Recent Comments

1. over 4 years ago on Super-Fun-Pak Comix

   Here’s a link to Max and Moritz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz

2. over 4 years ago on Super-Fun-Pak Comix

   Side note: the Katzenjammer Kids debuted in 1897, at a time when the German immigrant population was at its relative peak, with German having much the same status in American society that Spanish has today. “Katzenjammer” would have been a much more familiar word to Americans then than it is now.

   Side side note: the kids are derived from the “Max & Moritz” cartoons from Germany in the 1860s, and which are still much beloved in Germany today. (I grew up with them, even though born here.). Max and Moritz, like the Katzenjammers, were constantly getting into mischief, but unlike the Katzenjammers they usually met untimely ends, as each story was a small morality play for kids.

3. almost 6 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   Perhaps it’s just satirical gibberish?

4. almost 6 years ago on Luann

   Und auf Deutsch!

5. over 6 years ago on New Adventures of Queen Victoria

   Well, it’s not a common language by any stretch. But it is by far the easiest language I have learned, and learning it helped me to learn others much more quickly, too. (Since there aren’t any stupid exceptions to any rule, you don’t get caught up in them, and you get a really good grasp of how language works.)

   It still strikes me as an unobvious topic for a comic strip, though.

6. over 6 years ago on New Adventures of Queen Victoria

   Google Translate still has it quite wrong, I’m afraid.

   “No one is talking about hoping” would be “Neniu parolas pri esperado”.

7. over 6 years ago on New Adventures of Queen Victoria

   No. It’s misspelled and awkwardly written Esperanto. It’s supposed to be “Neniu” instead of “Nenieu”, and with that correction, the sentence translates as “No one doesn’t speak Esperanto today”.

8. over 6 years ago on New Adventures of Queen Victoria

   There are some parallels between Hitler and Trump, but the places where they don’t are more important. Trump doesn’t have a totalitarian ideology; he doesn’t have the attention span for it, candidly. Nor does he have a paramilitary organization to reinforce his political party. There really is nothing comparable to the Brown Shirts or Black Shirts.

   A far better comparison to Trump is Kaiser Wilhelm II: likewise a short attention span, with no intellectual curiosity, resulting in bombastic statements and revolving-door policy changes that staffers couldn’t keep up with. Aggressive militaristic-nationalist posturing, compensating for physical deficiencies (Wilhelm II had a withered left arm). The parallel continues even down to Bismarck the national hero forbidding Wilhelm II to attend his funeral because of his disgust with the man.

   It’s a much better analog. Unfortunately, it didn’t end well for Wilhelm II, or Germany.

9. over 6 years ago on New Adventures of Queen Victoria

   Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is pretty well dated. Much better these days to read Richard Evans’s history of the Third Reich. But your point still holds.

10. over 6 years ago on WuMo

    … which also lasted 28 years, coincidentally.