This was one of the “sample” bits of clip art Rob gave me when he first asked me to take over the strip. It took me this long to figure out what to do with it!
Every idea I had with this piece had something to do with video card games becoming the norm and actual physical card games becoming the exception, and once again it was one of those things where every idea became far too wordy to fit in three panels. The one with cowboys complaining about how a mechanical decision-makin’ contraption could never replace a real player because they wouldn’t be able to flip a table seemed the most promising, but ultimately I had to pick a direction I could go in without having to connect too many dots.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that I have a seemingly-unlimited number of games available in my pocket at any given moment. But there’s a big difference between sneaking in a few minutes of Words With Friends on your lunch break and having a loud happy evening of Dixit with actual friends.
-=ShoEboX=-
The leftmost one is clearly a woman, complete with boobs, and they all appear to be trying to avoid eye contact with her. I would have done something like…
Frame 1 (woman): “He done made fun of my hat so I cut his throat with a broken whiskey bottle”
Frame 2 (woman): “Then I proceeded to gut that varmint and made a purdy parasol out of his entrails.”
Frame 3 (one of the other players): “Jesus Mom, would you put down a card already? This is the last time we invite you to cowboy poker night.”
Okay, you’ve finally lost me. What’s the joke? Is this an iphone thing?
Hah! Bozo up there made a pretty good one I think.
Do those birds make you angry, JOnn?
It was indeed an attempt at a Smartphone-type joke, albeit not my best. I’m not all that happy with this one, and I’m gonna try to get another strip up later this week.
-=ShoEboX=-
I probably would’ve gotten this a lot sooner if I was a mobile-device user.. as it is even after reading your explanation it took me a few tries to realize that the joke was treating real life like a computer game..
Maybe if the title was ‘playing cards in real life instead of on the phone’ or something..
The cowboys look like they’re straight out of a Glam Band MTV Video.
I came on to mention the woman on the left, but Bozo not only beat me to it, he made me laugh hysterically.
I didn’t get the connection with angry birds at first.
I thought the one on the left looked like Michael Jackson, then I thought that one looked like a woman, but I decided Shoebox was going for a Michael Jackson joke. Nope. Oh, well, I liked it anyway. What did Mrs. Shoebox think?
got it. thanks kip. ‘you kids with your darn phone-thinking-machines…’