Broom Hilda by Russell Myers for November 19, 2009

That doctor must be as blind as Earl’s wife Opal.

That comes from running around in a bear foot.

Rim shot for Yukoner!

Yes, well done, but how did she end up with one shoe on and one shoe off anyway?

This doc’s as blind as the HMO docs of Troglydonia (in Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!). There, back pain = sabertooth tiger clamping on your butt without your realizing it.

Bear-trap attached to foot=getting around is a real drag. Poor Broomie!

I think that doc is a pain in the place where the sun don’t shine.

At least she didn’t sit on it. That would have been a real bite in the

Doctor Toon’s Nuclear Coffee? Johanan Rakkav’s CocoMocha?

If neither of those work, then I can’t help you. :)

the comments are almost as good as the cartoon!

That’s gotta hurt, I’ll bet it hurt more when she hit the end of that chain.

Second greatest pain I ever felt, right?

She must have paid an unexpected visit to the Plenty’s over at DT.

“[H]ow did she end up with one shoe on and one shoe off anyway?”

Maybe she had both shoes off when she stepped in the trap, and could only put one shoe on for the doctor’s appointment.

Maybe the trap secretes an acid that dissolved her shoe and sock, but didn’t hurt her skin.

Maybe she tried to ZAP the trap off, but the trap proved more zap-proof than her shoe.

Maybe she convinced Gaylord to wear one of her shoes after yesterday’s strip, as a compromise.

Maybe she tried to chew her foot off like a coyote, but lost her appetite after finishing the shoe.

Maybe she was coming home from Wednesday Night Services at the Church of Brian.

Maybe she met a one-footed man who cried because he had no shoe, and did him a good turn.

Maybe Russell Myers was running out of black ink, and only had enough for one shoe.

Maybe she’s not wearing a shoe on either foot, but the trap on her left foot caused gangrene in her right foot, turning it black and making her toes fall off.

And the Number One Reason Broomie Might Be Wearing Only One Shoe…

It’s surreal!

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John, He lays eggs for gentlemen.

No, that’s not it…

You did yourselves proud, guys. Wonderfully whimsical answers to my questions.

It seems pretty clear that Broomie can only call upon her ZAP when she’s drawing upon her Jungian Shadow…probably the deepest part of it. In other words, mere pain won’t do it. You have to get her mad, really mad, in her own defense.

And then again, there’s the First Law of Cartoon Physics: “Only When It’s Funny”. :))

“You have to get her mad, really mad, in her own defense.”

I don’t think it necessarily needs to be in her own defense, but I think you’re right that she uses her ZAP sparingly. All those who were expecting Broomie to zap Flossie simply because she talks loudly think too little of her (Broomie’s) discretion. She wouldn’t zap a child, unless s/he really deserved it, and really only Gaylord and Nerwin are in danger of being zapped out of simple peevishness.

Perhaps she can’t use a lightning bolt on the metal trap because the voltage would just go into the wound on her foot.

In other words, zap + trap = “CRAP!”

fritzoid - you’re actually still talking of different ways of working “in one’s own defense”…in the psychological sense. By the time we become mature, we have four out of our eight cognitive or thought processes that are still more apt to defend us (and not in a very helpful way) than to help us or others.

If I understand how the current multi-level personality type theory works correctly, it’s the cognitive process at the very bottom of the rung that’s the most likely source for Broomie’s ZAP. Its archetype is often called Demonic or Destructive (or when positively used, Transforming). And if she triggers it when someone’s being peevish (that engages another process, called Deceiving/Comedic or the Trickster), then there’s no question as to what MBTI code she’d have. In fact, now that I look at how she reacts to other situations good and bad (comparing it to a list of very detailed descriptions I have, authored by Dr. Linda Berens), I have no question in my mind what code she’d have.

Broomie is a fellow ENFP, just as Calvin is a different “flavor” of the same. In fact I suspect that ENFPs are very disproportionately represented among cartoonists, just as they are among Hollywood writers (according to a type specialist out there named Vicky Jo Varner, who has many of them as her clients and who’s helped me a lot too).

Sorry for the digression. I didn’t mean to bore. But the thought occurred to me, and I hope it might profit some.

“Sorry for the digression. I didn’t mean to bore. But the thought occurred to me, and I hope it might profit some.”

Actually, JoRa, I think that’s very interesting! Cognitive psychology is something that I don’t know much about, and would like to know more. Thanx!