The Comics Curmudgeon

59 responses to “Some are more equal than others”

1. Woodrowfan
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:41 pm [Reply]

   first first, first! my life has meaning (and I sense I can be considered a plugger now!)

2. Dingo
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:41 pm [Reply]

   Oh, Cherry. Those EYEs.

3. Trotzenbonnie
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:42 pm [Reply]

   For the first time I really feel sorry for Loretta.

4. Woodrowfan
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:42 pm [Reply]

   Next on “Shoe”

   “Does your dog bite? no. (dog bites) that’s not my dog!”

5. aldos
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:48 pm [Reply]

   Is that a hook that Mark has, or some kind of pin? Maybe i’m just being picky, but none of the hooks I’ve seen looked like that. Usually they have like a *hook* part. Could it be that Jack Elrod doesn’t actually know what a hook is? I’m sure if a hook was some sort of bird or deer he wouldn’t have any problem drawing it…

6. Trotzenbonnie
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:50 pm [Reply]

   That hotel in Shoe has a sign-in book, real keys, that little dingy bell thing on the desk and a radio that’s probably tuned in to the Fireside Chats. Next thing you know Johnny Roventini is going to say there’s a call for Philip Morris.

7. willethompson
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm [Reply]

   Josh! Go to bed! Mrs. Josh is waaaaay too cute to have you slaving over a keyboard on a warm Sunday night!

   (wink, wink, nudge. nudge)

8. Bob Vila
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm [Reply]

   #5 aldos It’s an eye hook. Gotta go. I’m late for my manicure.

9. PeteMoss
   March 25th, 2007 at 7:54 pm [Reply]

   “Earlier, I was thinking about refinishing the boat but now…I think we’ve been USED by my supposedly good friend! What will I think next??”

10. Rhekarid
    March 25th, 2007 at 7:56 pm [Reply]

    It’s not so odd for birds to have dogs. There’s no magical cutoff point that separates human intelligence from other animals, or more importantly a magical cutoff point between intelligence differences that makes pets different from slaves. I don’t see how humans keeping and training monkeys is any better than a bird keeping a completely different and apparently non-sentient animal as a pet.

    More amusing is the short-circuited expression of the person behind the counter, clearly having trouble comprehending where on the pet/master scale someone too stupid to know what she means by “no pets” belongs.

11. MossMoses
    March 25th, 2007 at 7:58 pm [Reply]

    Josh, I was happy to see in today’s WaPo omubudsman column that you came out in support of returning Mary Worth to the Post. It is not the same at all reading it online. I don’t feel right without Mary Worth meddling in my living room. Now she’s meddling in my workplace on a computer. One zombie strip they could dump is “Classic Peanuts”. It’s time to let Charles Shultz rest in peace and bring Mary Worth back, ASAP. E-mail WaPo at comics@washpost.com to voice your displeasure. If enough people complain they will bring it back.

12. Kurdt
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:01 pm [Reply]

    I’m surprised that Josh (or anyone so far) has pointed out how truly lame the joke in Shoe is. I guess the sight of a bird with a dog on leash overwhelmed him.
    Ha ha, she misinterpreted the sign! Ha ha….I feel sick now.

13. Dingo
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:03 pm [Reply]

    Y’know, Mark, I don’t think this is the first time you’ve been used by an old Army buddy. Time to break out the bottle of Jim Beam and come clean with Cherry.

14. banana
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:05 pm [Reply]

    actually, loretta is dressed almost exactly like turtleneck/cardigan man…but I guess that’s leroy’s point, and the punchline? “at least no other WOMAN is wearing the same outfit as you”.

    still, what a hateful comic.

15. PeteMoss
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:11 pm [Reply]

    14 Banana

    You right! The gag is she’s dressed just like the dude! The color gnomes could have helped the gag by coloring their outfits the same, but it was so lame, they just didn’t care.

    By the way – Cute kid of yours. Is he still quotin’ the Foo-foo?

16. Weasel Boy
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:14 pm [Reply]

    Loretta: “Maybe not, but there are two guys wearing the same web-foot shoes as me.”

17. FREE HOWARD NOW
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:25 pm [Reply]

    Yep, would’ve been a lot funnier in black and white, or with the same colors on Loretta and turtleneck-man.

