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Barney Google & Snuffy Smith
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.
Herb and Jamaal, 1/25/10
Good lord, Herb and Jamaal, I think it would be best for you to stick with what you know — risible non-specificity — because when you try to make up actual names for the inhabitants of your fictional universe, you fail in discombobulating ways. I admit to being totally baffled as to what image “Who Waa Twang” is supposed to evoke — some horribly misguided attempt to create a Chinese or African name, maybe? I’m also having a bit of difficulty buying Herb, who has two young children and a sprightly mother-in-law, as being old enough to have even as a child enjoyed an art form that had more or less vanished by 1955. It’s possible that he managed to convince a significantly younger woman to marry him, since his diminutive stature might have made him appear younger in her eyes.
One thing I do like is the fact that The Guy Who Played “Who Waa Twang” is still an imperious, self-centered ass, like the movie star he is. Fishing saliva-covered false teeth off of the no doubt filthy floor? That’s for the little people! TGWP“WWT” (as they call him in the tabloids) doesn’t bend over to pick stuff up when there are adoring fans to do it for him, and there always adoring fans to do it for him.
Family Circus, 1/25/10
It’s true that I’ve been on a bit of a Family Circus run of late, but how can I not be when it’s so continually and hilariously cruel? My favorite part about today’s panel is the smug little smile on Billy’s face in the background. Clearly Billy realizes that his little brother is so monumentally stupid that he’s literally forgotten how to walk. Perhaps he’s been out there for days, holding that snowball and hoping someone will come within range; it would explain the pile of snow that’s accrued around his feet.
Gil Thorp, 1/25/10
There’s nothing that turns Gil and Mimi Thorp on more than inappropriately matchmaking with their students! Cassie Corman, for those not following along, is a just-turned-18 senior engaged in a tempestuous and parentally unapproved affair with Ray, a pizza jockey with few social or economic prospects. Obviously her parents will be thrilled when she ditches this lout for Steve Luhm, a college drop-out and high school janitor, who under certain conditions might appear to be marginally higher on the social ladder.
Judge Parker, 1/25/10
Whoah, older Spencer adoptee Neddy will soon at last be returning from her Paris sojourn! And with a new boyfriend to boot. I’m intrigued by Sam’s “How young … and how talented?” question, as he appears to be trying to find the sweet spot between “Neddy is shacking up some some 45-year-old has-been” and “Neddy is molesting a child prodigy.”
Also, when Neddy left for Paris (four years and an artist ago in real time, which is, what, three weeks ago in strip time?) she had some boyfriend to whom she tearfully bid goodbye by doing some kind of cool tongue thing, so there’s sure to be room for drama!
Spider-Man, 1/25/10
Whee, Spidey’s thrilling tales of cowardice continue! “I’ve made myself safe by hiding from Sabretooth! Maybe I could make the city safe … by hiding more effectively! I can’t see anything going wrong with this plan, in the sense that if I can’t see it happening because I’m not around to see it, I won’t know about it!”
Blondie, 1/25/10
“I mean, you might think that a genuine pink-and-purple macaw would be pink and purple! But that’s a rookie mistake.”
UPDATE: Uh, speaking of mistakes, as several commentors pointed out, that’s a pink-and-purple beaked macaw, with the coloring actually pretty good for once. The Comics Curmudgeon regrets the error.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/25/10
Wait, the mule is Looweezy’s aunt? And is also related to her husband somehow? Hootin’ Holler’s kinship networks are even more unsettling than I would have imagined.
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, 1/10/10
Any catalog of complaints from General Halftrack’s various body parts that does not include a plea for a mercy killing from his much-abused liver is a joke and a fraud. One can only assume that the poor organ is wholly comatose at this point, or that it possibly expired in blessed relief years ago.
Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/10
With today’s throwaway panels, it appears that Snuffy Smith is moving away from retreaded hillbilly humor and towards an interesting new creative avenue: providing absurdly elaborate but almost realistic replies to the set-ups of classic vaudeville-era jokes. “This guy on the street told me he hadn’t had a bite in weeks … so I said ‘You might want to check out this new fish place on 33rd Street, the halibut is to die for!” “Take my wife … to that Philip Glass retrospective! It’s not my thing, but I think she’d really enjoy it!”
Oh my goodness, the site’s been all rearranged! More information about the redesign can be found on the Internet.
