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B.C., 10/31/06

KIDS TODAY! WITH THE BIG, BAGGY JEANS! THEY’RE SO HUGE! THEY LOOK THEY MIGHT FALL DOWN, AND SOMETIMES YOU CAN SEE THEIR UNDERWEAR EVEN! HOO! BAGGY PANTS! IT’S CRAZY! WHO WEARS THAT STUFF? THE KIDS! THEY’RE NUTS!

HOO!

Good times.

Actually, I do find it kind of funny that Peter (or whoever) is pulling up his … um … diaper … thing in the third panel. Also, kudos for not letting us know that we’re all going to hell on Halloween this year, Johnny.

Judge Parker, 10/31/06

Look at Abbey’s face in panel three: she’s thinking, “God-damned lucky bastard, at least he was.” Have you noticed how difficult it is for her to convince Sam to fulfill his marital obligations? They act like they can’t get it on if there’s anyone else at home, which is kind of strange considering they live in an enormous ranch with, like, outbuildings and such. I’m thinking that Randy isn’t the main “family values” liability to this campaign.

Momma, 10/31/06

This strip made me happy, for a brief moment, that Pluggers exists. Because if it didn’t, I probably would have seen this strip and thought, “Oh my God they want her to have sex with the freakish half-beast — that’s disgusting and horrifying!” But as it is, I just thought, “See, this is why you need to put ‘NO PLUGGERS’ very prominently in your personal ad.”

Mary Worth, 10/31/06

“Yeah, I’d say it went pretty well, seeing as I’m high as a fucking kite right now.”

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Family Circus, 10/30/06

There’s always some sort of twisted psychodrama going on this ostensibly innocent little feature. Today, I’m wondering why Jeffy looks so damn depressed about Billy’s unfunny little joke. Some possibilities as to what might be running around his misshapen head:

• “Mommy’s wrong and preacher’s right! There really are such things as witches, and evil and the devil are real!”
• “Uh oh, Billy’s on to my initiation into the dark arts. I need to cast some sort of hex on him to keep him out of my business.”
• “‘Baby witches?’ This is my big brother who I’m supposed to look up to? Jesus, I don’t know if he’s this stupid or if he thinks that I am.”
• “Uh oh, I pooped my pants again.”

For Better Or For Worse, 10/30/06

OK, let’s for a moment assume that the crowd is going to go wild for the Hose-O-Phonium (which of course it wouldn’t in any rational world, but we are way past any rational world, baby). And let’s assume, against all evidence, that Uncle Phil really is the cool professional jazz-ish musician we’re told he is. And let’s assume that the endeavor on display here — the attempt of 4Evah and Eva to upstage the professional and talented (but still, of course, whorish and evil) RebaccaH — is a noble one. So, basically, Apes and her little friends are bringing in an adult professional to humiliate a thirteen-year-old. Nice. Shannon is so embarrassed by the whole thing that she’s attempting to escape through some kind of trapdoor in the floor, which is the only explanation I can come up with for why she comes up to about April’s navel in panel two.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/30/06

Ah, Mrs. Dr. Morgan, always trying to bring a little positive energy and dignity to a thankless world. Because who cares if the people in line behind her have to wait even longer than she did, she’s determined to make friendly chit-chat with this underpaid bureaucrat. It’s a bad idea, though: check out the seam down the side of the teller’s face in panel two. That’s no human clerk, it’s a pitiless android, and when it says “the clock keeps ticking,” it’s in deadly earnest: if June uses up her allotted time and the transaction isn’t complete, the DMV-bot will vaporize her with lasers from its eyes. So let’s get a move on, lady.

Luann, 10/30/06

So does it still count as an infuriating rehash if you get all post-modern and have one of the characters note that it’s an infuriating rehash? Yes, yes it does. Tune in next week when Luann has an awkward phone conversation with Aaron, and Bernice stands behind her with an enormous sign that says “NOTE: THIS STRIP IS ‘PHONING IT IN.'”

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Here’s a relatively new comic I haven’t featured before: Watch Your Head. Check out the crawl at the bottom of the screen in today’s installment:

Cory Thomas, WYH’s author, is an occasional poster in the comments section here at in the forum, and if he’s trying to get my attention, he’s got it. (Apartment 3-G, take note … oh, like they have to work to get my attention.) Anyway, the extremely overgeneralized version of WYH’s story is that it’s about the lives of a group of college students at a (fictional) traditionally African-American university. I’m sure a lot of newspapers are giving it a look for the coveted “comic with mostly black characters that might appeal to people over the age of twelve and under the age of sixty” slot with the Boondocks going on permanent hiatus; it also, to my mind, fills a rather remarkable hole in that there hasn’t to the best of my knowledge been a daily strip about college life in general since all the kids in Doonesbury finally got real jobs.

I’ve definitely liked what I’ve seen of this strip so far (and really, I would have said that even if I hadn’t seen the first indisputable shout-out to this site in a nationally syndicated comic strip this morning), but because it doesn’t appear in the Houston Chronicle where I read my strips online, I must confess I’ve been too lazy to put it into my daily rotation and give it the Comics Curmudgeon treatment. Hopefully it will get to the Chron soon. (Note to comic syndicators: The Houston Chronicle so dominates the online comics landscape that I think it’s definitely in your interest to court them extra hard when looking to syndicate a strip.)

Check out the strip’s home page at Comics.com, the cast of characters, faithful reader yellojkt’s appraisal from last month, and Cory Thomas’ Web site.