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Apartment 3-G
Apartment 3-G, 2/5/10
OK, you guys, are you ready for a theory that will blow your mind? Huh? Are you?
Before I launch into said theory let me, for the benefit of relative newcomers, recap the Story of Margo. Margo was raised by her wealthy father Martin and his wife — who, it turns out, was not her mother. Her mother is Gabriella, a lowly maid, who Martin knocked up. When Margo found out this sordid tale as an adult, it wreaked havoc with her family life and ability to feel ordinary human emotions, obviously, and she seems deeply suspicious that her parents are palling around again.
And what about Martin’s wife, the one who, presumably, Margo thought of as her mother for most of her childhood, but who probably viewed Margo with some combination of horror and disgust? Well, we don’t really know much about her, other than her name, which is … Roberta.
What’s a common nickname for Roberta? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Or, really, more specifically, are you thinking what the folks over at the Lovely Ladies of Apartment 3-G blog are thinking, who had the idea first? Is the cheating husband Bobbie is obsessively chasing Martin? Is that building across the street Gabriella’s? Is this glorious lunatic pill-popping shrink-screwing floozy the woman whose disdain and resentment shaped Margo into the woman she is today? Will this plotline end in a fantabulous one-on-one Bobbie-Margo battle that will result in the two of them resolving their differences and teaming up to destroy anyone in their way? I am giddy!
(And if you aren’t reading the Lovely Ladies of Apartment 3-G, well, why the heck not?)
Pluggers, 2/5/10
Pluggers pretty much go through life in a prescription med haze, so why shouldn’t their pets, too? It sure would keep the damn things from barking constantly and cutting into pluggers’ valuable staring-at-the-wall-and-drooling time! Plus, giving pills to animals is the sort of thing that seems hilarious when you’re high.
Beetle Bailey, 2/5/10
Meanwhile, the poor vendor who owns that cart is lying on some city sidewalk bleeding to death from a bayonet wound to the gut. But, whatever, that Sarge sure likes to eat, amiright?
Apartment 3-G, 1/31/10
Margo has been largely absent from the A3G panels of late, privately mourning the death of her fiance in her own way (which way I assume involves equal parts cocaine and fisticuffs). While Sunday installments of this strip usually just consist of recaps of the previous week’s action, today we at least get a welcome Margo cameo. Her mind clouded by grief and/or drugs, she takes the opportunity to berate Tommie for no good reason, just screaming things at her that may or may not actually be responses to anything Tommie is actually saying.
Meanwhile, Professor Papagoras, realizing the implications of his sexy affair with a pill addict, contemplates two asprin and wonders if they’ll be a gateway to the hard stuff. Will he be on the street in a few weeks, desperately seeking a connection who can supply him with some black market Nuprin?
Mark Trail, 1/31/10
Mark extols the cleverness of the fisher without really dwelling on what its plans for that adorable old porcupine are now that it’s been flipped over on its back. The Wikipedia article on the subject assures us that stories that the fisher will “scoop out [the porcupine's] belly like a ripe melon” are exaggerated; however, actually observed behavior, in which the fisher kills the porcupine over the course of half an hour by biting it on the face, is no less unsettling. Such a scene would be inappropriate for the Sunday funnies, though it might be amusing to depict Rusty watching on and weeping in terror at the end of the gruesome process.
Judge Parker, 1/31/10
Today’s Judge Parker is pretty much all about fucking! Sam, who lived in sin with Abbey for years before she made an honest man out of him, shows further hypocrisy by fulminating about Neddy’s sexual autonomy while crowing over Rocky and Godiva re-energizing their Hollywood sham marriage out in the guest house’s bed. Meanwhile, Randy Parker has arrived at April’s, for sex. Unfortunately, his disastrous new brush cut and ill-advised decision to pair a brown jacket with a black t-shirt may mitigate against this desired outcome; April is already openly fantasizing that he had decided not to show up.
Panels from Blondie, 1/31/10
Dagwood’s odd gait, with his unnaturally low shin-to-thigh ratio and his knees perpetually bent even in situations where normal people would stand upright, is one of this strip’s most striking artistic conventions. I believe it was a commentor on this blog who suggested that Mr. Dithers at some point had Dagwood’s hamstrings cut to limit his mobility and prevent him from fleeing his sinister employer. However, in this final panel, we see that his unusual leg structure may be an evolutionary adaptation that allows him to sleep comfortably on the family’s too-short couch.
Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/31/10
The throwaway panels of today’s Snuffy Smith offer an explanation of the strange mixture of modern and archaic that defines the strip’s universe. At some point, perhaps several generations before the action began, the America we know was destroyed in some terrible cataclysm, possibly a nuclear war, leaving behind a ragtag, malnourished group of survivors attempting to rebuild their civilization, using their dim memory of the previous golden age as a guide. The disaster has also left its mark on the language these characters speak; just as the English language changed rapidly in the Middle Ages, when the ruling Norman aristocracy spoke French and English was used only by uneducated peasants, so too have these hardy survivors been too busy over the past decades rebuilding their smashed world to worry about the niceties of a bygone era’s grammatical rules. Thus, it’s not too surprising that the polity just beginning to arise in the aftermath of this destruction has the neologistic name of the “Newnited States”.
In unrelated news, the Smith (or “Smif,” in the new orthography) family gene pool is lousy with criminality.
Apartment 3-G, 1/27/10
Poor Tommie! No human in the history of time has ever asked her to actually repeat one of her boring, forgettable actions; therefore she has no choice but to assume that Blaze is propositioning her with a request for some perverse French sex act.