Curtis, 1/4/10
Oh, right, Kwanzaa! If there’s one thing that keeps me from viewing the purchase of a new calendar as just another step on the ever-descending spiral towards death, it’s the annual Curtis Kwanzaa fable of hallucinatory madness. I generally tear through the first half of the tale with joy when I return from my Christmas travels. Past adventures have included:
This year’s story, involving nightmarish soul-stealing shadow-things, talking, styled animals, and all-knowing rhythm instruments, while whimsical and awesome when measured by other yardsticks, is thus rather pedestrian by when viewed in the Curtis Kwanzaa context. Still, today our hero appears to be passing through a magic mirror into the realm of the dead, so perhaps things might be looking up. I’d also like to point out that his sentient animal friends can speak and think like humans but, since they cannot enter the spirit realm, apparently do not have souls, which to my mind makes them by far the creepiest part of this whole drama so far.
Pluggers, 1/4/10
Speaking of monstrous, soulless beasts, let’s check in with Pluggers! Let’s see, yep, same old same old, pluggers are casting their minds back to a bygone age and … finding it … wanting? OH MY GOD EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG! Is 2010 the year pluggers finally get with the times? What’s next? “Pluggers will suffer a witch to live”? MADNESS!
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/4/10
This strip would be funny (well, OK, not funny per se, but at least not so unsettling) if Ol’ Lukey were laffin’ it up with his fellow rustics in the second panel, rather than just sort of staring off into space looking befuddled and a little frightened. As it is, it appears that this elderly hillbilly is falling into corn likker-accelerated dementia, unable to remember where he’s going and why at any given moment. Soon he’ll be receiving Hootin’ Holler’s version of elder care (e.g., abandonment on a rocky hillside to be eaten by grizzlies).
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/3/09
It has long been my contention that Parson Tuttle is a fraud, using his position as Hootin’ Holler’s lone clergyman to bilk his gullible parishioners out of their meager savings. Today it has become clear that he never even bothered acquiring the rudiments of a theological education before launching into this long-term grift. He’s desperately trying to come up with some vaguely Biblical-sounding thing about niceness that might get these ladies to make peace with each other, and all he can pull out of his fancy hat is the Good Samaritan; but even the semi-literate locals know that this parable is really about expanding the notion of “neighbor” to encompass mercy and virtue, not just geography or ethnic and religious loyalty, and has little to do with stopping people who actually live next door to each other from feuding. Still, they might yet get some spiritual edification out of it; after all, the parable does involve a man beaten by bandits and left for dead at the side of the road, which I imagine happens in Hootin’ Holler with depressing regularity.
Crankshaft, 12/3/09
I have to admit that I kind of enjoy the often nonsensical “Crankshaft-speaks-to-the-garden-club” episodes of Crankshaft, mostly because there’s so much disconnect between the various components. The ostensible point of the strip is to provide a humorous counterpoint between the ’Shaft’s educational agenda and his wacky and relentless malapropisms; but funnier still is the comical juxtaposition of both with his look of unbridled disgust and contempt and his audience’s terrified cowering. Pretty much the only way to parse any of this is to imagine Crankshaft as an aged absolute dictator, still wearing his proletarian uniform to show his revolutionary bona fides despite years in power, launching into hour four of a rambling, nonsensical harangue that his audience cannot escape or ignore for fear of execution.
Funky Winkerbean, 12/3/09
Ha ha, whoops! I think we’re about to find out that Funky recently decided in a “cost-saving move” not to renew his restaurateur’s license. Westview’s last economically viable private business will be shut down, throwing its already struggling employees out of work just in time for the holidays. Merry Funkmas, everybody!
Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/3/09
I’d argue that the blame for this whole escapade really ought to be placed not so much on Henry the non compos mentis golf pro but on the neglectful management of the nursing home that allowed the two oldsters to escape. I’d also point out that it’s incredibly common for people with Alzheimer’s to form romantic attachments to each other in care facilities, and that it probably brings a certain amount of joy to their lives. But whatever, Tim! I’m sure your mother will be much happier locked up in your basement! I do hope you and Becka can stay friends, if by “friends” we mean “she will come by a couple times a month free of charge to make sure your mother isn’t dying.”
Mary Worth, 12/3/09
People, people, people, this strip, in which Wilbur confesses (while moodily chewing on an orange celery stick) that his daughter helped him set up a Facebook page, has been live on the Chron Web site for more than 10 hours, and yet nobody has set up an actual Wilbur Weston Facebook page yet. Shame on all of you! Whoever does this first, and makes sure that his six combover hairs are visible in each and every one of his profile pictures, will be a true Internet hero.
UPDATE: Wlibur profile is up! Go to it!
Marmaduke, 12/3/09
It’s a good thing that former president Bill Clinton has his wife’s salary as Secretary of State and the money he makes from his speaking engagements to fall back on, because I don’t think his bosses at the dealership will be pleased that he let a demon-dog with unnaturally powerful neck muscles destroy the roof of one of the cars he was trying to sell.
Mark Trail, 12/3/09
OH OH OH! Please, please, please let Sassy get eaten by a squid!
