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Sally Forth
Gil Thorp, 1/23/10
“Help” = all-too-interested-in-high-school-athletes creepster janitor Steve Luhm, obviously, whose stint “helping” the girl’s basketball team will turn out to be even less appropriate than his efforts with the boys.
Family Circus, 1/23/10
This is an illustration of the empathy-free horrors that the Keane Kids have become as a result of their monstrous upbringing, and a good reason why the Keane Kompound must be bombed, from a great height, for the safety of all mankind.
Sally Forth, 1/23/10
Having gone behind Ted’s back to loan family money to her deadbeat sister, Sally knows that she has only one chance to deflect her husband’s anger: to finally cater to his fantasy of having sex with Han Solo. Will Han shoot first in this scenario?
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/10
Since Hootin’ Holler has long been neglected by the flatlander-dominated government and has never been serviced by any sort of municipal water supply, its impoverished rustic residents have only their own bodily fluids with which to bathe themselves.
Pluggers, 1/23/10
After a plugger dies of a massive coronary, the indelible dents his enormous ass left in the furniture make up the monument he leaves for his descendants to remember him by.
Beetle Bailey, 10/11/09
This is a pretty sad demonstration of how Beetle’s half-century stuck in the timeless limbo of Camp Swampy will make it impossible for him to reintegrate into normal society upon his release. Like the hero of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Private Bailey will leave the military and find a civilian world with mores and values outside of his understanding. For instance, he’ll find his clothes to be laughably out of date, and discover that the whimsical pastimes of his native 1950s, such as tree-sitting and breath-holding contests, are no longer relevant in the age of reality TV and Internet pornography. However, he will be pleased to find that the competitive eating scene is still alive and well, and moreover that revolutionary new technologies allow hot dogs to be cooked without being blackened to a crisp.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/11/09
Remember the classic narrative switcheroo at the climax of Silence of the Lambs, when the scene edits make you think that the FBI team is assembling outside the serial killer’s house, but it turns out that they’re in the wrong place and Jodie Foster is ringing his doorbell instead? Well, that’s sort of what happened here, without the tension or excitement. Becka and Tim have been heroically driving through a sodden golf course looking for his runaway mom, whom we’ve been led to believe is holed up in the pro shop there — when in fact they’ve broken and entered into some punk rocker’s trailer, perhaps miles away! Everything about this punk rocker — his piercings, his shaved head, his use of “street” slang like “crib” — is supposed to be terrifying and menacing to us, the solid middle-American comic-reading audience, but I feel obliged to point out that it is, in fact, his crib, and he has a right to protest random old people breaking in and attempting to hold golf lessons there.
Sally Forth, 10/11/09
Oooh, contest — what terrible habit is causing Ted to drain the Forth family finances? Keep in mind that Ted is pure of heart, so all the sleazy things you sickos are thinking of (cocaine, roulette, 15-year-old Thai male prostitutes) are out. I’m thinking that the basement shelves are groaning under the weight of his collection of first-edition GoBots, or that every time he PayPals someone on Craigslist who claims to have a copy of the Star Wars Christmas Special, he’s convinced that this is the time he won’t be disappointed.
Sally Forth and Marvin, 7/26/09
Hey, guess who’s a fancy intellectual elitist book-readin’ guy in addition to the writer of a suburban middle-American comic strip? Ces Marculiano, that’s who! The opening lines of today’s Sally Forth are also the opening lines of Thomas Pynchon’s 760-page modernist classic Gravity’s Rainbow, and a tiny bit of high culture is slipped under the skin of comics readers everywhere.
But really, does Hillary’s soliloquy (good name for a band: “Hillary’s Soliloquy”) really challenge our settled, comfortable mindset the way Pynchon’s novel did? Consider this: despite the myriad kaleidescoping themes covered by the book, if you ask most people who were assigned to read it in college English what they remember about it, the first thing they’ll come up with will probably be the shit-eating. And what strip spends more time contemplating the symbolic meaning of poop than Marvin? Today’s installment is a particularly fine example, in which the title character, an absolutist on the subject of free will, insists that one can only truly demonstrate maximum personal autonomy by walking around with so much putrefying feces in one’s pants that it attracts swarms of flies. So, sorry Ces, but I think you’ll have to push the boundaries your art further if you plan to smash bourgeois sensibilities.
Mary Worth, 7/26/09
Two word-pairs you probably never anticipated seeing in juxtaposition: “Mary Worth” and “booty call.” I particularly marvel at the one-word-per-panel thought-ballooning sequence that serves as this strip’s centerpiece. Is it just an attempt to stretch limited action out over a longer Sunday strip? Does it instead represent Delilah’s grim determination to find succor in the worst way possible? Or does it simply indicate that she thinks … very … slowly?
