Amazon’s Kindle has turned up again in a newspaper comic strip. This time it’s in Frank and Ernest, and the joke is actually pretty clever. The two characters stand in the back of a classroom while one explains that it’s teaching beginners how to use their e-readers.
“Ah,” says the other character. “Kindle-garten!”
What’s really interesting is it’s not the first time that there’s been a Kindle joke in the Frank and Ernest comic strip. Back in 2010, another strip showed the two characters sitting on a couch watching Hawaii 5-0. One of them complained that they didn’t like the way the show’s catchphrase had been updated. Now when the police investigator arrested a crook, he didn’t tell his partner to “Book ’em, Danno”. He’d say “Kindle ’em, Danno!”
Whatever you think of the jokes, it feels like an exciting milestone when the Kindle finally starts appearing in old, traditional media. (Frank and Ernest has been running in daily newspapers for over 40 years, according to Wikipedia.) In fact, in 2006 the original artist died, and his son took over writing the daily comic strip. As he looked around at the world that his generation inherited, maybe he decided now it was time to start making puns about the Kindle.
I’ve been reading comic strips since I was a kid, so I love seeing this newspaper institution finally acknowledging the Kindle. There was a Ziggy comic strip more than two years ago where a Kindle was getting spammed by the public library! And sometimes it’s not just one comic strip, but an entire series of strips. The Crankshaft comic spent five days on a story where the strip’s grumpy bus driver starts to warm up to the idea of reading his beloved Tarzan novels as ebooks on the Kindle he received as a gift.
But two years ago the Kindle made what was possibly its strangest appearance ever in a newspaper comic strip: it turned up in one of the melodramatic storylines in Mary Worth. For entire week, the grey-haired do-gooder ended up arguing with her younger neighbor about whether or not she should be reading her books on a Kindle.
“The Kindle crashed it’s way into the stodgiest newspaper comic strip of them all,” I wrote at the time. (Mary Worth was first created over 70 years ago, according to Wikipedia, and in Amazon’s Kindle discussion forum, someone suggested that by now her character must be over 140 years old!)
But it’s still really nice to see an American institution like Mary Worth acknowledging that there’s something new and exciting that’s come into our world.