Cartoon One Two Five Five

Odds

King Arthur and his Knights sit at the Round Table. Lancelot (or someone) says: “Actually, Your Majesty, quests for The Grail only have a 3.2% chance of success.” The title is: KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ACTUARIAL TABLE.

Someone must have done this joke before. I refuse to google it. Or did I write it already?

Here is an absolutely amazing one one five six from Anita Rademakers:

Before I lavish praise on this marvel, let me note that, from the inception of this Substack I’ve striven to keep it 100% apolitical. Believe me, I’ve put a lot of thought into this decision, and could talk about it for hours, but the short and incomplete version is that I aim to make this Substack a respite from the relentless political news that clots our every waking moment. If you want to read political opinion, there are LOTS of places you can find it. This dumb cartoon site you visit for three minutes a day doesn’t need to be one of them.

So, with very rare exceptions, I’ve kept politics and political figures completely out of the conversation. Anita, though a new reader, astutely notes this, and gives me the out of not using the comic, if I don’t think it fits. Thank you, Anita, I appreciate that, but really… this is just too good not to publish. This should be a half page in The New York Review of Books. Who am I to say no?

To everyone else: please don’t take this as license to start putting politics/ Trump into future submissions. If something’s great, we can talk about it, but it is very hard to be great.

This reminds me of another, incredibly beautiful comic a reader sent in (and that also dealt with a window, actually), but, in that case, I decided I couldn’t run it. It wasn’t political, but it stepped on some peculiarly American social sensibilities that I thought some readers might be offended by, even though being mean or offensive was the exact opposite of what the artist intended. It broke my heart, but I didn’t feel like I could risk it. We are a nation of Puritans.

To that artist, if you’re reading this — thanks, again for being so cool. But I wish I could’ve run that awesome cartoon…

Come back next week. I’ll try to meet you there. Read my books. This week: “Ratscalibur.” King Arthur with rats; good stirring adventure for middle-schoolers.

Draw my comics. I’ll post them here.