The above is another page taken from the mysterious disappearing Cul de Sac book (which I saw on an actual shelf at a Barnes & Nobles, who seem to've cornered the market on them). And it deals with dirt, which somewhat continues the conversation from the post below.
Back almost 30 years ago I read a short story by the tall-tale sci-fi fabulist R.A. Lafferty called "You Can't Go Back". Like all of Lafferty's work it's hard to describe, but briefly it's about this little rogue moon called the White Cow Moon that will come bobbing over the horizon and float over your head when you blow the White Cow whistle, and how some now-adults who played on it as children visit it for the first time in years. I'm sure I'm misremembering details, but the White Cow Moon disappoints them; the troll who lives in the moon's core looks moth-eaten, the little village is ramshackle, the whole place looks fake, like a beat-up amusement park (like I said it's hard to describe). And I always wanted to steal that idea, of a little untethered moon that shows up sometimes then wanders away. This cartoon is as close as I've gotten, and I even worked cows into it. Alice's final line is thanks to my old editor at the Post, Tom Shroder, who taught me that ending a comic strip with an unexpected tangent is always the most fun.
