up. I’m still ticked I can’t use the word “gay” the way I used to.

Not that private, Bernice, if you’re so eager to tell about it.

I was thinking about the faults in Luann and by now most of them have been brought out by readers like me and others to the point that they too have become repetitive.Let’s forget about Karen or whoever this female assistant is that contributes to the strip – Its Greg Evan’s strip, so whatever happens in it rests solely on his shoulders.I’ve read a lot of comics in my time. Peanuts, Tumbleweeds, Doonesbury, B.C. and many, many others. Some that were around before our younger readers were even born.I noticed a trend with these, and that they run out of ideas and become redundant. Tom K. Ryan saw this and decided to retire Tumbleweeds; Johnny Hart found Jesus and tried to incorporate his newfound ideas into B.C. – but later realized it didn’t work either and retired it as well. In some cases, these strips were resurrected by newer artists and kept it going. I lost interest in them by that time, so I don’t know how they’re doing.Peanuts should have been retired a lot sooner than it did, but it still goes on today. To me it wore out its welcome with its repeated showings of Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown or Linus’ obsession with The Great Pumpkin – which was savagely parodied in Robot Chicken.It’s happened in Doonesbury, too. Way back when Garry Trudeau’s observations were current and hip – bringing up subjects like drugs, interracial relations and of course, politics. But his core audience got older and grew out of those ideals of youth – realizing after living life for a long while that they have little relevance to their lives-if at all. Unfortunately, Garry Trudeau hasn’t and his comic observations are nothing more than recycled ideas from an earlier time and while his audience is younger he’s not, and his current output smacks of pandering and patronization. He came down hard on Nixon and now his Bogeyman is Donald Trump. His obsession with this man looks like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick – even after Trump left office.

But back to Luann. Remember the highlights?Luann’s first period – a lot was made of this at the time because before it was deemed “groundbreaking” or some other kind of superlative. It was somewhat controversial, as some thought it too adult to be mentioned in a comic strip. When I saw it, I thought, “Oh, how about that?” and went back to my corn flakes without another thought.Luann and Zee – another pseudo-provocative arc than ran longer than most of the others (except for her relationships with Aaron Hill or Quill – more on that later), featuring Luann strutting around her bedroom in a sexy black bikini bra and panties and telling Bernice how she wanted to grow her bust in this “skin sells” episode.Aaron Hill – a potentially romantic arc that went nowhere. There was a great number of disappointed sighs from the readers when their hopes for that “first kiss" were dashed which leads us too…Quill – a lot of stops and starts here. Just when you thought that Luann and her beau were going to progress further in their relationship than those before, Evans lost his nerve and yanked the carpet out to send Quill back to his father before those two could “do the deed”.Don’t lie – you knew you wanted that to happen, didn’t you?Speaking of adult, has anyone seen the adult Luann parodies? Wow.There are others, but lately it appears that Evans and company are running out of ideas as he hits the same roadblock again and again no matter which arc he goes with. Karen has run her course, as her ideas have hit similar limits due to her age and until she gets pregnant and has a child she can’t go any further, either – unlike Lynn Johnston in For Better or Worse. I took a look at her current strip and found her daughter Elizabeth is grown and has a child of her own.So there you have it. Luann is running on fumes and eventually will peter out altogether while the author struggles to keep this going like Charles Schulz did in Peanuts. Hopefully Evans won’t beat this dead horse

too much longer.

This confirms that there is more than one park to go to. They are at a park and Jack is going to leave this park to go to the Dog Park.

Jack is a " happy go lucky" guy. He probably didn’t mean anything by it. Bernice has issues.

If you look up Introvert in the dictionary, Bernice’s picture pops up.

This girl needs therapy. Like, for reals. Aren’t they about 20 at this point?

Bern needs to loosen up. She’s really wound up!

Bernice is trying to say her sex life is Nil.

Hook up does not mean the same as it did decade ago now it means casual hyper-sex back in the 1990’s Hook-up’s were called dating.

I’ve got spurs that jingle,jangle,jingle

As I go riding merrily along

And they sing….“Oh,ain’t you glad you’re single”(??)

As you go riding merrily along.

Actually Bernie, you tend to freak out more than make out.

She’s hysterical! delirious! alive!

I swear Max is giving Bernice the look…

Don’t think Bernice is in any mood to hook up now

Oh poor Bernice, she’s repressed herself so much in favor of academics that now she’s gone crazy

When does Bernice’s true love come wheeling back into her life??

Does anyone know when the first time Jack’s dog was shown? I thought he had a big dog..

meh… (X2)

I think a lot of folks are misunderstanding Jack. I think that he means that everyone already knows that they meet there.

Berniece is definitely not one to show off in front of everyone.

Can Nil and Bernice stay on first base?

Just how old is Sister Mary Catherine, I mean Bernice, anyway?

And, for HER, “make out” means she Thinks about it while they keep their lips from actually Touching.

Nice play on words there G Evans.

Does Max have a little snicker on his face? No.. he is unmoved by just about anything. But Bern may end up destroying her relationship with Nil over this. She’ll go on the attack over his telling Jack about their relationship. Hopefully Nil will quietly point out her senseless assertion… i.e. they make out in public.

Oh, no! Bernie is…human? Don’t let word get out! It’ll spoil her reputation. (Ahem.)