The Comics Curmudgeon

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Baby trouble

Archie, 4/25/07

I defy you to offer an explanation for the third panel that isn’t totally insane. Since no fungus (or fung-us) I know of looks like that, or attracts flies, I have to assume that Archie has been hoarding his excrement and building a lingam out of it in his hamper. And that Jughead chose to touch it. And that when Jughead arrived, Archie was just lounging in his chair, looking at it with a big, satisfied grin on his face. The awful thing is that the other explanations I can think of are worse.

Hi and Lois, 4/25/07

This strip is funny (by which I mean “funny”) because Lois is baffling her little kid with her high-falutin’ vocabulary. Which would make this a middling Family Circus-style gag if it weren’t for the fact that Trixie is entirely pre-verbal. Yeah, I know, thought balloons, whatever, but the fact is that she doesn’t know those words because she doesn’t know any god-damn words at all. Maybe her thought balloons are just ideas other people project on to her, and her eyes have gone wide like that because she’s wet herself again.

Marvin, 4/25/07

This strip is funny (by which I mean “horrifying”) because it’s about the sex lives of babies. I actually kind of like Carl’s wide-eyed look of shock and horror, because that’s exactly what you’d feel if your girlfriend left you for an infant.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 02:53 pm and is filed under Archie, Hi and Lois, Marvin.

132 responses to “Baby trouble”

Toronto
April 26th, 2007 at 2:57 pm [Reply]

The fumes from Archie’s hamper have also done a number on Jughead’s shirt. What’s with that tucking job?
BrigidKeely
April 26th, 2007 at 2:59 pm [Reply]

I’m just pleased that Marvin didn’t go down the “dump == fecal matter” route, which really is all I expect from that strip.
SecretMargo
April 26th, 2007 at 2:59 pm [Reply]

Isn’t that stiffened cum-rag in Archie? That would explain his “cocky” look of satisfaction. And Jughead’s fascination.

I’m telling you: tomorrow in Archie, fisting. It’s just that kind of week.
Pelagius
April 26th, 2007 at 3:01 pm [Reply]

When I was in the service a lot of guys had a particular sock that would stand on end like that…
Archie Andrews
April 26th, 2007 at 3:04 pm [Reply]

Jughead is disappointed because Arch shot his wad.

He was hoping to go down and show Arch why they call him JugHEAD.
Sigivald
April 26th, 2007 at 3:06 pm [Reply]

It’s laundry. It’s stinky. Flies represent stinky (this is a comic after all, and gets to use iconic representation).

Unkempt, damp laundry grows molds, which are miscalled fungus for the joke.

See?

It’s lame, but it’s not insane.
Sergeant in the Free Time Army
April 26th, 2007 at 3:07 pm [Reply]

The events of today’s Marvin have so traumatized poor Carl that his rakishly off-kilter hat has turned 180 degrees between panels 1 and 2. My world was similarly turned around today, when anyone (even a 2-year-old) wearing monogrammed overalls felt that they could offer advice to another human being on any topic.
Splinky
April 26th, 2007 at 3:11 pm [Reply]

#1 Toronto, I think the issue is that Jughead has actually begun to implode, much in the same way that this strip had been doing for the last 15 years.
Oâ€™Fogeyette
April 26th, 2007 at 3:12 pm [Reply]

I don’t like babies in cartoons much better than I like them in real life. I’ve long felt that most cartoonists who use them are lazy. They’re easy to draw–no character lines, for example, just a big head and a mindless, gap-toothed grin. (Come to think of it, that’s how many cartoonists also draw old people, though usually also with wattles and wrinkles.) No need for subtlety or cleverness in the gags (the two examples above being cases in point).

Older children and adolescents, on the other hand, can provide comics gold, the standard being Calvin. I also like Ruthie and Pre-teena.

Re-reading this, I realize that I sound like a curmudgeon. So I must be in the right place.
ugarte
April 26th, 2007 at 3:12 pm [Reply]

Beetle Bailey: Et tu, Otto?

