The Comics Curmudgeon

Metapost: The soaps, summarized

Being away for two weeks only served to show me how little actually happens in two weeks in the soap opera strips. Still, a couple of loyal readers offered amusing summaries of their twists and turns. Brandon, who also goes by the name of “Tournament of stuff,” provides this recap of Rex Morgan, M.D.:

“After surviving a harrowing adventure far more harrowing than anything in Without A Paddle, Rex and June are ready for two things: a shower and some sleep! Something’s troubling June, though, and it’s not just that Rex smells ‘like a goat.’ Alternately too tired to discuss her concerns and too worried by them to go to sleep, June finally reveals that they’ve been neglecting their parental duties. It’s time, they decide in the morning, to fire their nanny. After saying their cheery goodbyes and their thanks to the crew that nearly killed them, Rex and June head home to face the unhappy task that awaits them.”

Brandon also describes himself as “a fan”, as if that sort of ass-kissing is going to get him mentioned in the blog. Oh, wait, it will. Ass-kiss away, people!

Grand prize, though, goes to an anonymous poster who offered a summary of two weeks of Mary Worth — in advance!

“Heck, I can summarize the next two weeks of Mary Worth without needing the strips to be published. Or without even using a verb! (Since nothing ever happens in Mary Worth, verbs are unnecessary.) Wilbur. Iris. Dinner. Breadsticks. Drama. Wilbur’s broken heart.”

Good try, my nameless friend, though even the most faithful Mary Worth fan couldn’t have predicted that the litany should have really looked something like this: “Wilbur. Iris. Dinner. Breadsticks. Drama. My very own meth lab!“

OK, now they’ve gone and changed it BACK

Rex Morgan, M.D. 8/31/04

Really, the art Rex Morgan, M.D. looked different when I got back from France. Right? Right? Am I taking crazy pills here, or what?

Maybe my comments were enough to scare them back into their old artistic style. I hope I don’t let my newfound power and influence go to my head.

Where else do you see regular use of the term “flatlanders”?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/30/04

Here’s a fact that will give you a sense of how resistant the comics page is to change: Barney Google, one half Barney Google and Snuffy Smith’s titular duo, hasn’t been a regular character in the strip for more than 50 years. The strip was originally called Barney Google, and started in the roaring 1920s as the chronicles of the title character, a henpecked urban racing and boxing afficiando; in the 1930s, though, there was an American vogue for hillbilly humor, so Barney decamped to the North Carolina mountains and fell in with local rural layabout Snuffy Smith, who soon became the strip’s primary focus. Barney himself left sometime in the Eisenhower administration, but his name has remained.

Now, to me, the important aspect of this story is the fact that urban Americans have enjoyed making fun of hillbillies since at least the 1930s. It’s ever so much more comfortable being a culturally snobby elitist when you can claim to be the heir to a long history of culturally snobby elitism. (Anyone who tries to say that I can’t claim to be a culturally snobby elitist and still dedicate this much energy to comic strips can just leave now.)

Anyway, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith is one of those strips that seem to take place during some indeterminate time in the past, which makes it weird when the modern world — in the form of NASCAR, in today’s case — intrudes. (Yes, yes, I know, NASCAR has been around since the 1940s, but its popular omnipresence is a relatively recent phenomena.) It’s all the odder because Snuffy and his hirsute companion are listening on a classic Depression-era radio. Of course, just the idea of listening to auto racing on the radio would itself be inherently funny if there weren’t so many people doing it.

Today’s fun facts about Barney Google and Snuffy Smith all come from Don Markstein’s Toonpedia, which is a great comics resource. Among other things, it reveals that during World War II, Barney and Snuffy appeared in a combination propaganda film/comedy short called (I’m not making this up) Hillbilly Blitzkrieg. Where were the people who protested The Real Beverly Hillbillies when that happened, huh?

