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Comics archive!
October, 2009
Gil Thorp, 10/30/09
I may not be the most knowledgeable guy in the world when it comes to football — I lost all my play money in my family’s NFL pool by the end of week four this year — but I know enough to know that generally when one of your guys runs a punt back 98 yards for a touchdown, that’s a good thing, right? And yet there’s Coach Kaz, looking horrified and flapping his hands around theatrically. I suppose it’s not considered classy to run up the score when you’re already winning by more than two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and we’re going learn some Valuable Lessons About Sportsmanship.
In a larger sense, I’m finally figuring out that there are really only two basic story-driving Mudlark character types: troubled loners and loudmouth jerks. And in this year’s football storyline we’re getting one of each! In SAT analogy terms, Duncan Daley:Cully Vale::Jamarr Gaddis:Andrew Gregory.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/30/09
Oh, man, just when I thought I couldn’t love Cue any more, what with his shiny bald head, his general attitude right on the border between menace and dyspepsia, and his continued and reckless use of the word “crib,” it turns out that he’s also a small-time pot dealer! “Take it easy man … I just called to get some weed” shall be solemnly inscribed in the book of Greatest Rex Morgan Quotes Ever; it certainly compares favorably to “Sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to kill your buzz” for soap opera drug lingo verisimilitude. Now, you might think that Cue is being pretty selfless, passing up an opportunity to profit from the sale of illegal narcotics in order to bring these poor souls back to their home, but he’s actually thinking strategically. Someone in his line of work would love to have contact with a group of people who are largely idle all day, have a little bit of money, and don’t particularly care about any damage they might do to their short-term memory. Yes, sir, this trip’s gonna be lucrative for ol’ Cue, reward or no.
For Better Or For Worse, 10/30/09
Today is the day when I break my blood oath to ignore the pure rerun installments of FBOFW on this blog. I do so because I am so very, very amused by the title of the girlie magazine that John is reading not ten feet away from his wife in panel three. What sort of photography, pray tell, graces the inside pages of Nacho Man? Are there pictures of nearly nude ladies, their most intimate parts concealed only by a thick, gelatinous layer of melted nacho cheese? Are there sexy photo spreads featuring other popular bar foods, like chicken wings or mozzarella sticks? The mind boggles, and one ought to be thankful that we can clearly see both of John’s hands. Also of note is the ad on the back of this fine publication for Lion Tamer cologne, which, I assume, smells of sawdust, circus peanuts, panicked sweat, and lion shit.
Crock, 10/30/09
I kind of love the miserable expression on the face of Anonymous Legionnaire On The Left in panel two. It’s as if he knows that he will only appear in this one strip, and that his only purpose in his mayfly-brief existence is to elicit the punchline for this awful, awful joke, but despite that terrible self-knowledge, he is incapable of stopping himself.
Mary Worth, 10/29/09
I would appreciate anyone who could help explain exactly what the hell I’m looking at in panel two. It seems that the effect intended is “dramatic camera angle shot from just behind Scott’s shoulder, for some reason,” but everything’s also skewed at an angle that makes it look like Adrian and Scott are villains in the Adam West Batman TV show (if only), so it’s sort of hard to look at it and not see Scott’s chest as kind of rising up and his head tilted back. My interpretations: either Adrian is disconnecting Scott from the machines keeping him alive and forcibly dragging his dying form to the altar, or he’s convulsing at her very touch in a desperate attempt to escape their impending matrimony.
Mark Trail, 10/29/09
You know, Sassy gets a lot of crap from you people, but she and she alone seems to realize that Mark is on the verge of leaving the swamp without physically assaulting anybody, and is thus taking matters into her own itty-bitty paws. I’m assuming that we’re going to get the overly complicated plot-sequence of “Sassy almost gets eaten by alligators, Mark rescues her, Mark spots poachers while out and about,” or maybe even “Sassy almost gets eaten by alligators, Rusty rescues her, Rusty gets captured by poachers, Mark must rescue them both,” for all you Rusty-in-peril fans. I’d sort of like to see a version that cuts out the middle steps, where the poachers spot Sassy and recognize that her beautifully spotted off-tan pelt would make a charming muff. Fortunately, Mark’s ability to hear piteous mewling at a distance is superhuman.
Family Circus, 10/29/09
It seems that we’re only now seeing the consequences of the Keane’s decision to keep any and all information about sex and procreation out of the Kompound. Clearly Dolly believes that her parents “made” her baby brothers Jeffy and PJ out of clay or some other random crap they had lying around the house, though looking at them you can hardly blame her.
