1 {scene: still pitch black darkness...}
1 Gollum: Another riddle... What iss black and white and bouncesss?
1 Lambert: Black and white... and bounces? Um...
1 Gollum: Doess it gives up?
1 Lambert: No! Give me a second here. Black... and... white...
1 Gollum: And bouncesss, it doess. What isss it?
1 Lambert: Um... bounces... and... black and white...
1 Gollum: Too sslow it isss...
1 Lambert: A rubber... um... rubber... er... nun! A rubber nun!
1 Gollum: Aaargh!
1 Lambert: Ha! Too easy!
1 Gollum: Yesss... Another riddle it hass to gives usss...
1 Lambert: I'm thinking! I'm thinking!
1 Gollum: A riddles, or it losesss...
1 Lambert: Um... er... What have I got in my pocket?!
1 Gollum: In itss pocketses? That's not a riddle!
1 Lambert: Close enough!
1 Gollum: Three guessesss it musst gives usss...
1 Lambert: Okay, okay. You'll never get it.
1 Gollum: In its pocketses... Lint!
1 Lambert: No.
1 Gollum: A trick quesstion it iss! Nothing! Nothing in its pocketses!
1 Lambert: No... That's two guesses.
1 Gollum: In itss pocketses... what hass it got in itss pocketses?...
1 Lambert: You'll never guess...
1 Gollum: Is it... is it... The Preciousss?!
1 Lambert: No! It was a trick question! I don't have any pockets!
1 Gollum: Auugh!! Why not??!
1 Lambert: Trust me, around Mordekai you're better off not having anything in pockets.
Two things:
1. I wanted to get through this dialogue without serving up another dozen strips of four black panels, so I compressed it down to a single
strip in this format.
2. In some ways like #1402, but in other ways completely differently, this strip deliberately challenges the idea of
what a comic strip is.
Is this a comic strip? Or is it just prose?
I leave that question as an exercise for you, the reader.
3. A rubber nun! Ha! That's my favourite silly riddle of all time.
2016-08-09 Rerun commentary: Two more things:
- It never made much sense to me why something as monstrous as Gollum would play a relatively civilised game like Riddles with some random person. It was only when much later I learnt that Gollum was a hobbit, corrupted by the Ring, that this made any sense at all. So... good foreshadowing, Mr Tolkien.
- Of course, I would argue that this is a comic. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to explain why.
