RING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH PUCK!
Celebrate the New Year and the end of 2020 with Puck and Phoebe!
As for this comic…
Because some of my readers live across the pond, I need to note that in Canada (and to a lesser extent in the United States), manual transmission cars are exceedingly rare. (Glancing at one source, it put the manual figure around 1.2% of all cars sold.) The only people who drive manuals are old people who grew up with them and race car wannabes who believe it makes them somehow channel their inner Steve McQueen. British readers will scoff at this, and say that our automatic-loving country is obviously full of idiot grandpa drivers who lack fortitude and intelligence, but … honestly? Manual cars are an overtly bad choice 99% of the time. They’re less convenient, no more fuel efficient and make drinking coffee while driving that much harder. I chalk up the British obsession with manual cars to the same bizarre quirk that makes Brits refuse to ever install air conditioning. It’s just the British way to choose suffering. It’s fun for them.
This is a very indirect way of saying that Colin’s lack of familiarity with manual cars is not unusual in Canada. Though as a nerd, he really should recognize the Batman Begins reference.
From Colin’s response, I’d say the answer is no.
You’d say correctly.
Maybe Puck can drive stick. She is older than Colin.
sure ut fred always drives losing
him further fred cred
Exactly. Only Fred can drive the Mystery Machine.
Likely. Though we have actually never seen her drive. She gets driven around by Colin or Phoebe. I haven’t exactly decided this, but I’m leaning toward the idea that she can’t drive at all.
Aw. I was hoping he was messing with him.
It would work just as well! *pout*
I have got to say, I love the coffee cup. But as for me, I KNOW how to drive a sick. I also know how to destroy a slant six.
Well, you’re just a better man than me.
I’m more impressed with the second part of that statement.
My daughters never learned to drive a stick.
They never asked to borrow my car.
BWAH-HA-HA!!!!
You. Evil. Genius.
Good call.
Wow. Not only can you not be Fred, now you can’t even be Shaggy. Shaggy knows how to DRIVE.
Actually… this brings a weird question to my head:
Who would win in a GT1 race, Shaggy, Speed Racer, or Jacky Bryant?
Speed Racer. Always.
Classic speed racer or warchowschi speed racer?
I actually quite like both. They’re both good. One has vintage charm. The other has eye-popping, thoroughly underrated visuals.
Vanellope von Schweetz.
Colin is a failure in all capacities.
In the mid 90s, I was a very valuable gang affiliate because I knew how to drive stick, aka standard transmission.
I had no real affiliation to the gang, other than to support my housemate/best friend, but I was the gut to steal Acura Integras or Honda Preludes because I knew how to drive stick shift.
I still drive mid 90s pickup trucks with standard transmissions, but I definitely have tales from when I was a villain.
Said best friend has grown into a fine upstanding member of the community. As for me, I’m not a bad guy any more and am trying to put positive energy into the world where I can.
It’s less hippie than it sounds.
I still drive a standard transmission pickup truck. I am also glad I am not living in Southern California USA (where I did such a thing for a WHILE).
Well, I’m glad to hear you renounced your life of villainy and have become a more wholesome individual who reads webcomics. It’s a redemption arc I can get behind.
In Soviet Russia, STICK drives YOU!
In Soviet Russia, joke also makes comic. Must be nice.
Yes, I can drive stick. Grew up on a farm where it was the norm, on account of farmers only buying new vehicles once a decade or so, and automatics have really only really taken off in the past 20 years. Especially if you need a towing vehicle.
That said, while they are dying out, I feel that the Australian car market has more manuals than the US market… or at least when it comes to utes (I.E pickup trucks) though that is rapidly changing.
There is nowhere more automatic-obsessed than Canada, really. I’m in my forties and my whole life I’ve only ever known automatic cars. I believe Japan is also almost 100% automatic too. If automatics only took off in the past 20 years, I think you Aussies are closer in mentality to our UK brethren.