Pluggers, 10/29/09
Think what you will about this installment of Pluggers, but it can’t be worse than my initial misinterpretation, in which a starving, impoverished dog-man was about to eat a lint-covered hot dog he found underneath his couch cushion for lunch.
Spider-Man, 10/28/09
I’ll admit that I’ve been disappointed with Bigshot as a sinister adversary, as his name seems to indicate only his somewhat larger than average girth and his sole apparent superpower is the ability to wear that suit without self-consciousness. But now we’re beginning to see that below the surface of cheerful good-natured criminality lurks almost unspeakable depravity. In order to force the reformed Sandman to return to his life of crime, Bigshot has kidnapped the mutant’s daughter — an obvious and time-tested tactic. Presumably Sandman will rob a bank or two, little Sandy will be released unharmed, and everyone’s comes out a winner, right?
But wait, what’s this? Is Bigshot having is awful minions pollute li’l Sandy’s mind … with literacy? Imagine the scene: Poppa Sandman’s all like, “Hey, Sandy, let’s tune in to NBC to watch the hilarious and insightful Jay Leno, just like we do every weekday at 10 pm!” but then Sandy’s all “No way, dad! I’m still working my way through this week’s New York Review of Books!” And just like that, a once-solid father-daughter relationship begins to founder. Bigshot, you are a monster.
Momma, 10/28/09
Upon reading this strip, my first thought was, “Hey, Danny is supposed to be one of Francis’s no-good friends, right?” This implies some kind of intriguing family drama here, with Marylou going after (and by “going after” I mean “attempting to strangle”) a member of her little (?) brother’s coterie of losers. I was just about to start plumbing the depths of my archives or the Chronicle’s pages to confirm Danny’s identity, but then I had an epiphany: I had spent the maximum reasonable amount of time thinking about Momma today. Sure, this whole comics thing is fun now, but when you’re trying to cross-reference the identities of Momma’s mushy scribbles — and then, once you do, maybe update the strip’s Wikipedia page with your findings, just in case you or the Internet community at large has need of this data in the future — well, that’s when people start staging interventions.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/28/09
I’m sorry, residents of Hootin’ Holler would have to trudge three or four miles down rocky hillsides to the flatlands in order to get any kind of advanced schoolin’, so I refuse to believe that any resident of this impoverished hamlet would be able to deal with advanced math like “fractions” — or, for that matter, to form coherent thoughts without verbalizing them.
Luann, 10/27/09
I spent more time than I’d care to admit trying, really trying, to make sense of the final panel in this strip in terms of fiber’s well-known effects on the human digestive system. Do the bran muffins separate people because said people need to scurry away from each other to take a dump? Or is there farting involved, which also can reduce people’s tolerance for proximity? Or … but then I realized that I was expending valuable brain energy on figuring out a damn Luann joke that wasn’t ultimately going to be very rewarding, and dwelling on tasteless ass jokes to boot, so I stopped.
I blame Marvin for the poop joke fixation.
Anyway, I’d like to point out that anybody who actually implements Papa DeGroot’s community-building idea will find his house pelted with eggs, toilet paper, and puzzle pieces in short order.
Herb and Jamaal, 10/27/09
Fortunately, today’s Herb and Jamaal has required no such overthinking process. Ha ha, Herb’s mother-in-law has dumped an entire pot of scalding chili on his genitals! Oh, how it must burn! Ha ha! Note that, thanks to Herb’s total commitment to awkwardly setting up lame jokes over multiple panels, he’s heroically cagey enough to leave the payoff for the end, even as his flesh sizzles.
Crankshaft, 10/27/09
The worst thing … wait, no, that’s not something I think that can really be quantified. Let me start again: One of the terrible things about living with Crankshaft is his unapologetic racism. Pam can’t have any of her friends of Celtic extraction over to visit, because she knows her father will lurk about, muttering audibly about “filthy potato-eaters.”
Your comment of the week shortly, but first, a few items! You may have heard that several cartoonists, including the odd couple of Stephan Pastis and Jeff Keane, recently travelled to Iraq to visit U.S. troops there. Well, one of said troops, faithful reader MolyBendum, got to chat with the former (if not the latter). If you missed his report in the comments, check it out!
