On Today's Alley Oop - 25 June 2021

I was curious what the NASA headquarters looked like in the 60s and it took not even a five-minute Google search to find pictures of the building that was used from the early 60s until the early 90s. It, of course, looks nothing like depicted by Lemon. You can chalk that up to his usual laziness but whether it's his inability to do the basic research that would be expected for this type of strip or just his slapdash approach where anything goes as long as it sort of resembles an office building isn't clear. It got me thinking of a comment made a couple of days ago where a poster on the "Tarzan" board said that Russ Manning's work on Tarzan sucked. If that poster wants to see sucky artwork on a supposed adventure strip, he should get a look of Jonny Lemon's work. To say it sucks would actually be a complement.

Today's strip is a good example of the "as if" nature of Joey's writing. As I suggested yesterday, the Terrific Trio would find a really silly way to get into the building even though they could use the magical time-cube to get in whenever they wanted. In the real "Alley Oop", if he wanted to get into a building or a city or whatever, he would devise a logical way to to so. Here our heroes just randomly open an unlocked door on the side of the building and wander in. As if there would be a random, unlocked, unguarded door in a very important government building during a highly critical once-in-a -lifetime mission. Then they are stopped by a guard who, without asking questions, assumes they are temps and hands them ID badges. As if a security guard would not query people he had never seen before. As if the guard wouldn't check to see if their names were authorized. As if NASA would have temps start work on the day of the moon landing. As if temps wouldn't be accompanied by someone or held until somebody in an authority position showed up. Or that they would be sent to get a photo ID made. Hasn't Joey ever worked anywhere where they employ temps or does she think the average strip reader is a moron? Temporary employees don't just wander the hallways until they find something that interests them.

Ooola got it right about the security being bad in the 1960s. It's every bit as bad as it was in the first story where the Three Stooges were able to just wander around the Reagan White House. I hope Joey tries this on a D.C. visit sometime to see if she doesn't end up in jail. And Doc's comment about back in the '60s seems really odd given that they are actually back in the 60s.