And now, a little something for the gentlemen

Apartment 3-G, 8/29/04

Apartment 3-G, like all other forms of visual entertainment, needs to please that all-important demographic of males between the ages of 18 and 54 (aka “the violent and horny years”). It can’t offer much by way of car chases and explosions, so it makes up for it with occasional cabana fantasy sequences like this one. I’m not really sure what the bizarre undergarment that Margo is wearing in the first panel is supposed to be, but once she changes, things really get started. She’s upstaged, of course, by her new boss’s bikini-clad daughter. The mention of “private school” offers us a tantalizing hint of jailbait, but because Apartment 3-G has a sketchy drawing style and a complete lack of cultural cues understandable to anybody under the age of 65, it’s impossible to tell with any degree of certainty how old she actually is; the oversized cocktail glass indicates that she probably just goes to Vassar or something. All in all, however, it’s still pretty sleazy, though nowhere near as bad as the time that the tiny-towel-wrapped trio of roommates spent an entire week sighing ecstatically in a sauna.

Actually, current plot developments may lead to car chases and explosions yet. The secluded mansion, the eccentric and domineering billionaire, the team of weirdly submissive female servants dressed in matching jumpsuits — all signs seem to indicate that Margo’s new client is some sort of James Bond-ian supervillain. This should make for a more exciting storyline than LuAnn’s studio’s ventilation problems. Hopefully the whole thing will climax with Margo battling an army of bodyguards, or possibly robots, for control of a giant death ray — while still wearing her borrowed bathing suit, naturally.

By the way, my hometown paper cuts off the first two panel of this strip on Sunday, so this is the first time I’ve seen the logo in the first panel. I have to say that the grinning, floating, disembodied heads of our heroines creep the living bejeezus out of me.

Foppish adventures on the high seas

Mark Trail, 8/28/04

No one has yet submitted a Mark Trail entry in my summarize-the-soaps contest (Enter now! Operators are standing by!) but I’m beginning to think that it’s even more loopily entertaining when I’m baffled by the plot developments. Today we meet Otto, a cravat-wearing, contraction-eschewing, possibly European cook (though “chef” would no doubt be a better term for such an obvious aesthete), and Primrose, his … well, what are we, exactly? In the second panel, Primrose looks like a lemur, or maybe a marmoset, while the in the third she takes on the appearance of an ordinary house cat. (In the first, she looks like a cardboard cutout, but let that be for the moment.) As amusing as it would be to have one of the minor primates on board for this adventure, I think it’s pretty clear that pencil mustache + cat = villainy. And if the colorists are to be believed, he’s a shade swarthier than everyone else, too. Watch out, Mark!

I’d also like to point out that the bearded man in the middle of the first frame, who I assume is this voyage’s commanding officer, seems to have stolen his uniform from a 1970s airline pilot, or possibly a movie about 1970s airline pilots. This is one shady operation.

Meanwhile, I hate to make fun of Mary Worth, but … oh, who am I kidding. I love making fun of Mary Worth; it’s one of the main reasons I started this blog. Anyway, be sure to check out today’s installment, as it contains the first use of the phrase “my very own meth lab” that I’ve seen in the comics outside of Dennis the Menace.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what in the name of God is THAT?

Mary Worth, 8/27/04

Much, MUCH more alarming that subtle changes in Rex Morgan, M.D.’s artwork is the presence of this freakish she-man in Mary Worth. The deliberate cultivation of gender ambiguity as an expression of one’s innermost self or as a cultural critique is one thing, but I think this is just some seriously crappy drawing. The diagonal folds towards the beltline of that too-small tank top made me think that it was actually a woman’s leotard at first (and there’s a challenge to all you Photoshoppers out there if I ever heard one).

I’m assuming that this individual is the ne’er-do-well son of the object of Wilbur’s affections. Actually, now that I look at him more, I have to say that he most resembles what He-Man (a cartoon figure with his own set of fascinating gender issues) would look like if he stopped using steroids.

I have to say that I’m really “digging” his mental use of hip drug lingo. Now that I’m back, I urge any Mary Worth-ites out there to take up my challenge and summarize the series of fascinating events that brought us here, or to the present moment in any of the soap opera strips. I’ve got a couple entries already, but I’ll wait a day or two before posting them to give others time to play along.