Archive for March, 2007

For Better Or For Worse, 3/30/07

I’m not entirely sure what I would considered to be the best possible way for this storyline to play out; it probably would have involved April an’ Gerald having a frank discussion about their respective thoughts about sex and feelings for each other, informed by knowledge about contraception that they learned in school and from their parents. But you know what? This scenario — where they almost let their fifteen-year-old hormones get the better of them but then don’t get the chance, and almost got caught but don’t, with Elly and John none the wiser — works for me. Hopefully in the longer term it’s just another awkward adolescent moment that will be looked back on years later with fond amusement, and not not chapter one of April’s Descent Into Whoredom. Because if she wants to wear something trampy at Liz and Anthony’s wedding (and you know she will), it’d be harder with a bun in the oven.

Mark Trail, 3/30/07

How not to solve a mystery: Like all too many human beings, Mark has seen a little evidence, used that evidence to jump to a conclusion, and now goes into the world not in the spirit of genuine inquiry, but only looking for something that confirms what he already believes. I’d love to see him shown up. “Come on, Andy, let’s look over here in that nearest cove! Hmm, what have we here … some logs … some debris … Dan’s bloated, rotting corpse … dammit, where are the things that will confirm what I believe?”

Sally Forth, 3/30/07

Oh, come on now, we all know — whether we want to or not — that the Forths screw like minks, constantly. I mean, look at this. Or this. Or this. They probably really go nuts when Sally’s totally blotto, which is pretty much all the time. “Been a while” probably means “since lunch, when Ted drove over and we did it in the car out in the parking lot.”

The Wizard of Id, 3/30/07

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second:

1. The Wizard of Id is written by Johnny Hart.
2. Johnny Hart is a strict creationist, as indicated by his constant ridicule of Darwin in B.C.
3. The Wiz here implies that the King is descended from monkeys.
4. [HEAD EXPLODES]

Baldo, 3/29/07

As part of my program of occasionally saying something unmitigatedly nice, I’ll say that I really like this technique that Baldo does occasionally, where normally cartoonish characters suddenly become lifelike, if romantically idealized. For reference for those of you who don’t read the strip, this is what Tia Carmen usually looks like:

Since Baldo is about a Latino family, it’s tempting to call these installments comic-page telenovellas, but their real antecedents are soap strips like Mary Worth or Rex Morgan, I think. I like them because I think they represent the idealized way the characters see themselves, rather than the cartoonish way in which we usually look at them.

Ziggy, 3/29/07

Hmm! Say there, Ziggy seems to be saying something to the mice about something that we, the audience, can’t see! Doesn’t this seem a bit familiar? Let’s turn the wayback machine to November 15, 2006:

Ziggy, 11/15/06

At the time, I said this:

You know what would have made this cartoon marginally funnier? If we could actually see the mice making off with Ziggy’s cell phone. Or see the antenna sticking out of the mousehole. Or see Ziggy holding an empty cell-phone holder. Or really see anything that would indicate that this wasn’t one of hundreds of photocopies of a single pre-drawn “Ziggy talks to the mice” panel, all awaiting only the addition of “hilarious” dialogue and published at reasonable intervals so as not to be glaringly obvious.

(Note for libel purposes: I’m not saying that Ziggy actually uses photocopied panels instead of coming up with a new one every day. I’m just saying that it would save a lot of work if it did.)

Well, it sadly looks like I was right. Despite the fact that today’s Ziggy could have just used the November panel with different dialogue, it seems that the artist has gone through all the trouble of making an entirely new drawing for what’s essentially the same mice-using-wireless-communications-technology joke. To his credit, he managed to make it even less interesting visually this time around.

Spider-Man, 3/29/07

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed that Spider-Man getting hit in the head with a brick would cause amnesia and mistaken-wife-identity hijinks. It was a moronic idea for a storyline, I thought, but hey, this is Spider-Man. Of course, I failed to account for the fact that the Spider-Man strip will do whatever it takes to prevent you from deriving enjoyment of any kind from it. Today, it becomes obvious that Spidey getting bonked in the head and stumbling about woozily for the better part of a week wasn’t meant to set up any ludicrous narrative shenanigans; in fact, it actually served absolutely no narrative purpose at all. As I should have known since this enraging sequence a couple years back, this strip exists entirely as some elaborate bit of storytelling gamesmanship, in which all reader expectations of excitement or at least a vague sense of involvement are continually and gleefully thwarted.

Pluggers, 3/29/07

What I love best about today’s Pluggers is how damn smug Grandpa McCheapskate looks. “Yeah, I’m trying to teach you the value of a dollar … specifically, that it’s four times greater than the value of a quarter. Now go get a job, you little ingrate.”