As a way of humanizing the worst of humanity, people say “Even Hitler loved his dog.” It never occurred to me until today that the feeling might not be mutual, and Hitler’s dog no less a victim of the Reich than the enslaved workers at Oskar Schindler’s bullet factory.
Oâ€™Fogeyette
April 26th, 2007 at 3:14 pm [Reply]

And by the way, I sense a spate of new threads coming up. Brace yourselves, Curminions!
Buck Ripsnort
April 26th, 2007 at 3:14 pm [Reply]

Archie’s forced so much of his genetc material into that tube-sock collection it’s cum alive! RUN!
PeteMoss
April 26th, 2007 at 3:15 pm [Reply]

Pluggers 4/26 – Listen here, Jim Murray and and his father-in-law, if you “remember” when Old Navy meant sails, you may be over a 120-years-old.

Mark Trail’s new storyline is going to be ever so exciting: A visit with the friend at the the “Wildlife Service” and then visits to some airports. Wow. Then, the thrill of watching Mark draft his article, spell check it, and send it off to his editor. Edge-of-your-seat stuff coming up!
Derelict
April 26th, 2007 at 3:16 pm [Reply]

The continued publication of Hi and Lois is a mystery. The strip was almost funny for a few weeks back in 1977, then it lapsed into a comedic torpor from which it never recovered. Sadly, I predict that this can only mean one thing: Hi and Lois will continue for decades to come as the artist’s descendants take turns “creating” it.
rich
April 26th, 2007 at 3:17 pm [Reply]

Just because Trixie can’t speak doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand a few words. My cat doesn’t speak either but she understands words. (Though in all fairness, she is a lot smarter than Trixie. Or Hi, or Lois.)
N. Onimus.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:19 pm [Reply]

Yet another kiddy sex joke? Maybe the comics are celebrating Alice Day.
PeteMoss
April 26th, 2007 at 3:19 pm [Reply]

Brookins’ typo disease is is spreading. Now Iâ€™ve got got it.
Hogen Mogen
April 26th, 2007 at 3:20 pm [Reply]

I never understood why Feng-Shui was pronounced “Fung-Shway”. The original word is Oriental. Why don’t they just spell it the way it sounds when they convert it to European letters?

It’s probably Jughead’s fault.
bootsybooks
April 26th, 2007 at 3:22 pm [Reply]

#11, O’Fogeyette, you killed another thread? This early? Wow, you are good.

Also, I don’t much care for babies either.
Applemask
April 26th, 2007 at 3:23 pm [Reply]

Now I can’t get “Rugrats Go Wild” out of my head. Why won’t it stop? Why won’t the horrible torrent of images go away? IN GOD’S NAME WHY?

GOD DAMN YOU TOM ARMSTRONG GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL
RedParatroopa
April 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm [Reply]

Be careful about projecting your ideas onto the thought bubbles of babies. Are we sure Carl hasn’t also wet himself?
Paperback Rifler
April 26th, 2007 at 3:32 pm [Reply]

Archie: I’m going to leave the third panel’s “funk-shui” or whatever alone because I’m fixated on that first panel, which clearly shows that Jughead has some kind of retractable, suction-cupped appendage growing out of his neck.

This could only mean one thing: The Archie-Joke-Generating-Laugh-Unit 3000 has finally replaced the old Archie characters with robotic versions of the old Archie characters, resulting in a robot Archie and a robot Jughead that can deliver punchlines with an increased efficiency of a whopping 36.4 percent.

Okay, maybe an alternative interpretation is that the Archie-Art-Drawing-Unit 3000 needs to have its perspective program updated. But I’m going to stick with my robot theory, thank you very much; particularly since it amuses me to reread the strip at the top of this page and imagine that Archie and Jughead are speaking with electronically distorted, monotone, “Robby the Robot”-like voices.
Archie Andrews
April 26th, 2007 at 3:37 pm [Reply]

Feng-Shui is sanskrit for mutual blow-job.
Power of 1000 Lemons
April 26th, 2007 at 3:38 pm [Reply]