Also! I received the following intriguing note from faithful reader David Shea:
I stumbled across a discarded poster today, and I thought you might be interested in seeing it. It depicts Mark Trail in his usual outdoorsy pose, and Andy, or perhaps a tuft of grass, suggests that you should attend the Corn Tassel Festival in Gainesville.
The Gainesville in question is Georgia’s, where a crafts festival has been held annually since 1966. The festival was renamed in 1993 when someone someone bothered to look up the namesake, George “Corn” Tassel, and found out that his greatest claim to fame was being hung for killing a dude in 1830. The case involves some legal sketchiness, since the Cherokee Nation probably had jurisdiction and Georgia hung George while things were being appealed, but still, no one wants that downer at their crafts festival, and it’s now known as the Mule Camp Market. Either way: Mark Trail.
And! Faithful reader Nigerian Business Executive sent me a link to this hilarious collection of comics mashups, which I had somehow missed.
And now it’s that time again … time for … COMMENT OF THE WEEK!
“I imagine the phrase ‘Don’t worry, Tommie. You won’t win’ plays over and over in her head pretty much constantly. Having someone say it out loud is just redundant.” –BigTed
And the runners-up! Also hilarious!
“The thing that really annoys me about Slylock Fox, as well as Encyclopedia Brown, for that matter, is that all you have to do to solve a mystery is catch the disreputable-looking character in a lie. ‘Rodney Rat wasn’t retrieving repellent, he was stealing money.’ I mean, really. He could have any number of embarrassing reasons for being out of his tent. ‘Actually, Slylock, I was masturbating.’ ‘Actually, Mr. Fox, I was trying to get the lady-duck over there to do some videos for my new foot-fetish site, Web of Lies.‘” –teddytoad
“Slylock wearing a suit, deerstalker cap, and a cape even in the desert? Total prick move. You’re not a superhero. You’re not even a lawman. You have no badge or license. You’re a rat-persecuting maniac, who trails Reeky and Rodney across the world, blaming every crime in a ten-mile radius on them. No wonder they’re reduced to living in tents.” –Strangefate
“I, for one, would like to know why the rabbit man is about to hand Rodney Rat a pair of trousers.” –ArtisticPlatypus
“I noticed today that Leroy Lockhorn’s feet are at least as long as his legs. Given these freakish new proportions (ultra short legs, rotund shape, giant nose, etc.), I can only assume that Leroy is secretly The Penguin. This can only improve the comic, as repeated guest appearances by Batman, increased explosions, and testing the latest umbrella-weapon on Loretta have vast entertainment potential.” –Alan’s Addiction
“After Tommie gets her makeover on I Dressed In the Dark, she’ll be ready to co-star in Margo’s new reality series, I Really Deserve a Punch In the Throat.” –Patrick
“Tommie needs the more intensive makeover offered by I Will Die Alone Then Be Eaten By My Dozens Of Cats.” –Ed Dravecky
“Reveal: I Dressed In the Dark will turn out not to be a makeover show. It’s a hard-hitting documentary about street people, and the producers have been humoring Ruby in the belief that she is queen of the hobos.” –Tim Cavanaugh
“I can’t believe that Cathy did something meta. Now meta has been ruined for everyone.” –Nekrotzar
“I am looking carefully at panel three and admiring the evidence that even campfire smoke obeys Mark’s mighty will. At ordinary campfires, smoke insists on rising and even gets in people’s eyes. This smoke, not wanting to be punched, cowers low.” –Poteet
“The only reality show Ruby and Tommie should audition for is I Dressed Under the Full Glare of Florescent Lighting.” –Victoria Dunn
“When I see someone with outspread arms, an expression of agony, and a glow around his head, I assume I’m looking at a crucifix. Duncan’s other big secret, apparently, is that he is the Son of God, dying for the sins of the world. I am baffled by this plotline.” –sarahtheawesome
“I love the jump to the third panel, where Gil is relating the conversation to Mrs. Thorp. ‘So he’s all, I’m laying bare my emotional distress to you, blah blah, my brother’s in jail and I cry all the time, waaaah. Poor kid, right? It’s all he can think about and absolutely no one gives a shit. Especially not me.’” –Mollie
“Ruby says Tommie’s clothes are ‘just’ boring. Just? Ruby, honey, Tommie’s got boring down to an art. She took a vow of extreme boring many years ago and has been a faithful practitioner ever since. She’s a professional bore-meister. If Tommie suddenly stripped naked and started humping the sofa arm, the only notice anyone would take is to straighten the doily.” –Farley’s Revenge
