On Today's Alley Oop - 8 October 2021

Sigh. You think this strip can't get any dumber but it does, day after day. Joey got into her current mess by creating a fake problem for our three heroes. She contrived to have a dinosaur step on the time-cubes to create the potential that the Three Amigos would be stuck in the Bone Age, excuse me, Stone Age. But that makes readers wonder what has happened to Ava and the time-machine. Shouldn't she be able to bring them back anytime she wants to? Has she simply forgotten this or does she just assume that nobody would notice?

So how does Joey solve the problem that really isn't really a problem? Her usual way with stuff that just randomly happens to help the helpless trio. First, Alley says he's heard that a weird meteor has hit old man Krank's cave (9/24). It happens to be time-onium (the only element name with a hyphen in it) which just happens to be what Doc needs to rebuild the time-cubes. Even though Doc knows that he can use it on the time-cubes, he has no idea that it also makes people younger. Except that at some point it just stops - no explanation of why, it just does. Old man Krank became a baby but the Three Stooges become young children before Krank reappears (10/1) as a young man to warn them about the meteor. Absolutely no explanation of how he went from an infant to a young man, it just happens. He leads them outside the cave where the trio returns to younger versions of their normal self. Except Krank still remains the same age! Inconsistent writing would be a compliment for Joey.

Doc says that only a small amount of time-onium is needed (10/5) to fix the time-cubes so he gave a small amount of the meteor to every Moovian to keep them always young. How did he do that since he has no tools? When did he do that since Moo is spread out over a large territory and neither Oop or Ooola has seen him leave. And, although he gleefully tells them that they should age just like him, why wouldn't he keep some for himself? Didn't he like being young? The dumbness just continues on.

The following day, Doc declared they need something called reversite to reverse the effects of time-onium. What? Why? Haven't they already reversed the effects by getting away from it? Whatever the reason (magic!), they find that meteors fall constantly in Moo. Today Doc explains that the easiest way to find it is to find a waterfall. Sure enough, the waterfall is falling upwards, defying gravity, because of the reversite. But wait a second - how would a meteor or revestie ever reach earth? Wouldn't it fall downward rather than upward? Too bad Joey couldn't find some reversite and turn dumb, dull storytelling into something interesting or exciting.

One other note about this story is that it really isn't about Moo. Losing the time-cubes could have happened anywhere and we would have just had a different magical solution. Here we take another trip but, yet again, no King Guz, Foozy, Wizer, or Lemians. Just one more thing that's fake - fake Moo.

More of the continuing dumbness: https://www.gocomics.com/alley-oop/2021/10/08