Reading the Comics, July 29, 2017: Not Really Mathematics Concluded Edition

It was a busy week at Comic Strip Master Command last week, since they wanted to be sure I was overloaded ahead of the start of the Summer 2017 A To Z project. So here’s the couple of comics I didn’t have time to review on Sunday.

Mort (“Addison”) Walker’s Boner’s Ark for the 7th of September, 1971 was rerun the 27th of July. It mentions mathematics but just as a class someone might need more work on. Could be anything, but mathematics has the connotations of something everybody struggles with, and in an American comic strip needs only four letters to write. Most economical use of word balloon space.

Mort (“Addison”) Walker’s Boner’s Ark for the 7th of September, 1971 and rerun the 27th of July, 2017. I suppose I’m glad that Boner is making sure his animals get as good an education as possible while they’re stranded on their Ark. I’m just wondering whether Boner’s comment is meant in the parental role of a concerned responsible caretaker figure, or whether he’s serving as a teacher or principal. What exactly is the social-service infrastructure of Boner’s Ark? The world may never know.

Neil Kohney’s The Other End for the 28th also mentions mathematics without having any real mathematics content. Barry tries to make the argument that mathematics has a timeless and universal quality that makes for good aesthetic value. I support this principle. Art has many roles. One is to make us see things which are true which are not about ourselves. This mathematics does. Whether it’s something as instantly accessible as, say, RobertLovesPi‘s illustrations of geometrical structures, or something as involved as the five-color map theorem mathematics gives us something. This isn’t any excuse to slum, though.

Rob Harrell’s Big Top rerun for the 29th features a word problem. It’s cast in terms of what a lion might find interesting. Cultural expectations are inseparable from the mathematics we do, however much we might find universal truths about them. Word problems make the cultural biases more explicit, though. Also, note that Harrell shows an important lesson for artists in the final panel: whenever possible, draw animals wearing glasses.

Samson’s Dark Side Of The Horse for the 29th is another sheep-counting joke. As Samson will often do this includes different representations of numbers before it all turns to chaos in the end. This is why some of us can’t sleep.