8. Wouldn’t a Gremlin Have Been More Sensible? (Dec. 1975 [?])

This collection overlaps with the previous book and reprints 124 daily strips from:
June 4 1974 to June 15 1974
July 1 1974 to July 12 1974
July 29 1974 to December 20 1974
22 strips from these blocks are not included (see comment for list).

Trying to guess the logic about why storylines were included, excluded, skipped, or shuffled out of sequence from one book to the next is usually a fool’s errand, but you can make a pretty good guess about this one, in part. The sequence from July 1 to 12 is the one where Zonker accompanies Joanie to California, and looks up his Uncle Duke, who makes his first, fleeting appearance here. By keeping these in the same collection as the subsequent stories of Joanie, her new rommate Virginia (“Ginny”) and her hopeless dolt of a boyfriend, Clyde, it forms a more satisfying read.

On the other hand, that logic doesn’t apply to moving the second series of strips about Czar Simons from the previous book, where they should have appeared, to this one. The character is retired from the strip after the June 4-15 strips.

While Uncle Duke doesn’t get much screen time here – only four strips, just enough for him to make an impression as a Hunter S. Thompson parody and exit stage right – we do meet two new, very young characters of Rufus’s acquaintance, Bobby Matthews and Malcom DeVeaux, aged seven and dealing with the effects of bussing.