Marvin is just the human equivalent of Garfield, isn’t he? The heavy-lidded eyes, the thought bubbles as a form of speech, the strips that feature limp setups in service of even limper punchlines… all we need are a couple more lasagna face-plants and it’s over.
Kurdt
April 26th, 2007 at 3:43 pm [Reply]

I’m guessing that Jughead’s shirt untucking between the first and third panel is a subtle sign of time passing. Archie and Jughead had hot steamy man sex that the newspaper publishers wouldn’t allow to be shown.
Dennis Jimenez
April 26th, 2007 at 3:43 pm [Reply]

Nothing profound here, but Marvin and horrifying always fit perfectly for me.
MossMoses
April 26th, 2007 at 3:45 pm [Reply]

Okay Josh, since you have thrown down the gauntlet and challenged us to explain Archie’s clothes hamper, former Green Bay Packer Najeh Davenport was passing through Riverdale and had an urgent, urgent gastro-intestinal emergency in Archie’s laundry basket.
AppleGirl
April 26th, 2007 at 3:47 pm [Reply]

9 – O’Fogeyette, count me in on your Babies are Boring campaign. Babies also kill good sitcoms. When the writers run out of ideas, they bring in a baby for laffs. Forgetting that babies are not funny, babies are boring. Old people can be pretty funny, though.
Gabe
April 26th, 2007 at 3:53 pm [Reply]

Yes, Marvin has been derided for years for being basically Garfield in baby form. I agree, though I did have my share of Marvin paperbacks as a kid.

Then, if you’ve been following my posts, you realize I had paperbacks of everything, regardless of how awful.

If you knew how many pocket paperbacks of the Family Circus I had…(today’s fun FC trivia: Did you know that Billy calls Mommy “Mom” when his friends are around? Check it out, it’s true! I actually always thought that was a nice touch).
MossMoses
April 26th, 2007 at 3:54 pm [Reply]

18. HM, “feng-shui” is the Chinese Communist romanization of the characters for wind and water. There are different romanization schemes from Taiwan, like Wade-Giles, but the ChiComm scheme is the most widely used by westerners learning Chinese. This could be because there are 1.3 billion people in mainland China and only 24 million in Taiwan.
Phil
April 26th, 2007 at 3:54 pm [Reply]

I find the direct address in Marvin more disconcerting than anything going on in “Hi and Lois.” I would be terrfied if a baby called me by name in a telepathic thought balloon.
Gabe
April 26th, 2007 at 3:55 pm [Reply]

Apple Girl: Actually, not quite. Sitcom writers find pregancy hilarious, and often get stuck on ideas when the actual baby arrives (cause its hard to suddenly do things with characters that need to pretty much be home 24 hours a day).

Hence the rash of miscarraiges and so forth. Or Friends, where they just ignore it for episodes on end.
Phil
April 26th, 2007 at 3:59 pm [Reply]

Sorry for the double post, but I forgot to address “Archie.” Now, as is well known, these kids are lame. But seriously, Archie has a poster of a ostensible rock star on his wall with MUSICAL NOTES coming out of his guitar. Or maybe Archie is humming a tune, and the note is simply blending into the poster.

I’ve got a lot of weird metaphysical thoughts on this, but I’ll withhold them for the time being.
Squawk
April 26th, 2007 at 4:03 pm [Reply]

I think the flies can be explained by the fact that Archie’s clothes are filled with pizza crusts and Twinkie wrappers. Or maybe the flies are self-referential, attracted to the virtual excrement that is the entire Archie strip.
Uncle Lumpy
April 26th, 2007 at 4:05 pm [Reply]

More information about Wade-Giles and Pinyin romanization systems can, inevitably, be found on the Internet.

The Wade-Giles system is apparently really atrocious – a compilation of whatever Chinese sounded like to Westerners who couldn’t follow the pitch-accents. Pinyin is better, but no romanization system can ever do justice to a language with different phonemes.