I’m in the UK and learnt to drive in 1987. It just wasn’t an option to learn in automatics, that was a specialist service for people with only one leg or similar. Also if you pass your test in an automatic in the UK your licence only allows you to drive automatics. So a lot of people even now learn in a manual specifically to be legally allowed to drive either. Plus back in the 90s and 00s automatics had considerably poorer fuel consumption, it’s only in recent years with fancy new auto boxes that they’re fuel consumption is as good as a manual.
I have air con in both my house and my car. Air con in the car is common now in the UK, it’s still very rare in houses. My car is still a manual, but being 18 years old (I bought it new) it didn’t make sense at the time to buy an automatic. I expect to skip automatics and go straight to an electric car.
Fair enough. And with the whole AC thing, I get the fact that most houses are older and don’t have a forced air system that makes AC easy. I know historically that the merry British Isles have not gotten many days that are swelteringly hot in any given year. But that seems to be changing lately. And let me tell you, In Ontario where disgustingly humid heat waves with temps well over 40C with the humidex are the NORM for four months of the year, it’s very hard to function without some form of AC.
Yup, I can count myself as one who knows stick. Been a long time since I’ve owned one, though, so probably out of practice. But yeah, auto tech has improved enough that, despite my really liking manual, I have to admit that there’s no real need for manual anymore. Even big rigs (tractor trailer, etc) are autos nowadays.
I get the romance of the stick. And I’m one who clings to old, outmoded tech more than most. I still draw this comic on paper, with pencils and ink. That is incomprehensible to most people in this field.
As an American, I can kind of drive a stick. I’ve learned to listen to the engine sounds that tell me when it needs to shift through years of an automatic having transmission issues when shifting at the low end, but when I actually use a stick shift, I don’t always get the timing right.
On that same level, I am confident that I could drive a stick … badly. Not sure the transmission would survive the journey, though.
Yup, Colin’s reply fills me with confidence as well. Confidence that he has no idea what is going on.
The BEST kind of confidence!
Luckily, I can drive stick. The instruction car at school was automatic, but my parents’ cars were stick. Now, my first outing after getting my learner’s permit was to grab a burger with one of my parents to celebrate. Just had to drive from the countryside to the outskirts of town. Killed it on the first intersection, and maybe ran the tac a little high in places, I was fine after that.
There are some advantages to stick, by downshifting you can put some of the stress of deceleration on the wheels and engine instead of just the brakes, which can make a difference on icy or snowy roads.
Also, you gain the option to roll or push-start your car by getting the car rolling (protip: park facing downhill) and popping it into gear at the right time. This is good if your battery is dying and/or you can’t afford a new one yet. This helped my father and I on several occasions, helped us help strangers stuck in intersections a few times (because they didn’t pop it into first or something and the battery or starter was acting up) and helped me help a friend get his truck home (I taught him how to do it and then pushed his truck down a big hill and he managed to pull it off).
It’s a handy skill to have if you’ve got some.. non-standard experiences with vehicles. I’m the spawn of trucker and mechanic families, so there’s some carry-over. (The move into technology just happened last generation, so we still have the old habits).
Lastly, let me just say: You made me wince thinking of what’s going to happen to that poor transmission when Colin tries to operate that van.
If you know vehicles and are the spawn of truckers or mechanics, a manual is probably a good call, I feel. If you’re a hapless schmuck who only vaguely knows what a transmission is, you’re better with an automatic.
There are now cars which, despite having manual transmission, are too automated to actually work without power in battery and specifically can’t be started by getting the car rolling.
What annoys me far more than auto transmission is electrically operated handbrakes and hill start assist on manual transmission. Neither of them make any sense. If you can’t stop yourself rolling back on hill starts with a manual box then get an automatic! As for electric handbrakes, I was in my boss’s car when his went wrong on him. I am never going there. This is part of the reason I’m still driving an 18 year old car, it’s all still properly manual.
There are electric handbrakes? Weird. My car’s not that old and the handbrake still feels very … non-electric. Like it’s a crank and feels very much like it’s attached to a cable that is pulling something. Though I can see why some manufacturers would want to go electric because so many handbrakes rot due to never being used. Maybe that’s the reason?
