This may be faulty logic, but follow me through. The Globe and Mail is supposed to be Canada’s high-brow, more intelligent newspaper, the New York Times of Canuckland if you will. As such, you will find me doing the challenge crossword on any given day of the week (like any good igloo-dwelling citizen). Now, we all know the Times invented the crossword, but they stay away from cryptics — it promotes a weird level of pomposity. For good cryptics, you want to turn to the New Yorker and Fraser Simpson (he authors the Saturday cryptic in the Globe).
So, what does all this newspaper name-dropping have to do with comics? Well, the Globe publishes a view comics next to their challenge cryptics. We can only assume that’s it’s some vain attempt at reproducing the cerebral air of the New Yorker’s strip. Long story short, the Backbench comic next to the cryptic wasn’t particularly funny until I made a few changes. See if you can spot them!