Fun fact: babies’ babbling contains phonemes of all languages. They gradually lose the ability to speak — and to hear — the ones they don’t hear in the speech of the adults around them.
Nina
April 26th, 2007 at 4:05 pm [Reply]

It’s 12:15 shouldn’t Archie and Jughead be in school?
Tommyp
April 26th, 2007 at 4:06 pm [Reply]

I’m glad Archie joined the football team-it should give him the inside track on Betty and Veronica’s goodies. But someone needs to tell him the greasepaint goes BELOW his eyes.
Josh
April 26th, 2007 at 4:12 pm [Reply]

#18 Hogen, to expand on what MossMoses said, different languages have different sounds that don’t map exactly onto the sounds of other languages. The Romanization of Chinese (i.e. writing Chinese in the Latin alphabet) can only approximate what the original language sounds like, and what you usually hear Westerners say (”fung shway”) is probably not precisely how they say in in China anyway.

Of course, it’s not like inividual written letters in English always donate the same sounds consistently anyway, mostly because English spelling rules date back to the 1400s and 1500s, when English vowels were actually pronounced quite differently than they are now. And the alphabet we use was actually developed by the Romans to write a language only distantly related to modern English, and they adapted it from an alphabet developed by the Greeks, who borrowed it from an alphabet developed by the Phoenicians, whose language isn’t related to ours at all.

It’s a tricky business, is what I’m saying.

Vaguely related funny true story: I lived in Germany for a few months in 2002, and there were a couple young (probably early 20s) kids from China in my total-immersion German class. These kids were very urbane new-China types from a big city (I forget which — Xian, maybe?). Much of the learning in this class took place in our weekly after-hours sessions where we’d all go to a bar and drink German beer and have drunken conversations in drunken German. Somehow we got to talking about Feng Shui, and these kids found it totally hilarious that people in the US pay big bucks for Feng Shui consultants and the like; for them, it was something that illiterate hillbillies did. It would be as if you found out that billionare CEOs in Tokyo hired snake handlers to ward off the devil in their boardrooms or something. Anyway, someone made up the German word “Feng Shui-meister” in the course of this conversation, which is pretty much all I can think about when I hear the term.

Josh
MossMoses
April 26th, 2007 at 4:12 pm [Reply]

35. UL, the best system of all is called “zhuyinfuhao” and is used for teaching Chinese in Taiwan. It doesn’t use English letters at all. There are only a few simple characters to memorize and you can pronounce any mandarin sound properly using it. I learned Chinese myself using that system and agree wholeheartedly that Wade-Giles and pinyin are crap.

Another possible Archie laundry basket explanation: Archie is an artist. He draws flies…
Desoto
April 26th, 2007 at 4:13 pm [Reply]

Not only does Archie wear his greasepaint incorrectly, but he seems to be styling his hair with a waffle iron.
Oâ€™Fogeyette
April 26th, 2007 at 4:20 pm [Reply]

28 Apple Girl and 19 Bootsybooks: Thanks for joining my “campaign,” though I didn’t mean to launch one. I’m always afraid to let people know I don’t like babies, for fear of being thought unwomanly or something. I like kids fine, but they need to be old enough to have a real personality. Babies are just little screaming, drooling, pooping bags of need. A kitten or puppy is much cuter.

BTW, I’m amazed this thread has gone so far. Usually when Josh ignores us for a while he unleashes a series of new threads so fast that only the nimblest can keep up.
fisherpriceman
April 26th, 2007 at 4:20 pm [Reply]

The musical note on the poster on Archie’s wall tells us that the man holding the guitar is playing music.
Shaen
April 26th, 2007 at 4:23 pm [Reply]

How old is Trixie supposed to be, exactly? Because depending on her stage of development, she might be able to understand English without being able to express it in words…

…which still doesn’t change the fact that this strip is completely not funny by any stretch of the imagination. Congrats, Hi and Lois writer, you can use a thesaurus!
Uncle Lumpy
April 26th, 2007 at 4:25 pm [Reply]

#18 HM, #30/39 MM, #38 J –

If you haven’t seen it, John McWhorter has an excellent book on language evolution. Western and African focus, however – Asian languages, not so much.
Phil
April 26th, 2007 at 4:29 pm [Reply]

Re: #42 fisherpriceman

I mean, like, is it a photograph and the poster-makers drew a musical note in there so that people who don’t know that guitars, when strummed, produce noise? Or has Archie hung a drawing of a guitar-playing guy in his room?