A disgustingly large proportion of new cars (by which I mean more than 25%) in the UK have a switch for the handbrake where the lever is supposed to be. It’s utter stupidity, if the battery dies you can’t disengage the handbrake. But the worst thing about it is the manufacturers assume everyone will be fine with it. So while Automatic vs. Manual remains an option, you get the electric handbrake whether you want the damned thing or not.
Okay, THAT is dumb. I’ve never seen it before, but I’m betting it will be everywhere in no time.
Emily needs her own bio on the character list.
I’m going to add one. I just need to get around to it. Doing the character bio stuff is a pain with Comic Easel.
Though I never commented before (or did I? I don’t think so), I’m overwhelmed by the need to say that in Italy we have something like 99% cars with manual trasmission. And we LOVE air conditioning.
So no, it’s not just Brits. I don’t know about the “choose suffering” bit… You may have a point there.
Also I like the comic. But that goes without saying.
Yeah, I’d be more accurate if I said, “All of Europe is a manual-only zone”. (Although the Brits will be angered by my categorizing of them as European, but whatever. They’re European.) I just singled out the UK because, well, it’s an English-language comic and I don’t have many readers from continental Europe. But I’m glad you’re following along! That’s encouraging!
I’m from continental Europe. And yes we have mostly manual transmission cars.
You Europeans. Who do you think you are, not being lazy, slovenly oafs?!? You think you’re better than us? Because you are? Well… Dang. Now I feel bad.
Last time I needed a new car, I lucked out and found a low-mileage manual-shift Civic. Learned to drive in a reamed-out mid-50s Jeep with 3 shift levers, and I still prefer manuals. They’re a lot more fun.
The car has AC, but the house does not. Most of the time, I’m trying to stay warm.
Well, warmth is key. Where in the world are you? Where I am, warmth is everything for one half the year, and AC is everything the other half.
At first, I read “broomstick” (without the bedknobs, Colin? Really?) as BOOMstick – and then I went down the rabbit-hole of Army of Darkness quotes.
My first new car had $1000 options for automatic transmission and air conditioning. Living in Hamilton, I chose the air conditioning…
Well, if you can drive a stick, and you only had $1000 dollars to spare, I’d say you put the money to good use.
I’ve driven vans with both 4 on the floor and 3 on the tree, and I must say from experience that there are some vehicles that do not belong on the road without auto transmission.
Good to get the supportive opinion of an expert.
HAH! I love it!
I can’t either. I also can’t drive a vehicle with planetary gears. I just can’t drive.
Real men take public transportation.
Well, I’m real enough I guess. For a random left-handed guy on the internet.
I used to have a 1963 Chevy Corvair Monza — I loved that car. It was a stick (manual transmission) and it was very handy (see what I did there?) during the winter and on mountain roads as I could set it in whatever gear that I needed and knew that it would not shift on me. Yes, I know that automatics have a “low” gear but only the one setting. I have an automatic now.
A lot of automatics have all three lower gears available to force shift to. I’ve force-shifted to lower gears to get up snow-covered inclines. I think my car has three available?
I am a former trucker (19 years over the road).
People just are amazed sometimes to find me driving an automatic.
Not that I have a choice.
I am presently looking after my mother and driving her caddie.
on occasion, she decides to drive herself.
I tried to teach her how to drive a stick (won’t do THAT again).
Some people say I walk like I drive (go wide around corners, watch the corners as I approach, constantly watching behind me, ect)
I think that if you don’t learn to drive a manual within your first few years of driving, it’s probably already too late for you to learn. But kudos to you for at least trying to teach your mother.
Should add…I learned to drive using just my right foot, so I could learn to drive manual and not, say, use the left foot to brake. My father was insistent on it. I still drive that way to this day. I don’t use my left foot at all
But I never did learn to work stick.
Uhhhh…. That’s proper driving technique. Only knobs drive with both feet. And race car drivers. But having your left foot on the gas and your right foot on the brake (if you’re not a race car driver) just can easily lead to you hitting both simultaneously, which is never good. I drive with my right foot only.