18. fizzy logic
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:31 pm [Reply]

    #5 – aldos – I think some people are having a hard time visualizing what it is that Mark found. I went looking on the intertubes for what it is that I think he’s got, and this is what I think he found. Correct me if you think I’m wrong, other mudges. Maybe something with an open hook, instead? It looks closed to me….

19. PInk Haired Girl
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:31 pm [Reply]

    Cherry’s expression in the third panel is just too awesome to leave alone. I call for T-shirts! I might even buy one.

20. Chromium
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:36 pm [Reply]

    When I first glanced at MT I thought Cherry was emitting comical shock-stars a la “Beetle Bailey.” But then I looked closer and realized it’s just a bunch of tiny birds flying out of her eye sockets.

21. Shiptic Canker
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:38 pm [Reply]

    “Cherry, do you see this hook?” I’d imagine the fact that Mark’s hands are 50% the size of an adult male’s makes it marginally easier for her to do so. And the Jack Elrod snot-bubble popping forth from her nose is an explicit manifestation of her verklemptitude at the notion of a ZombieDan. This Mark Trail makes Gil Thorpe look like Prince Valiant.

22. Harry Paratestes
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:42 pm [Reply]

    Mark’s ‘blunting of affect’ is caused by the many tours of the Vietnam War that he volunteered for; he was a sniper in the same unit as John Denver and Mr Rogers. You folks didn’t know that? For shame.

23. yellojkt
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:45 pm [Reply]

    Sherlock Trail also deduced that Diver Dan is left handed, a former meth addict, and needs more fiber in his diet.

24. Smokey Stover
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:46 pm [Reply]

    “A thing that I know I shouldn’t get worked up about and yet do is the presence of animals in comic strips … .”

    Well, what gets me is that Mickey Mouse’s best friend and his pet are both dogs. What do you think Goofy and Pluto think about each other? Is it crazier (or more comical) for a mouse to be a dog’s friend or a dog’s owner?

25. Harry Paratestes
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:49 pm [Reply]

    Loretta has that look of quiet desperation, like she’s going to bust Leroy’s chops for that last comment.

26. Tomcat
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:52 pm [Reply]

    Luann Sunday: Herk! Gaak! Bleeeeeecchh!!! Let’s tone down the cheesy romantic crap already!

27. ThisWas
    March 25th, 2007 at 8:53 pm [Reply]

    I was so overwhelmed by the Millenipost excitement that missed this 3/23 news item: “Lynn Johnston’s ‘Farley’ to be featured on Ontario license plates”

28. Blondie
    March 25th, 2007 at 9:00 pm [Reply]

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! That is the THIRD time Jack Elrod has used the shot in that first panel!

29. macb
    March 25th, 2007 at 9:06 pm [Reply]

    #24 Smokey Stover: You’ve pointed out one of the great metaphysical conundra of the age, i.e.: “If Mickey is a mouse and Donald is a duck and Pluto is a dog, what’s Goofy?” Especially puzzling because in some Disney cartoons Pluto has been portrayed as Goofy’s pet!

30. Randy S
    March 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm [Reply]

    18: Yeah that was basically what I was thinking too.

31. NotThatGuy
    March 25th, 2007 at 9:20 pm [Reply]

    I know I always think the worst whenever I find an eye bolt or screw eye or bolt hook or whatever the heck it is that Mark’s holding.

32. King Folderol
    March 25th, 2007 at 9:26 pm [Reply]

    Shoe – Talking animals and non-talking animals bothers me too. The idea that Mickey Mouse had a dog and yet treated Goofy – who was the biggest moron in Disney’s universe – as a peer pissed me off to no end. And now I’ve shared. Thank you.

    MT – This is really making me miss the elegant simplicity of the dog-napping storyline. I don’t know who Mark can possibly punch out here. He won’t punch Cherry, and punching the hook won’t satisfy me the way his punching those dognappers provided me with satisfaction.

    Lockhorns – Since we can’t see this woman from the front, I have to presume that Leroy’s all about her ass. But Loretta seems to have a lot going on with her caboose, too. I really wish Leroy would just get a divorce and realize he’s not going to score with any of these women unless they all enter a Scrabble tournament together.

33. Horace
    March 25th, 2007 at 9:48 pm [Reply]

    I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before that Shoe and Pluggers have the same artist. That Brookins, he sure gets around. I guess when you’re that talented, you have to share your gift through as many outlets as possible.