Spider-Man, 1/27/10
Ha ha, it sure looks like MJ was looking forward to hanging around Miami in her industrial-grade unmentionables without her dopey husband stupiding things up, am I right? Presumably she fears that his sparkling wit (“See, the theater you’re performing in isn’t on Broadway, which is a street in Manhattan … so you might say you’re … wait for it …”) will alienate all of her theater buddies, while trips to the beach will only result in passersby recoiling in disgust from his freakishly oversized arms and nippleless torso.
Crankshaft, 1/27/10
Wow, Montoni’s must be in a more precarious position than I thought if its hated rival is a counter at the mall’s food court where the employees are forced to wear comical faux-ethnic garb. Still, it’s nice to see that Pam likes to spend time with her dad when he’s indulging in one of his favorite hobbies — insulting strangers — and that she still has visceral personal shame-spiral reactions when he lets loose with his unfocused misanthropy.
Mary Worth, 1/27/10
Whoah, it looks like today is one of the three designated days per year when someone in Mary Worth talks sense! Wilbur’s reaction implies to me that he doesn’t entirely understand how the proposed process works. “Kurt, I went to my doctor and I tested positive for paternity. Maybe you should get tested as well! You can never be too sure!”
Crock, 1/27/10
Hey, kids, remember “boom boxes”? They were like iPods, in the ’80s! As near as I can remember, they were covered with brown flesh and sparse hair and were physically attached to their owners, which explains Otis’s mistake.
Mark Trail, 1/19/10
Since we last checked in with Mark Trail, we’ve learned that the contours of 2010’s first storyline will involve disputes over land use and land preservation and a sinister, charismatic Senator and a restaurant that serves wild game and … uh … that’s about all I can tell you. I’d like to say that you should go back and read the archives to connect those dots, but I don’t think you’ll be able to make much more sense out of it than I have, because it’s pretty incoherent. My guess is that the Mark Trail brain trust was ordered by the syndicate to tap into prevailing anti-politician sentiment by making the next villain an elected official, but since nobody involved in creating the strip understands politics outside the context of “forest law,” by necessity that part didn’t make much sense.
Anyway, now the strip is on much firmer narrative ground: rustic ruffians who want to interfere with good-hearted folks’ enjoyment of nature! “I thought we warned you to stay out of this end of the lake! We’re the Parker Brothers … do you think we’re playing a game with you?” Ha ha, get it, because … Parker Brothers … erm. Anyway, the main question now is whether these two outboard-motoring thugs will be punched separately or in a single mighty blow.
Judge Parker, 1/19/10
I haven’t been covering Judge Parker here either, but its action has been much easier to follow. Rocky and Godiva are having marital problems, so Sam convinced Rocky to stay by describing how financially ruinous their divorce would be! Sam and Abby are all smiles while discussing this, because their sexless sham marriage works out so well for them that they can’t see why others wouldn’t enjoy one as well.
Apartment 3-G, 1/19/10
“You seemed quite comfortable” is obviously newspaper-comics-we-can’t-show-it code for “your penis seemed quite comfortable … in my vagina,” which is unsettling because (a) Bobbie and the Professor have remained fully clothed and (b) there’s no furniture in this apartment, which means they must have done it up against one of Bobbie’s beloved radiators. Just in case this pills-for-sex deal wasn’t tawdry enough for you! I hate to keep bringing the pills back up, but honestly, there’s no explanation other than powerful prescription tranquilizers for the disconnect between Bobbie’s sharpening tone and her blissed out expression in the second panel.
Beetle Bailey, 1/16/10
I guess General Halftrack is supposed to be a one-star general — he has a single star on his uniform, anyway, and it’s kind of hard to imagine him getting promoted. It now appears that he has chosen this star as his logo, as if he were a supervillain or some kind, buying an enormous and hideous stained glass star window for his front door to boast of his status as a general officer. This may also be the origin story of the general’s starry pajamas, although those may indicate that he secretly harbors fantasies of someday becoming a 147-star general.
Also, have you noticed that very few people send personal letters anymore, which means that bills and bulk mail make up of most of what you get in your mailbox? That’s pretty funny, right? Right?
Apartment 3-G, 1/16/10
Is it possible that Ruby’s friend/casual sex partner Lyle is a bit player from Mark Trail? Because she seems to have acquired that strip’s random bolding syndrome. Remember, kids, always use protection when getting intimate with a cartoon character, because you too can fall victim to the heartbreak of RBS.
Panel from For Better Or For Worse, 1/16/10
Speaking of getting intimate, if you feel like your overactive libido is interfering with your life, why not print this panel out and look at it whenever you need to make those erotic feelings vanish in a puff of disgust? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wash my mustache for the next nine hours.
Family Circus, 1/15/10
Yes, Dolly, a lot of cute pictures — which all appear to be thrown pell-mell into a cardboard box. You’d think that, what with her walls being a seemingly endless expanse of white, she might find room for a photo or two of your grotesquely swollen heads, or at least of your parents. But it looks as if she prefers emptiness, infinite emptiness, to any visual reminder that you exist. That little smile is her thinking about the moment you leave, when she’ll get to shove that box back under the bed and stop thinking about you for days and days.
Apartment 3-G, 1/15/10
Here in Baltimore, “The Block” is the name for the section of downtown where all the strip clubs are clustered together, so the narration box in panel one gave me brief hope that today’s strip would have content more interesting than tales of irritating wedding planning and not marrying guys named “Lyle.” I think matching redheads Tommie and Ruby could work up quite a little burlesque act together, slowly and suggestively unwinding their matching scarves until they finally reveal their necks to a hooting audience.