I used to sniff at air conditioning. Living in Seattle, it’s helpful only about 1 week a year. During Hot August Week, I just lazed around sweating and enjoyed being nonproductive.
But then I replaced my home oil furnace with a heat pump. “It also comes with air conditioning”, they said, “Because air conditioning is basically a heat pump going in reverse”.
“Pshaw!” I thought, “I shall never use this”.
Then came Hot August Week. The AC came on automatically, for I had forgotten to disable it.
At that moment, I realized that AC is like sex: You can live without it, but why?
You northwest coasters don’t get it, living in the temperate paradise that you do. Around where I live, the only constant about the temp is the fact that it perpetually feels like Mother Nature is trying to kill you. You are comfortable at ambient air temp only for one week in spring and one week in fall. The rest of the year is suffering.
I guess that puts me in the “old American guy” category. Though if I ever manage to teach my daughter how to drive, I’ll make sure she knows how to drive a stick.
My first manual car was Three on the Tree. I’m guessing that’s rare even in England? Surely nobody makes them any more. I’ve seen exactly two in my lifetime that I know of.
As for “why”, I have to say there’s something satisfying about having the extra level of control, even if it’s not practical. I used to alternate between automatics and sticks, but alas, I’ve gone from “cheapest car on the lot” to luxury vehicle, and my last three cars have all been automatics. But sometimes I miss that stick.
…And then I get stuck in stop-and-go traffic.
I obviously don’t know what I’m missing. I missed out on the romance of the stick.
Most Cathartic Voting Incentive Ever!
P.S. excellent costuming choice, showing the characters’ differences with the need for dialogue.
2021 be warned!
Phoebe’s wearing the same weird gossamer dress thing she wore in the 2020 New Year incentive. It just felt right to return to the scene of the crime, as it were.
I can understand that.
Humina, Humina, Humina, Phoebe in a see through nightie!
Well, the skirt is see-through. Just trying to poorly defend myself here.
I’ll have to mull on the Voting Incentive a bit.
Some truly awful events ocurred nationally, and worldwide, in 2020.
Yet there were no World Wars, and honestly, as far as mass casualties go, COVID-19 has been more bark than bite (surely Robin recalls the Bubonic Plague).
And my family is very fortunate in that we remain in decent health, are together, and unlike so many, have not sufferred great economic losses.
Thank You 2020, you did the best you could.
Honestly, I’m not one of the “2020 WORST YEAR EVAR” people. There have been worse years. Just within the past 100 years or so there are many contenders. Like, you could probably choose any year from the 1930’s or 40’s and it would be a worse experience for a greater number of the world’s population than 2020. But it was a year that threw everyone’s daily rhythm of life off, and it’s the weirdest one for many in living memory.
It hasn’t been that bad for me and my family either, but I know many that have suffered great loss. I don’t want to downplay that.
2020 could have been worse, certainly. But I am dearly hoping that 2021 is a better experience for a greater slice of the world’s population.
Think about the Justinian Plague. It likely killed fewer people, but they were all concentrated in one city, so YIKES! New York had it bad, but that was even more horrifying.
And so….i binged the entire comic thus far in one day….and now i’m sad as there isn’t anything to look forward to for the rest of the day.
Well, there’s a new one coming on Tuesday? It’s not much but it’s something?
That votey. Wow Phoebe, gorgeous. Wow Puck, bloody.
Now that the body is on the ground if I look at its pants a certain way they say NONONONONO, which seems appropriate for the situation and for 2020.
Hey, the year was giving us a hint all along! Look at sideways and it was cautioning us….
I’m wondering if anyone thought, “BOOMSTICK”
A 12-gauge double-barrel Remington?
@EG, Justin just said what I wanted to say about NONONO (!) Of course, IRL, 2020 died of old age, just like all years do. So I think he dropped dead just before Puck’s board reached his head. 😉
Well, she had to make it look good. You gotta take credit for a natural death every now and then.