Furthermore, does all art in the Archie Universe employ the same symbolic language as the actual world? Maybe when the Archies play in Riverdale, speech balloons appear over their heads and comic-strip musical notes eminate from their instruments. If Riverdale isn’t terrifying enough already, think of living in this bleak, monochrome landscape. And now… silence.

P.S. It’s like a poster of a baseball player with the word “BASEBALL” on it. I’m appalled.
Douglas E. Iannucci
April 26th, 2007 at 4:31 pm [Reply]

Yes, America needs more wholesome comics the whole family can enjoy, like Hi & Lois. I had a hearty chuckle over my afternoon milk and cookies as I read Lois exclaiming that it was blustery and breezy, and then Trixie in the next panel thinking, “Yeah, and it’s windy too!”. You see, Trixie did not know that blustery and breezy have the same meaning as windy! So, when she said it was windy too, she thought she was contributing more to Lois’s observation (although not aloud, as she cannot speak yet). This is yet another absolutely brilliant exposition of wit and humor I have come to expect from H & L!
MossMoses
April 26th, 2007 at 4:31 pm [Reply]

Regarding my post 27 as an explanation for Archie’s stinky clothes basket, here is a link to the Najeh Davenport poop story. Apparently, there is some Anna-Nicole-like controversy regarding the father of the dump, since the stool sample wasn’t saved to match up with Davenpoop’s DNA. The moral is: “If you can’t take the rap don’t do the crap”.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/10/56096
yellojkt
April 26th, 2007 at 4:34 pm [Reply]

The cast of Marvin is really a tight-knit community of 30-year-old coprophiliacs.
Douglas E. Iannucci
April 26th, 2007 at 4:36 pm [Reply]

Marvin hasn’t been around as long as Hi & Lois, but in time it will be just as beloved by those of us who appreciate clean, wholesome, side-splitting humor. Imagine, a toddler losing his girlfriend to a “younger guy”! Why, at that tender age, a “younger guy” would have to be an infant, wouldn’t he! I had a good chuckle over my second helping of milk and cookies this afternoon after reading that one. Yes, we adults can sure learn plenty about ourselves from those precocious toddlers!
peradouro
April 26th, 2007 at 4:36 pm [Reply]

Archie’s scalp makes me crave ham sandwiches.
PeteMoss
April 26th, 2007 at 4:40 pm [Reply]

It’s amazing what I learn on this site. All this fasinating information while enjoying the comics in an ironic, post-modern way. It’s like I’m earning a college degree while being a smart-ass. Wait. I did earn my degree while being a smart-ass. Still, this is more fun. Thanks, Comics Curmudgeon!
anthus
April 26th, 2007 at 4:44 pm [Reply]

I thought the joke in Hi & Lois was that Trixie was mocking her mom’s use of two terms that mean the same thing.

Also, Carl: What hurts most is being condescended to by Marvin.
Douglas E. Iannucci
April 26th, 2007 at 4:45 pm [Reply]

Boy, thanks a lot Archie! Thanks to you, half of my third helping of this afternoon’s milk and cookies now adorns my kitchen wall, that’s how hard you made me laugh! I never noticed before how much “feng shui” sounds like “fung-us.” Outrageous! Hey, you guys owe me half a roll of Bounty!
Dono
April 26th, 2007 at 4:50 pm [Reply]

The Archie strip is strangely disturbing. He’s reorganizing his room for a more positive atmosphere, yet he isn’t aware that a wastebasket full of garbage and flies might detract from it?

And he can take the time to read up on feng shui and rearrange his room according to its principles, but he runs out of energy before taking the festering contents of his wastebasket out to the dumpster? The feng ain’t workin’, Arch.
MossMoses
April 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm [Reply]

53. Doug, love your snarkasm!
Mack
April 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm [Reply]

Here’s what confuses me most about Marvin – I’ve read Armstrong’s youthful cartoons for his college newspaper. And they were funny. Yet I read this strip, and I can’t conceive of it ever eliciting more than a confused, ironic chuckle.