34. Cornwhacker
    March 25th, 2007 at 10:11 pm [Reply]

    32: Personally, I’m hoping Mark gets to punch Diver Dan, who turns out to have actually drowned and came back from the dead. Mark Trail vs. Zombie would be all kinds of awesome.

35. banana
    March 25th, 2007 at 10:20 pm [Reply]

    #15 Pete Moss, thanks and yes he’s still quotin’ tha foo foo :)

36. Heckler123
    March 25th, 2007 at 10:23 pm [Reply]

    MT – So, what exactly is Mark saying? He’s been screwed in the bottom of the boat by Dan? Dan was some kind of hooker? Where are the beavers during all of this?

    And why is Cherry asking, “Alive?…What are you talking about?” How can Mark possibly speak any more plainly than that? Alive – you know, the opposite of dead; the thing that happens between popping out of the womb and being thrown back into the ground in a pine box.

    What the [Margo] is going on?

37. mercy me
    March 25th, 2007 at 10:39 pm [Reply]

    .

38. Jym
    March 25th, 2007 at 10:51 pm [Reply]

    =v= Mark Trail: The excruciating pace of Mark putting these clues together over the last week reminds me of Homer Simpson pondering the company dental plan in the “Last Exit to Springfield” episode.

    =26= Luann (Tomcat): I gotta say, that strip made me realize how romantic today’s music isn’t.

39. LariLee
    March 25th, 2007 at 11:36 pm [Reply]

    Wow, in Mark Trail, Cherry is so upset her botox might have stretched. Thank God she thought fast enough to hold this face onto her head.

    I don’t often read this comic because it always seems it revolves around beavers (insert giggle here) and now one lousy screw. Though considering Mark and Cherry, one lousy screw is all it takes sometimes.

40. Mibbitmaker
    March 26th, 2007 at 12:13 am [Reply]

    Shoe: A bird owns a dog as a pet. So what’s the problem? Haven’t you ever heard of a….. bird dog? (Ducks hundreds of flying tomatoes)

41. SappySwami
    March 26th, 2007 at 12:31 am [Reply]

    I kind of hope Loretta put something in his drink and her downcast eyes are looking at it, thinking “just a few more sips… just a few more.”

42. Tad
    March 26th, 2007 at 12:32 am [Reply]

    No real big comment, just an answer to a previous one: please don’t get rid of Classic Peanuts. It’s about the only thing on the comics pages that’s not horribly stale (although the sixties have arrived, so we’re creeping into a danger zone).

43. skulking on the outskirts
    March 26th, 2007 at 12:44 am [Reply]

    Someone needs to call Cherry Trail’s doctor or caseworker. From the looks of her in that last panel, she’s clearly gone off her court-ordered medication. Again. Any minute now, she’ll be snatching up some sharp edged implement and there will be gore and body parts liberally strewn about the strip. And I will be sitting back with my popcorn and cheering her on.
    Failing that scenario, somebody needs to send Elrod to art school, where he can either learn to draw human facial expressions that are at least remotely comprehensible to the average reader, or learn that he has Asperger’s syndrome. Whichever.

44. Mr. O’Malley
    March 26th, 2007 at 2:47 am [Reply]

    Well, just to be a contrarian, it generally doesn’t bother people to read novels that have both talking and regular animals. The usual convention is to capitalize the name of the intelligent animals. Thus, in The Horse and his Boy (C.S. Lewis), Shasta discovers that Bree is not a horse but a Horse. A more recent example using the same principle is Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire.

    Maybe it bothers people more in comic strips because the concept is played for laughs? Or because it is reminiscent of children’s books like Peter Rabbit?

    In Tom the Dancing Bug some years ago, the ethical question was posed whether a talking pig character should endorse pork products. Lyle the Talking Pig put up a good argument: “As pigs, we have to face facts. Humans run the planet! They support our existence because we happen to be tasty. … If people didn’t eat us at all, we’d become as plentiful as other species that humans don’t have a use for—the condor, the grizzly, the snow owl…”

    Personally, I’m more bothered by Sherman’s Lagoon, in which talking fish get eaten by other talking fish. PBS I find less annoying because the prey animals always outsmart the predators.

    On the other hand, my mother tells me that when I was a small child, being told the story of the Three Little Pigs, my reaction was “What did the wolf get for dinner then?”

45. P-Supe
    March 26th, 2007 at 3:09 am [Reply]

    Why does Roz have a baby Plugger on a leash???