Shoe, 6/17/09
The thing that most unsettles me about Shoe is of course its occasional portrayal of “sexy” lady birds, but the “goggle-eyed look of horror reaction shot” is a close second, especially since the punchlines in this strip are generally good-natured jokes about everyday life and not, say, an announcement of existential crisis. For instance, going by today’s text alone, I’d guess that this is supposed to be some wry commentary on how low the resale value is for all those expensive consumer goods we buy, and what’reyagonnado, amiright? But the way that our two characters are looking at each other in undisguised shock in the final panel implies that this sale of the Perfesser’s possessions was a last-ditch effort to raise funds that they desperately needed, and that the bad men will be coming to cut off their thumbs shortly.
Family Circus, 6/17/09
Wow, this week’s “Little Billy, Age 7″ cartoons sure are extra harrowing, aren’t they? I have no idea where Big Daddy Keane’s day job is supposed to be or why Billy is there with him, but the meaning of his display of violence is fairly clear. “See what I did to the machine, when it didn’t give me the bag of Funyuns that I paid for? Well, just think of what I’m going to do to you and your sister and your idiot brother if I don’t get the [kick] God [kick] damned [kick] peace and quiet [kick] I deserve [kick] once in a while!”
Sally Forth, 6/17/09
Ah, a mother’s love! It encourages us to speak in the sweet, comforting voice of LIES. Really, Sally, if Hillary always “do[es] great” on her finals, then why, after 27 years, has she still not advanced to the sixth grade?
Dennis the Menace, 6/17/09
“So I thought you might want to stab him with this, to teach him not to shoot off his big mouth.”
Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/09
Admit it, all of you: you would be disappointed if Dead Lisa did not occasionally manifest herself during Les’s attempts to court Cayla. It adds an element of the macabre to an otherwise low-key and fairly dull romance between two middle-aged single parents. In fact, since romantic intrusion from the spirit plane is inevitable, let’s take it all the way. I want to see the Ghost of Lisa on every single one of Les and Cayla’s dates. I want to see her feeding him romantic lines, like in Cyrano de Bergerac, only Cyrano and Christian used to be married, and Cyrano is dead. I want to see Zombie Lisa there in the bedroom, eager to help Les with necessary corrections to his sexual techniques that she was too shy to speak up about in life, which will ironically result in his inability to maintain an erection. BRING IT ON, FUNKY WINKERBEAN.
It really is good for Les that Cayla likes Woody Allen movies, by the way, because it shows that she has a certain tolerance for exasperating neurotics.
Apartment 3-G, 5/1/09
Good lord, will this Apartment 3-G storyline ever cease handing out wonderful gifts to all of us? Today’s heart-warming moment is a cop saying “You’ve been a bad boy, Dr. Kelly” while waggling an index finger scoldingly. Is he speaking in a comical Irish brogue, as his circa 1940 uniform would suggest? God, I hope so.
Sally Forth, 5/1/09
I’m pretty sure that Ted thinks Sally said “titter.”
In most of the Western world, Easter falls on a Sunday this year — and cartoonists are taking full advantage! Let’s see what treats they’ve hidden for us!
Sally Forth, 4/12/09
Oh Sally, Sally. Remember this as you wake on your blood-soaked pillow, deaf to your own screams.
Family Circus, 4/12/09
Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, and Wrath can mean only one thing — Easter with the Keanes! They’ve dialed back the Pride, Envy, and Lust ’cause it’s a family strip.
Slylock Fox, 4/12/09
They’re all the same to the bunny, pal — all the same.
My Cage (panel), Hägar the Horrible (pänel), 4/12/09
Even pagans can join in the Easter fun! Here’s Demeter (Ceres to you Reform Pagans) passing out bread products, while Hägar welcomes Sól’s return.
Rex Morgan MD (panel), Phantom (panel), 4/12/09
And hey, never mind the calendar — June is bustin’ out all over! Mr. and Mrs. Oldfolks McTourist may take a jaundiced view, but young Heloise Walker seems, well, intrigued. So maybe one more Phantom and that’s it? You gotta admit, 22 is a pretty good run — and why do we need a Phantom, anyway? That whole “African piracy” thing — nobody worries about that any more — right?
In case you missed it (I did!) this PBS Mediashift article features Josh, Ces, the AJGLU-3000 and other local favorites! Link courtesy of Ces.
– Uncle Lumpy