“I’m not entirely convinced that Duncan’s brother is actually incarcerated. To me, it looks more like Duncan is just experimenting with a new, hip alternative to the classic ‘In my pants’ joke, leading to some wacky misunderstandings when people take him seriously — IN PRISON!” –yuudai
“Why do I find Bernice sexy? Because she is unattainable? I better discuss this with my therapist later.” –LITTLE A. OF THE GRAND CONCOURSE JUNGLE PATROL
“I like Gil’s dim awareness of Duncan’s family situation. ‘Davey, right? I have vague memories of fucking up another Daley’s life six or seven years ago. It’s all a blur. Every year, they come to me poised at the brink of manhood, loaded with testosterone, and highly vulnerable to bad decisions. I should try and help steer them, but I’ve got the playdowns to worry about. Speaking of which, Dunc, how’d you like to kill Marty Moon for me?’” –Edgy DC
“Why is Ziggy even in the hospital in the first place? He looks fine. And by ‘fine,’ I mean more or less how I would assume a squat, bald dwarf with no pants on should look.” –Indichik
“What the heck kind of a prison is that? Karate prison?” –the good ship thetis
“Lousy joke aside, I am glad Ziggy is finally addressing his anal leakage problem. As is every one else who rides the bus.” –NoahSnark
“Duncan Daley is clearly exploiting his brother’s predicament as a path to realizing his bicurious identical twins fantasy. Croquet indeed, boys; break out those mallets! Meanwhile, Jailbird Daley provokes a guy who regrets patronizing Prince Valiant’s barber.” –Jessie
“Mud? In Dennis the Menace? Oh, I wish that were mud, but we both know that’s not true.” –Victor Von
“I like the fact that in deference to the elderly (the last demographic on Earth who read Rex Morgan non-ironically) the narration box refers to the escapees as an ‘older’ couple, rather than using a more straightforward terms such as ‘old,’ ‘cogerish,’ or ‘overly entitled Alzheimer-crazed gatecrashers.’” –Jake Morgendorffer
“Just so everyone’s clear, Mark refers to his left and right fist as ‘The Rangers.’” –Digger
“I was so taken with the new FW mission statement in panel three that it took me all day to realize that I don’t really give shit what happens to Cory.” –C. Havoc
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Apartment 3-G, 10/26/09
Oh my goodness, is flowzy floozy Bobbie Merrill trying to worm her way into my heart, or does this sort of behavior just come naturally to the pill-addled blonde? She knows how the world works, of course — you send a gift basket to the crooked head-shrinker who’ll write a script for whatever it is you’re jonesing for when you show off some ankle; that much is given. But that doesn’t mean that she has to like how the sordid game is played, or that she has to make nice with the gift basket industry that profits from these little social niceties or the concierges who piggyback on for the ride and expect their own cut. No, Bobbie has bigger fish to fry, and by “bigger fish” she means “a tractor-trailer full of Ambien,” and by “fry” she means “rob at gunpoint.”
Mark Trail, 10/26/09
You know what would be completely hilarious and rad? If Mark were really serious about leaving the swamp tomorrow without even a cursory attempt to track down the poachers vigilante-style and punch them. “Sorry, fellas, I’m on vacation! You can kill and skin all the alligators you want, see if I care.”
Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/26/09
Wait a minute, Baldy “Punk Rocker” “Earrings” McPunky O’Thug’s real name (or real nickname) is Cue? As in a cue ball, which is white and spherical, much like Cue’s head? This is the greatest moment in Rex Morgan Sinister Bad Guy Billiards-Related Naming since the appearance of a black drug dealer named Eightball.
Presumably Cue will learn from his offscreen media-savvy friend that there’s a big reward out for these runaways, and will heroically drive them back to their substandard nursing home, where he’ll be lauded at a press conference and receive the key to the city from the mayor. Meanwhile, Becka and Tim will continue to drive aimlessly around soggy golf courses, staying out so late that Becka’s husband will suspect her of infidelity, leading to further marital turmoil, divorce, and emotional anguish. You may think that sounds harsh, but I want every non-Cue, non-Alzheimers-afflicted character in this story to suffer terribly. Even Rex and June should be punished, for abandoning us to this mess.
Funky Winkerbean, 10/26/09
“Things can always get worse” = the new Funky Winkerbean mission statement, obviously. The only question: is that cop ringing the doorbell to announce that Cory’s dead, or that one or more people are dead because Cory killed them?