Those of you who read Wonkette have probably already figured out the secret engagement I hinted at the other day. Yes, I am the BLOGGER OF THE YEAR! Um, as selected by The Week magazine’s Opinion Awards. (Sadly, if you click on the “Opinion Awards” link on that page, you’ll be taken to last year’s winners, which are entirely me free.) Technically, since they’re all political and stuff over there, it’s mostly from my political cartoon stuff at Wonkette, but we all know that my work on Mary Worth is second to none in the blogosphere.

Look, here I am giving a half-assed acceptance speech!

(Photo thanks to Liz Gorman, Girl Reporter.)

Alex Pareene, Wonkette’s main editor, was also there, and wrote a very funny write-up of the event. I found the whole thing very surreal, as I don’t go to these things very often, by which I mean ever. But the booze and the food, paid for by Chevron and Philip Morris (I’m sorry, the “Altria Group”) were great. The only thing I have to add to Alex’s take is that Chip Bok (who won the best cartoonist award) and his wife are awesomely nice people who rescued me when I was sitting all lonely by myself at the pre-banquet cocktail hour, and Tom Toles, who I didn’t get to talk to quite as much, is very charming too. In fact, all cartoonists that I have had any contact with are uniformly great. So this award’s for you, guys! Except in the sense that it’s actually for me.

Mark Trail, 3/28/07

OK, yesterday’s zany talking rug was obviously just the lead-in to the full-on peyote-drenched nightmare that is … this. Sometimes people say things in the comments before I read a strip and I think, “Oh, they’re exaggerating” but … that potato in the first panel is talking. It. Is. Talking. It … JESUS AND SHE’S GOING TO PUT A KNIFE RIGHT THROUGH IT! Panel two is obviously a “world as perceived by Cherry’s drug-addled mind” view: the reason her skull is so unnaturally bulbous is because it’s full of people who talk and argue without her opening her mouth; the look of sheer panic and disgust on her face indicates that she’s ready to crack her own head open just to MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP FOR GOD’S SAKE MAKE IT STOP. The rather pedestrian scene of a giant bear ratiocinating in the final panel is prosaic and calming by comparison to the horror that came before.

Judge Parker, 3/28/07

Comprende? Comprende? OK, seriously, now they’re just fucking with us. Someone has ordered the dialogue in Judge Parker to be translated into “foreign.”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 3/28/07

NOTE TO ALL PERSONS NOT LIVING IN YEARS PREVIOUS TO 1965: When your spouse or partner says, “I’m so sick of doing chore X,” the correct answer is, “I’ll do chore X tonight.” OH YEAH!

I can particularly see why Catastra might be so tired of doing dishes, since it seems that this family of three has managed to dirty dozens of them in the course of a single meal.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/27/07

Man, just when I thought Funky Winkerbean couldn’t dip any further into emotional turmoil and human anguish, I think we’re about to see Coach Dude Whose Name I Forget ask his childhood bullying victim to inseminate his wife. Which will be more awesome, this or the FBOFW teen sex storyline? Only queasy, uncomfortable time will tell!

Mark Trail, 3/27/07

As a long-time fan of Mark Trail, I totally accept things like giant talking skunks without a bit of hesitation. But I’m having trouble with the giant talking rug in the third panel here. Which appears to be on the wall for some reason. Or is it perched on Mark’s shoulder? Or are Mark and Cherry actually standing on the wall, their bodies held parallel to the ground by some strange force, like Lionel Richie in the damn “Dancing on the Ceiling” video? Is that what’s going on here?

OK, so our dread sovereign, the Galactic Overlord Chennux, has been holding the King Features comics on the Chron hostage all day, so Tuesday’s comics will have to wait until tomorrow, because I have to jet out shortly for a SECRET ENGAGEMENT that I will be authorized to tell you about at a later date. But here’s a few items to tide you over:

First, MARGO! BOXCAR! SATURN shirts and mugs are here, courtesy of faithful reader and all around awesome dude willethompson!

As an experiment, we’re selling these shirts not through CafePress, but through … well, through willethompson himself. The quality should be higher, but we will need a minimum order to get things rolling; if we don’t get 24 pre-orders by April 1, we’ll just go the CafePress route. So, put your money where your mouth is, people! Head over to wille’s site for the details.

Second! You all remember the glory and pageantry that was the Finger Quotin’ Margo lookalike contest! Ever since, I’ve wondered, “What image in the comics is so iconic, so awesome, that people will be willing to humiliate themselves publicly to reproduce it?” Last week, I found the answer:

That’s right — it’s the Self-Clubbing Tyler lookalike contest! e-mail me a picture of you or a unsuspecting friend attempting to reproduce this glorious panel and YOU could end up featured on a classy mug or other item to be determined later! Now, I’m not saying that you’ll get extra bonus points for actually drawing blood or popping your shoulder out of its socket, but strict realism is encouraged.

And thirdly! One of my many minions recently met a nice fan of this site who draws his own comic, The Jackass and the Jew. The author is the Jew (except he isn’t, really) and the Jackass is his coworker, and … well, just read it, really, it’s funny.