46. Randy
    March 26th, 2007 at 7:47 am [Reply]

    Is Vera trying to turn Mary Worth into Strange Interlude? If she is, it’s going to take more than one thought-balloon per strip.

47. Woodrowfan
    March 26th, 2007 at 9:35 am [Reply]

    So in Shoe we have a mixture of animals as pets and peers with no definded species role? I think I saw that on CSI once, the episode after the furries but before the chubby chasers.

48. narthan
    March 26th, 2007 at 10:48 am [Reply]

    “In a world where everybody’s an animal…”

    wait a second! everyone is an animal in real life! I think I just blew my own mind.

49. Douglas E. Iannucci
    March 26th, 2007 at 12:44 pm [Reply]

    If you hadn’t mentioned Mr. Turtleneck-Cardigan Combo, I wouldn’t have noticed him, and then I’d be left wondering what the joke was. Thank you so much . . .

50. Alaskan
    March 26th, 2007 at 1:21 pm [Reply]

    Its interesting to contemplate the history of pet/owner relations in Treetops. Obviously at some point many dogs turned on their feathered masters, spreading fear of a sort not felt since the siamese catastrophe. The rebellion was quelled, but not before the casualties were stacked like cordwood. Ever since that fateful incident, the social stigma against predatory creatures has resulted in their being banned in most public bussinesses.
    Just look at the horror on the desk clerks face when the the terrible beast is sat on her desk. The reaction would much the same if it were shotguns in question instead of dogs.

51. Ellie M.
    March 26th, 2007 at 1:25 pm [Reply]

    Birds owning dogs? What about Mother Goose & Grimm? And Grimm is fully sentient, and obviously deeply unhappy about his second-class status. The more I think about it, the more disturbed I feel.

52. Hogen Mogen
    March 26th, 2007 at 2:07 pm [Reply]

    That Lockhorns would have been more clever if Loretta and the nameless guy were in the same color. Chalk it up to the mindless inking drones this time, but all the other times, the thousands upon thousands of other times, the blame lies squarely on the author’s head.

53. Hogen Mogen
    March 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm [Reply]

    MT: Obviously works for the Bushies. They sent him to Iraq in 2003. “I found this empty milk carton. I’m upset and confused, but I will deduce that there are biological weapons here.”

    Here’s how Mark Trail could suddenly become somehow interesting: If Mark Trail had to follow some trail of clues, CSI style, into the woods and then catch up with his old Army buddy Dan-o. The plotline would have been doubly cool if we, the reader, didn’t know anything about Dan’s grift. But, yeah, all the nut cases in the world would have freaked if that bastion of morality Jack Elrod showed a guy falling in to the water and not coming out, leaving poor little kids, all avid fans of Mark Trail who have never watched a violent, bloodbath of a movie, to believe that someone actually died in the comics. Because showing people dying in the comics certainly messed up this generation and the generation of our parents who read Dick Tracy and Phantom or watched Gunsmoke or Have Gun Will Travel or Miami Vice any of the other violent TV shows and/or movies.

54. Roadchick
    March 26th, 2007 at 2:50 pm [Reply]

    Loretta and Mr. Smooth have on the same outfit. Maybe they can swap later and try a new color combination.

55. Andy L.
    March 26th, 2007 at 6:22 pm [Reply]

    Why don’t cartoonists communicate to the coloring lackeys anyway? Wouldn’t a simple note saying “Lorreta and the man are wearing the same clothes!” be enough to stop the colorers from ruining a Gag?

    Sometimes Slylock Fox’s ‘Six Diferences’ panels have coloring problems too, which is just as bad.

56. alamo
    March 26th, 2007 at 9:12 pm [Reply]

    why is roz checking ino the empty arms hotel? maybe the tips at the cafe aren’t as good as the overnights here.

    the stenciled feet in the lockhorns makes me think — “point out six differences betwen the old gal and the young hunk.”

    1. color shirt/jacket
    2. color hair
    3. smile/frown
    4. eyes open/shut
    5. penis
    6. vagina

57. Luprand
    March 27th, 2007 at 5:26 am [Reply]

    Anyone else notice that the cardigan-turtleneck guy is staring straight down into red-dress’s cleavage?

58. King Folderol
    March 28th, 2007 at 10:46 pm [Reply]

    #53 – Mark Trail will get interesting the day that the women in Gil Thorp get feminine.

59. Josh
    December 11th, 2007 at 10:10 am [Reply]

    This is a test, please ignore me…

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