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Marvin
Spider-Man, 5/11/10
O cruel twist of fate! Here our hero, the Amazing Spider-Man, is betrayed by that which he loves the most: television! He always dreamed of the day when his image would appear on the fantastic glowing picture box in his living room, but now that it’s arrived, it’s just making him confront his financial inadequacies. Perhaps Peter will take this opportunity to educate himself about the rapidly consolidating corporate-controlled media landscape — presumably the Globe-Herald and this local TV station are owned by the same company, and whatever freelancing agreement Peter signed gave that parent corporation the right to use his work across all of its properties. Maybe Spidey’s next battle will be to make readers more aware of alternative, independent journalism, in print or online! Ha ha, just kidding, he’s going to stay at home and sulk and not even go see Mary Jane’s show, wah wah wah, poor Peter Parker, nobody loves him.
Dennis the Menace, 5/11/10
I’m not exactly sure why this is supposed to be either funny or menacing. Perhaps Dennis’s parents have thrown him out of the house into the pouring rain for his general bad behavior, and now he represents the social menace of child homelessness?
Apartment 3-G, 5/11/10
Apartment 3-G really brings home to me how much I make quick assessments about people’s age and social circle from the way they dress. This usually works well enough in the real world, but when you’re dealing with a cast of characters whose wardrobe appears to have been meticulously copied from mid-’60s issues of Redbook, you’re left sort of at sea. Are the A3G girls supposed to be 25? 40? 55? 25-year-olds involved in an elaborate cosplay subculture? Who knows! What I’m trying to say is that Lu Ann may well be a 12-year-old. It would explain a lot.
Marvin, 5/11/10
In happier news, Marvin is about to be mauled by a vicious dog.
Beetle Bailey, 4/28/10
I’m not sure why the Camp Swampy leadership is so excited about America’s still fragile economic upturn; after all, they’re all career officers with guaranteed government pensions, and improved private sector hiring is likely to make military recruiting more difficult. I guess maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical, and should just accept that these four guys are rooting for our nation’s GDP and glad to see it growing again. It’s also possible that they will take literally any available excuse to get blotto.
The “again” bit doesn’t come as a surprise to me at all, since there have been 10 or so recessions over the 60 years Beetle Bailey has been in print.
Spider-Man, 4/28/10
Spidey is always quick with a quip, but maybe he ought to give a little bit of thought to these one-liners before he lets loose with them. “That’s right, Sabretooth — I was able to successfully hide from you, like the coward I am! That’s why you can’t see me right n — aw, crap.”
Marvin, 4/28/10
Man, Marvin is definitely not disappointing when it comes to this “stand-up comedian grandma” shtick. “My aged, wizened body is falling apart, bit by bit! I feel the stench of death rising up from my own flesh! I could go out at any minute! Seriously, why are all of you laughing?” Also worth noting is that the art is not a repeat of yesterday’s strip, even though it’s just as static and boring. Kudos for that, I guess?
Jumble, 4/28/10
Oh look, it appears I’m in the Jumble again, this time as a counterfeiter? Sorry, Jumble Jeff, as a professional blogger, I already have a license to print money.
Marvin, 4/27/10
Regular readers of Marvin (a company of damned souls among whom I number) know that the strip takes occasional breaks from poop jokes to churn out multi-day theme weeks, like “Belly Laffs” or “CrySpace” or “Marvin’s Terrible Advice Column For Babies, The Name Of Which I Refuse To Look Up.” One of the least pleasant aspects of these sequences is that they feature jokes that are supposed to be jokes within the strip’s reality. We’re not just being invited to laugh at Marvin’s heavy-lidded antics; we’re expected to celebrate the characters’ own wit when they come up with hilarious “pregnant women get fat” gags. This to me doubles the offense of the whole project; it’s not enough that the jokes aren’t funny, but the structure of the narrative is built around taking the funniness of the jokes as a given, which makes the whole thing fail all the more.
That having been said, I have high hopes for this emerging “Marvin’s grandmother’s stand-up career” sequence. By looking at the expression of naked contempt on her face, we can tell that she has no illusions about the humorousness of her material. The fact that the easily amused and possibly senile residents of her retirement home are laughing uproariously at her litany of old people jokes doesn’t allow her to fool herself into thinking that she’s funny; instead, it just causes her to turn her internalized loathing onto her pathetic audience. If she can maintain this attitude of icy disdain, she shows great promise of becoming an excellent meta-comedian, with her entire act based on her own knowledge of her comic inadequacies and hatred for her fans.
Family Circus, 4/27/10
Speaking of comedic structure, I have no idea whatsoever why this Family Circus is supposed to be funny; however, I know why I like it, which is because Billy is having some kind of full-on manic episode, flinging envelopes of seeds all over the floor and gibbering out semi-comprehensible nonsense. I’m not sure why exactly Mommy, who will be responsible for picking up all those seeds when Billy runs shrieking into the fertilizer section, looks so pleased; maybe she knows that her eldest son’s brief enthusiasm for locally grown nutritious food will have passed within minutes, and she can continue to feed him Top Ramen and Pop Tarts until he’s felled by type 2 diabetes and/or hypertension at age 15.
