Strips 87-90 of the popular comic strip Molarity, which previewed in The Observer in 1977, celebrate a new pope.
87. This cartoon appeared during the election of John Paul II. Fortunately, these days you can Google “Idi Amin” and “Billy Carter,” so I do not have to explain everything.
88. The day after the Idi Amin cartoon, the College of Cardinals elected the first non-Italian Pope in almost 500 years. More important to some of us was his youth. It might be hard for people born after 1980 to appreciate, but a pope who went skiing was a prideful novelty.
89. Students who had cars were assigned to park in particularly distant parking lots. I suspect with the lots moved farther away from the buildings this is still an issue today. Front and back cover headlines in The Observer were “ND Trustees formulated a South African stock policy,” and “NY Yankees won the World Series.”
90. This was my homage to Monty Python, which was not as ubiquitous in 1978. The Observer sports page had the Irish looking forward to defeating the Air Force Academy. After a 0-2 start the Irish were 3-2. Unstated in the article was any blame for the two losses on John Paul I. After his death the Irish started winning again. It makes you wonder about the whole death-conspiracy angle.
See the first five classic strips. Check back monthly for more classic Molarity strips. Molarity Redux, the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends, also is posted monthly. For those new strips, check out the cartoon archives.