21Sep/095
Lincoln-Douglas
by Jeff
Image text: Stephen Douglas actually died soon after the debates and election, but if you demand historical accuracy in your webcomics you should be reading Hark! A Vagrant.
The image text is correct, Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address was in 1863 and Stephen Douglas died in 1861 of Typhoid.
And of course, the link to Hark! A Vagrant.
September 21st, 2009
So…is this one of those “Yo Momma” jokes? I wasn’t entirely sure where the laugh was supposed to be had in this one.
September 22nd, 2009
It is a “yo mama” joke. Which is the laugh because that’s the limit of Stephen Douglas’s debating skills.
September 22nd, 2009
can you explain this one? http://xkcd.com/24/
October 16th, 2009
I don’t know. The best I can come up with – which sort of makes sense to me – I gleaned from looking up Kurt Gödel and M. C. Escher on Wikipedia. It seems to allude to the intractable and circular reality of life – there is nothing new under the sun, and it all goes on and on. Take a look at Escher’s artwork. It will be familiar.
In the end, “what do you do?” Have each other. If the Kurt Halsey is this guy – http://www.kurthalsey.com/category/work/ – then it seems his artwork is quite affectionate and romantic. Love is everything – who cares about all the rest.
That’s all I can come up with – but, I like it.
January 12th, 2012
To address a relatively old post, I would point out that Stephen A. Douglas was an American politician who engaged in a series of seven debates with Lincoln in 1858 (the Lincoln-Douglas debates) and then subsequently beat Lincoln in a bid to be elected to the US Senate. The two were apparently well noted for their excellent debates.
Douglas ran for US President against Lincoln 2 years later, and lost.
This comic jokes that after he lost the election, Douglas’s previously excellent debate skills diminished to the point where his best come-back was a non-common lazy comeback of adding “your mom” to whatever the other person said. This started out originally done as a comeback to an insult, but has since come to be used as a comeback to anything (sometimes ironically) whether insulting or not.
Eg: “I don’t have time to eat now”Oh yeah? Well, YOUR MOM doesn’t have time to eat now!”
or “I don’t think I like Bacon” “I don’t think YOUR MOM likes bacon”.
On an unrelated note, I find that John Bell, who also ran in the same 1860 presidential election, bears a spitting image to Colm Meaney, an Irish-American actor perhaps best known as chief O’Brien on Star Trek DS9.