Apartment 3-G, 4/27/10
This is almost certainly some sort of unnecessarily coy set-up to a “Tommie gets an ambush makeover from I Dressed In The Dark” storyline, but I’d like to believe that Ruby’s describing how, almost without noticing it, she became a phone sex operator.
Hagar the Horrible, 4/19/10
Wow, this little crowd scene may represent the most artistic effort and affection I’ve ever seen lavished on a Hagar the Horrible strip. There are really quite a lot of nice touches: the crowd behind our heroes, grinning good-naturedly at the spectacle; the occasional pitchfork, conveying the both social class of the onlookers and the threat of violence lurking just beneath the surface of the seemingly festive gathering; the knight just to the left of Lucky Eddie, literally licking his lips in anticipation, and his friend, cheerfully pointing out some detail of interest to him; and, of course, the black-robed, torch-wielding executioner, his eyes wild but his dour expression indicating that he alone appreciates the terrible gravity of what’s about to take place.
Of course, all this is in service a particularly grim punchline — ha ha, everyone likes coming out to see a couple of guys get set on fire! Of course, said guys are savage Viking warriors who may well have killed or enslaved many of the family and friends of the people in the crowd, so perhaps their murderous glee is justifiable.
The Phantom, 4/19/10
So it turns out that the narrator dude who I misidentified last December as Billy Dee Williams was, as several helpful readers pointed out, merely a miscolored depiction of deceased Phantom creator Lee Falk. Apparently the coloring crew has been alerted and today he has been depicted with the proper skin tone. However, I’m not sure if anyone can explain the artist’s choice to portray him in panel three as a some kind of deranged goth leprechaun, complete with skull-tipped shillelagh.
Marvin, 4/19/10
Oh, look, it appears to be a new character in Marvin! Nothing good ever comes of new characters in Marvin, as nothing good ever comes from the strip itself, but since she’s making her debut by threatening physical harm to the titular hell-infant, I’m willing to give her a chance.
Apartment 3-G, 4/19/10
We may not get to see anyone die in a hail of bullets in Apartment 3-G, but we do get to see how Margo’s mind works, which is almost as harrowing/hilarious! “Only people who are so fanatically devoted to me that they’ll sacrifice their lives for my safety merit Margo Alone Time.”
Mary Worth, 4/19/10
I’m pretty sure Bonnie just made a pass at Mary, which I’m pretty sure makes her the second most sad, lonely, and pathetic person on Earth (after Dr. Jeff, of course).
Curtis, 4/12/10
I’ve been wondering for the last couple weeks where the “Flyspeck Island peanuts give you psychic powers” plotline in Curtis was going, and now I know: fulsome praise for a terrifying Orwellian police state where one isn’t even safe in the confines of one’s own skull.
Marvin, 4/12/10
Marvin is taking a break from the poop jokes to bring us hilarious gags about old people in sad, loveless marriages, to which I say: bring back the poop jokes.
Family Circus, 4/12/10
“But until then, we’re letting Barfy crap all over the lawn.”
(See, Marvin? It’s so easy!)
Beetle Bailey, 2/28/10
I originally read the heading on the piece of paper tacked to the bulletin board in panel three as “Worst List”, and believed that it was meant to be an accounting of the most incompetent, ineffective, and generally bad soldiers on the base, or perhaps just the worst humans on earth. This nicely dovetails with my interpretation of the ensuing panels, in which Beetle, struck by shame, climbs atop a building intending to jump off and end it all, and convinces many of his fellow soldiers to join him. Unfortunately, since the structure only appears to be 12 feet high or so, this too will probably end in failure, with the attempted mass suicide only resulting in a few broken ankles.
Judge Parker, 2/28/10
Hey, remember how there was this entire other Judge Parker plot going on, which, despite its many crimes against legal ethics, was actually somewhat more interesting than the Rocky-Godiva marital problems storyline? Well, it, uh, got resolved, completely offstage, apparently! Thank goodness this one of Barreto’s last few Sunday strips (or perhaps one of his son’s?), so that these boring people standing around some dull office explaining the resolution confusingly are at least halfway attractive to look at.
Marvin, 2/28/10
“Well, it looks like we’ll have to turn to cannibalism! We’ll start with Marvin, naturally. I’ll fire up the grill.”
“But honey, we have plenty of food in the ho—”
“I SAID I’LL FIRE UP THE GRILL!”
Panel from Blondie, 2/28/10
It’s only a dream sequence, but this panel offers further unsettling detail on the always grim relationship between Dagwood and his boss. We’re no doubt meant to chortle at Dagwood’s comically twisted leg, but I can’t stop looking at Dithers’s heel planted squarely on the poor man’s throat.
Panel from Mary Worth, 2/28/10
At last, the nature of Wilbur and Kurt’s forest frolic becomes clear: A laughing Wilbur is giving his smiling not-son a bit of a head start before he starts hunting him for sport. Truly, emotionally needy con artists are the most dangerous game.