Saturday is the new Sunday – Doctor! Doctor!

Yep, you guessed it. It’s yet another probably-never-seen drop panel. This one is for the Sunday strip rerunning today on Gocomics.com. And it’s probably better that it was unseen – I haven’t the slightest idea why the stethoscope is going up. I think it might have something with reversing the way stethoscopes usually hang, which is down. Dumb, really.

As for the strip, I realized thatrecently I described another Sunday strip as being one of only two Sundays that Mr. Bench appeared in. Well, it’s three. I’d forgotten about this one.

Also the set-up is funnier than the punchline, but it doesn’t really work as an ending.

The end…again

If you hadn’t seen the way I ended Bo Nanas way back in the summer of 2007, it’s rerunning today on Gocomics.com. If you want to see what leads up to it, start here at the beginning of the end.

Thursday is the new Sunday – We’re #2!

The Sunday strip that’s rerunning on Gocomics.com is one of only two times that Mr. Bench appeared in color. As I’ve mentioned before, when I would write gags, I would just write – not doing specifically dailies or Sundays. Then, if a gag was too long to fit in a daily it would become a Sunday. I guess most of the weird gags that became Mr. Bench strip were short enough.

As for the gag itself, I like the twist on “old man wants everyone to be like him.” Plus, “one size fits all” hats have never worked for my big melon.

Sunday in the park with Mr. Bench

Mr. Bench is in rare form in the strip running today – this time going off on meals.

Happy now?

Did you ever wonder if you could make someone truly happy? So has Mr. Bench and he tells us his thoughts on Gocomics.com today.

Two out of four

The strip running on GoComics.com today is a Mr. Bench fav that features not one but two, count ’em, two pause panels.

Once upon a time there was a blog called The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch. I got featured a couple of times (here and here). But, alas, author Matt Gill stopped his watch mere weeks before the ending of Bo, the last strip containing 4 out of 4 pause panels. My chance for immortality foiled.

Minor characters

Old Mr. Bench shows up today in the strip rerunning on Gocomics.com. Not the strongest gag – it does show off his cluelessness more than his craziness.

An even more minor character showed up Saturday – The Birthday Girl. She appears on my wife’s birthday and, although she’s modeled on her, TBG’s self-centered personality is nothing like my missus. Of course, since all the Bo strips rerun in an off-calendar way (I think Christmas strips will be showing up soon), Saturday was not my wife’s actual birthday.

Dig that crazy grave*

Yet another almost-Halloween strip that, by happenstance, reran today on Gocomics.com. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you – Mr. Bench: Gravedigger.

(* A great title from the Shell Scott wacky/tough guy private eye series of books by Richard S. Prather. I’ve got way too many of these on my shelves – and yet I don’t have the edition with this cover.)

Stay Tooned – The MAD issue preview (of sorts)

Editor/publisher John Read asked me to be in this upcoming issue (more about it here) and requested I pick my 10 favorite Bo Nanas strips and write commentary about them. By happenstance, one of the strips is up on Gocomics.com. Here’s what I said about it:

If I wrote something really, really strange to come out of someone’s mouth I’d give it to Mr. Bench. This is one of the more “normal” ones. I had this concept written out for months, and I knew how I wanted the story to end, but it took forever to get the punchline.

(If you’re curious, I’m in the lower left corner, showing off my sparkling personality.)

The end of Bo, revisited – #7