That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for October 23, 2023

“If the shoeshine business doesn’t pick up, we can always eat the dog.”

Zipper is disappointed that he didn’t get the part with RCA that Nipper got.

What do you call a shoe-shiner’s dog?

Blackie.

/// Underdog finds himself In the Hands

of the Enemy. He understands.

(Secret identity

known as “Shoeshine Boy.”) He

must comply with these bootblacks’ demands.

/// They are poor and don’t want competition

from a dog. If he earns their suspicion

that he talks and flies, too,

(on his chest a big “U”),

he must give up his crime-fighting mission.

His master’s voice? I think he ate his master’s keys!

Looks a little like Nipper…..

In societies diverse and global/

The dog is regarded as “noble”/

But this lazy beast/

Won’t budge in the least/

Which is why we have named him “Immobile”.

“You ain’t ever caught a rabbit- you ain’t no friend of mine..”

Dog is sad….they took his RCA Victrola away.

Looks like Fido fell for the old joke telescope again….

“I though you said it speaks?”

“Well, Buster, we’d have a hard time passing him off as Tige … But maybe with some addition of shoe polish here and there, we can at least make him resemble Nipper. Possibly, Wishbone.

“Heck, most of these snooty Wall Street types think they are so smart — but they couldn’t tell sh!t from Shinola! We’ll pull off this scam, and make it big like one them Horatio Alger kids!”

“Shoeshine Boy” — Fats Waller Conception (excerpt):

https://www.sheetmusicnow.Com/products/shoe-shine-boy-fats-wallers-conception-p313652

They’ve really taken a shine to ol’ Spot.

Where’s the Victrola?

Training the RCA dog for its iconic pose in front of the phonograph.

“You came back, Chattanooga! We were so worried!”

On his way to the office that morning, the advertising manager for RCA stopped for a shoe shine. The rest, as they say, was history.

“Get me a Labrador and I’ll retrieve it.”

Now draw a circle around his other eye, change his name to Pete, and Hollywood will be knocking on your door.

Maybe instead of training him to pee on customers who don’t tip, we should’ve trained him to find customers.

A trade mark for RCA Victor….his master’s voice…………..

Two boys and their dog waiting for the invention of the Victrola.

It was hours before they realized the flaw in their “shoeshine for pets” business scheme.

Looks like doggie has a comfortable straw bed….

“Geez, Maggie, have you been eating poop again?”

Where’s his gramophone?

“Speak, boy! Y’know, I think that taxidermist lied when he said it’d be life-like.”

No, I don’t think we can make money by letting him lick their shoes.

“Hey, do you think if we pull this loose thread the dog will unravel?”

“But what if he doesn’t recite Shakespeare when we take him to the bar?”

In the Hands of the Enemy or Shoeshine Boy: 

Paste (including the quote marks) 

"Category:1900s oil on canvas paintings" Wikimedia 

(syntax supported by the Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ecosia, and Yandex search engines) in the browser address bar (or search for it using one of those search engines) and choose the first Category: found and once there find the text string Brown, and click its link for info and links that point to more info about this roughly jumbo envelope size painting. File history has the strip coloration image.

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (Ctrl- or right-) clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s MASTERPIECE #3208 (October 23, 2023) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment, and using the dropdown menu (even larger, if you trim what’s after .png from the URL). I have added a comment there pointing to the blog entry with my comment and reply pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. So far, 8 works by him have been used here (9 times total, including 1 repeat), the August 24, 2023, strip being the prior (the repeat).

“So you lost the audition to be the Buster Brown dog and the RCA Victor dog. It’s OK. You’re still a good boy.”

Why call him at all? He never comes!

smarty the dog, let the boys hold his leach so they won’t get away, he was always the smartest of the bunch.

Rats, shoe polish doesn’t work on him and we ran out of hair dye. Where can we get some paint?