Also, when I was in the seventh grade, my math teacher had a Marvin poster up in her classroom. Garfield, Snoopy, they’re common sights in a class, but Marvin I had never seen before or since. It just so happens that she was the most humorless, uncreative teacher I ever had. She was the kind of teacher whose barely masked hatred of all youth sucked the life right out of you as soon as you stepped in the door. Funny how now I associate that feeling with Marvin.
Cycling Girl
April 26th, 2007 at 4:54 pm [Reply]

#28 AppleGirl and #32 Gabe: Regarding the demise of a sitcom, am I the only one whose ever noticed that when a sitcom is dying they bring in Heather Locklear or David Spade? Do they really think that this will save the series? For me it’s a good reason to stop watching. Or is it actually the universally agreed upon high-sign that, “Hey, we’re floundering here. Say your goodbyes.”?

And, of course, they also like to do the night-of-broadcast switch. Very few series have survived this deadly maneuver.
Uncle Lumpy
April 26th, 2007 at 4:58 pm [Reply]

#57 Cycling Girl -

Or Ted McGinley! Alas, there are many ways a show can jump the shark.

Click if you dare – and say goodbye to your evening.
AAckTPPth
April 26th, 2007 at 5:08 pm [Reply]

It’s been an unnerving week for [a term that will get Josh's blog listed on the FBI's S** Crimes Unit watch list].

The whole Crock/Spongebob thing, and now Marvin’s (literally) cradle-robbing theme is a very disturbing trend in the so-called funny pages.

I don’t want to open the paper tomorrow.
Potato
April 26th, 2007 at 5:14 pm [Reply]

You can tell their love is unpure and evil since the little hearts above their heads are black. Which kind of goes without saying since this is Marvin which itself is little more than a montage of the unholy and repugnent.
AAckTPPth
April 26th, 2007 at 5:20 pm [Reply]

And , of course, babies are a key sign that a strip has jumped the shark. Does that mean Marvin jumped on Day One? And Adam lost it a while back.

Just don’t say Sherman’s Lagoon has jumped, um, the, uh, shark. My apologies, I didn’t mean that. Although I’m not keen on the Herman-based strips, it’s still hilarious.
MossMoses
April 26th, 2007 at 5:22 pm [Reply]

57. Cycling Girl, you can tell an ex sitcom star is washed up when they show up on the Love Boat or Fox Celebrity Boxing…
fisherpriceman
April 26th, 2007 at 5:23 pm [Reply]

re: #45 Phil

I didn’t mean to make a smart ass retort, you posted as I was reading prior comments, then I posted before checking to see if there were any more posts. Goes to show you, always refresh.

Yeah, I don’t know about the note. I think very few rock and roll posters actually have the note on them, so I have to take it to mean that the poster is actually playing music and the note is there to let the reader in on that bit of info.
jules
April 26th, 2007 at 5:24 pm [Reply]

You actually thought of explanations for “Archie” that were MORE disgusting? I gotta get outta here before you decide to share them!

But first:

FW: Uh. Did he just compare his girlfriend to cholesterol? Or something? Is he throwing that whole “you threw up on me while I was dressed as French fries” thing back in her face? I’ve been trying on and off all day, between doing actual important things, and I just can’t come up with a single thing he could have said that would have been more lame. Or made less sense. Dangit, Batiuk! Stop making me think about your crazy-ass comic strip so much!
Trilobite
April 26th, 2007 at 5:25 pm [Reply]

The creepiest part of Archie’s head will always be those perfect oval “eyebrows” he draws on his forehead with black greasepaint. Sometimes if I glance at the strip very quickly they’re the only thing I see, and I think that the Gil Thorp artist’s fondness for drawing empty eye sockets has caught on.
Teem
April 26th, 2007 at 5:26 pm [Reply]

Say PeteMoss:
So the humor at this site is ironic and postmodern and I thought I was too old to be postmodern. Moronic sure, that’s me–but postmodern? Live and learn. And I thought you guys were just funny and witty, in an often mordant sort of way.
King Folderol
April 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm [Reply]

