The snowclone "I for one welcome our new * overlords" is the subject of some the most enduringly popular LL posts ("Giant space ants win control of Congress?"; "The memetic phylogeny of 'Our new * overlords'"; "I, for one, welcome our new * overlords".) So now, if you've got a collection of back issues of the Utne Reader during the period 1990-1994, and some time on your hands, the result could be cyberspatial fame beyond your wildest dreams. Or maybe not, depending on what your dreams are like. Anyhow, Martin Keegan writes:
The line "... and let me be the first to welcome our new Centaurian overlords" appeared in a three-frame comic strip in Utne Reader some time between 1990 and 1994 (when my parents got a subscription to Utne and when I left Australia and stopped reading it). The scene is the same as the Simpsons episode: a TV announcer covering an alien invasion switching sides mid-sentence. It's highly unlikely that one was not inspired by the other. Unfortunately I don't have the magazines to hand, so can't be as precise as I was over "butt-crack of dawn".
If you can track down this reference, please send me the citation -- and if possible a scan of the cartoon.
[Martin's earlier precision of attribution is on display here.]
Posted by Mark Liberman at November 12, 2006 11:36 AM