Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for April 16, 2013

Well, the shoe has dropped. I think Nancy will be accepting Toni into the family. And Toni was smart in echoing Brad’s comment from yesterday.

And that’s what astonishment looks like.

/A cup of askwardness all around. Well deserved. But everyone knes this was headig in this diredion a long time ago. sorry keyboard now fworkihg right, but hopefully you ge my bessage.

just out of curiousity….when did Brad start dating Toni?

Now we see that they have already purchased the engagement rings.

“When did you propose?” Um, which time?

Nancy, close your mouth. You are not a Cod fish! Repeating a Mary Poppins remark.

Luann should be bounding down the stairs any second…

Dad seems a bit confused that the one who did the proposing is the one sporting the shiny rock.

Well, I didn’t hit it out of the park , but, I guess my “Nooooooooooooooooooooo” with Nancy’s mouth wide open comes the closest of my options

On the blog, Karen said her Dad was hitting himself in the head for putting the ring on the wrong hand Sunday…. it’s on the right (left) hand today… but looks suspiciously as if Greg redrew the right hand to look like a left hand today

Oh well, modern times: girl proposes to boy, boy accepts. But I"d be willing to bet that Brad paid for the ring (some things don’t change).

By the way, where’s Luann?

I hope I’m wrong, but Nancy almost looks like she’s thinking “Golddigger”.

Yes, where is Luann? She’s gonna be over the moon! A sistah-in-law!

happy dance!

I think Mom is going to cause a few waves before all is said and done. Frank has always been kind of a shadowy non-entity, and to fill the vacuum Nancy turned into a hypercontroller with an over-inflated sense of her own importance.

@Mikeyj ok thanks…..

Well, the cat’s outta the bag. Hang on, folks~this could be a bumpy ride. No problem with Frank. Momma can beanother story. Nancy is v-e-r-y jealous.

Looked over the comic a little more closely and Nancy in the second panel looks more surprised than mad. Nancy always thought that Toni was flighty and would eventually leave. She’s more surprised that she mis-judged Toni’s character for so long and that Toni took the step in asking Brad which shows Nancy just how much she cares about him.

God be with the Boston victims and their families tonight.

It seems to me that Brad’s mom is more astonished that a woman would propose to a guy rather than the norm of the girl waiting for the guy to propose. In her generation, that was unheard of.

well…to be fair, Brad did propose. Twice. Toni just took a damn long time to say yes.

Good – Luann can really use a big sister. Despite Toni’s own jumbled past – I think Toni’s advice when requested will be right on.

Toni is exactly the person Luann wants to ask for advice. Toni knows what it’s like to get it wrong, and knows what it’s like to get it right. The person to ask for advice isn’t the one who magically got it right the first time. It’s the person who screwed up before, then got it right, that will understand your situation best.

That’s how we did it. I proposed, she wasn’t ready… months later she proposed and I accepted. Our parents didn’t look as astonished as Brad’s mother, though ;)

Go ahead Frank.

Go ahead and SAY it: “THAT’S Muh Boy!!!”

Nancy on the other hand, looks like she’s about to JUMP on Her broomstick and do DONUTS on the Front Lawn….,

Hey, as long as they didn’t get the ring at the same place that short-arse Elvis got his for Luann.

Trouble with Nancy, mark my words.

From Nancy’s reaction, I’m surprised she’s not on the floor. Perhaps tomorrow…

Tomorrow – Frank takes Nancy aside, and quietly says, “You can be a shrew, or you can be a Mom. Your choice. Toni and Brad need a Mom more than they need a shrew.”

Here is the link to facebook where Greg is smacking his head about Sunday’s ring placement.

After all the dramatic predictions over the past few days, today’s strip is rather anti-climatic. But then, Greg has nearly always followed Occam’s Razor.

Michyle Glen: Even in my day, there was leap year.

@davidpepper: Brad bought an engagement ring in preparation for his own proposal attempt a year ago. I figure he’s been holding onto it since then.

Parents faces were interesting. Expressions seem to go both ways. I love this strip!

Hey Nancy – your tongue’s getting all dusty.

@dataweaver: Go back and look at April 14th as he is remembering back they are at the Jewelers picking out the ring. By the way I think Toni uses Botox those are some verluptious lips she is sporting.

Time to get on the bandwagon, Mama. Wide-eyes like that won’t make you any points. Dad seems to have ot pretty well in hand.

Hey guys! Lay off Nancy. She has been a concerned mother looking out for her until-just-recently less-than-mature son. She didn’t want to see his heart broken by a girl whom she was convinced was only toying with him until something better comes along.

Now that they are engaged — and it was Toni who initiated the final step — the chief part of her fears are gone. Toni really IS for real. She really IS serious about Brad. Nancy is now going to accept Toni as her future daughter-in-law.

Now what will Luann’s reaction be? It will most likely be a bit more exciting. I am still hoping that she will sense it before being told.

Drewder,

Oops. It looks like you beat me to it. :-)

tension……

@Runforson and @dataweaver.

Runforson: You’re right, I looked at last year’s strip, even though Brad proposed and tried to get out of it by saying “April Fool”, he never had a ring. The April 14th strip shows them picking out the ring (right hand or left hand, who cares?).

On another note, I think both Nancy and Frank are very surprised. I have 4 kids, even though we were pretty sure they’d propose to their future spouses (it was a case of when, not if), it was still a surprised reaction from my wife and I when we were told. I’m sure Nancy was always a little leery of Toni, but when she sees how committed Toni is to Brad, she’ll accept her fully. She’ll eventually think of her as her “second daughter”.

It just dawned on me. Nancy reminds me of Molly Weasley of Harry Potter fame. She didn’t accept her son Bill’s intended either at first. If you recall, Fleur Delacour was a drop-dead gorgeous very accomplished and capable blonde girl, too.

Does anyone else think that Brad looks just like CBS anchor Jim Axelrod?

“Actually, Dad, I proposed over and over until I promised I wouldn’t ask until she was ready. She is ready. It’s this hot bod and sensitive nature, she couldn’t resist any more.”

Note to prospective mother-in-law: Don’t mess this up!

“…you know what’s really “head smacking” about it, is that Karen or Greg had said that they spent like 4 days researching and many hours drawing to do that cartoon ..you’d have thought that somewhere in all that time one of them would have noticed the incorrect hand!”

You are so right. I suspect nearly all their focus was on getting the montage just right. The “ring scene” was considerably simpler, so therefore didn’t need as much checking — or so they thought. That trap has caught me more than once, myself. :)

I guess they put all their creativity into finding and choosing which flashbacks to use.

I suspect Luann will talk sense into Nancy.

Althought she already has him, it is now official confirmation that she is taking Nancy’s little boy. I hope Nancy doesn’t make a fool of herself. Toni is a responsible person and is grounded in the realities of life. Brad has done well. Eventually, Nancy will be happy too.

Toni is “the luckiest girl in history?” In history? In HISTORY?

The man she wants to marry less than a year ago was squealing like an 8-year-old when allowed to “wear the headset” at his minimum-wage job at Weenie World. This man is so stupid that when he was laid off from his union job, he 1) didn’t take the unemployment cheques he was entitled to, and 2) took a minimum-wage food-service job when he was already a qualified and experienced paramedic.

Mind you, Toni is the woman who threatened to quit her job and destroy her career threatening her employer to get B-wad’s job back, when union seniority and municipal hiring practices DO NOT ALLOW such things.

Agh, they deserve each other.

Early in BT’s engagement it’s possible that Nancy reevaluates her attitude and feelings as she finds herself the “odd person out.”.

Luann (and her friends) will remain joyous & enthusiastic. It’s likely everyone in Nancy’s life, from her hair dresser to her immediate family will be happy and enthusiastic. Nancy has never been cold or foolish, she’ll be compelled to play her part in planning the wedding.

That’s my take on Nancy coming on board quickly.

Toni, this is a recipe for disaster!!

Luann is in school?She will learn about this later tonight . . . . .Wait until she gets to tell everyone, that will be the fun part.

Maybe Brad had the ring at the jewelers, on lay a way, or for safety.(didn’t want to lose it) What ever, Toni got the ring.

a basic rule …for any story line….whatever the medium…to keep the listener / reader / viewer interested…there must be tension between the characters…do we have any volunteer(s) ?

I don’t think Dad is a hugger.

I suppose a lot of you don’t remember the Sadie Hawkins day race in Dogpatch. Once a year this event was held and all of the eligible bachelors would run from the single women. If the girls caught them then they had to get married. Marryin’Sam did the ceremonies. So you see it is not a new tradition for the females to ask the guys to get married. It has always been said that the guys chase the girl until she catches him.

Do our young readers visit the Luanniverse sometime before the sun goes down?

Tomorrow’s strip:

Nancy hugging Toni with tears in her eyes, “Welcome to the family!”

That would be the death of a good portion of the commenters on this site.:-)

That smile on Brad’s face… he’s never looked more happy, more mature or more handsome. Likewise with Toni: happy, mature, simply lovely. Bravo.

Now that we established the reason TJ left Weenie world now my curiosity is up now about Ann Eiffel. How and why and whden did she finally quit/get fired? All os a sudden Ox was working there and He said that mean ann was gone. I would love to know what happened to her. Thanks much.

Tinyman,

TJ drove her out. It happened in the past 12 months, so it shouldn’t be hard to find the arc in the archives.

they will not marry comic strip will never write it or let it happen

I dunno, Nancy sorta looks outraged in panel 1

Congrats!!! Will there be little Brads running around soon?

well it’s about time Brad told Mom and Dad yea where’s Luann????!!!!!!!!

It looks that way in today’s strip, but in both panels, her arm is in front of her breasts AND she is wearing black, which tends to minimize her actual size. She typically has a pretty nice chest for a comic strip character - not that I spend time thinking about those things.:-)

“…not that I spend time thinking about those things.”.We’d understand if you did. We’d understand perfectly.

Maybe we were looking at them in a mirror? That would explain the sign in the window/mirror.

It would be cool if Greg had Brad and Toni request that instead of presents, people could donate to one of a select number of charities. Then readers could actually donate to the charity of choice in honor of the soon-to-be newlyweds.

Excellent! I wish I’d posted that.

Yes, you did mention Pibgorn and THAT got me to reading it, although the djinn is a better person than your friend, DW?

I just figured it out- they’re doomed. This marriage won’t happen.