What the hell is Trixie riding in? It looks like a miniature shopping cart with a cheap cover. Hi and Lois are doing their best to make Pluggers look like Trumps. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t give Mr. Foofram an honest 40 hours worth of work.
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 26th, 2007 at 5:32 pm [Reply]

Just because Trixie canâ€™t speak doesnâ€™t mean she doesnâ€™t understand a few words. My cat doesnâ€™t speak either but she understands words. (Though in all fairness, she is a lot smarter than Trixie. Or Hi, or Lois.)
Then she must be much smarter than Dot and Ditto, who today were on the verge of drowning themselves in the rain.
NotThatGuy
April 26th, 2007 at 5:40 pm [Reply]

Some fungi do attract flies, notably the stinkhorns. These are very, uh, suggestive fruiting bodies and are noted for their foul odor. A tropical one, the basket stinkhorn, is very beautiful (if you like that sort of thing.)
NotThatGuy
April 26th, 2007 at 5:41 pm [Reply]

Not that stinkhorns explain Archie, I hasten to add.
Mechanist
April 26th, 2007 at 5:59 pm [Reply]

Am I the only one who misread the last panel of Archie as “fung-ups”, and worried that the AJGU3000 had gone off its rocker?

Yeah, I probably am.

Oh, and 67: That’s not a shopping cart Trixie’s riding in. It’s a converted lawnmower. You’re right, though, because even Pluggers would look down on recycling a dead mower that way.
Anonymous
April 26th, 2007 at 6:02 pm [Reply]

Whats disturbing about Archie, is that though there are devices from the present, (Cell phones, computers etc.), it still seems to take place in the 1940s. The clothing people wear, the way they talk, even the drawing style! My theory is that the writer just sits in his house, and still thinks its 1941, but because of pop up adds on his computer realizes that things like cell phones exist.
.Doc
April 26th, 2007 at 6:07 pm [Reply]

Trixie has that look on her face because last night, Lois served her some Gerber Strained Peas for her supper. Trixie has a bad case of gas, thus that look. Trixie will soon soil her diaper, making Lois particularly appreciative of the breezy and blustery weather, assuming she’ s upwind of Trixie and her converted lawnmower.
ohio teach
April 26th, 2007 at 6:14 pm [Reply]

Josh, you’re great on the vast wasteland of newspaper comics, and Hi and Lois is indeed and always dreck.
BUT you obviously should not be opining about child development. If Trixie is ever to have a strong vocabulary (leading to success in school at every level) she’d better start hearing varied words in lots of examples of speech. Lois should be talking to her all the time instead of parking her under that damn sunbeam. If you wait until your baby can actually talk, to talk to her, you’ve stunted the development of that baby’s neural pathways. And if you wait until the kid has an adult vocabulary before you use lesser -heard words, you’ve got a kid who’s gonna blow her SATs and struggle through college.
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 26th, 2007 at 6:19 pm [Reply]

#58, Uncle L. You were right about that jump the shark link. I started reading about MST3K and barely escaped the tractor beam to get back here.

H&L: If I could project a thought into Trixie, it would be “Will you stop with the f-ing weather small talk?!”

Archie: The music poster is like the wreaths and other knick-knacks that have the word Country printed on them. They remind me of TV Batman. (Art history sure would be a lot easier if artists printed their movement name in their work.)
Phil
April 26th, 2007 at 6:33 pm [Reply]

I was just looking at Jughead, and thinking about how I always think he’s going to grow up to be Dagwood. Then I thought how maybe he’s going to grow up to be the Joker. Either way, these are the best years of his life.
Kenny
April 26th, 2007 at 6:34 pm [Reply]

#2 Brigid: I disagree, I found it would have been far funnier if the punchline was a pun on “dumps” as opposed to the sex-bent perv-fest it became. Something along the lines of: “… I know it stinks when your girlfriend dumps you.” “But it REALLY stinks when your girlfriend TAKES a dump on you.”

Wait, no… it was funnier before, sorry.
fizzy logic
April 26th, 2007 at 6:38 pm [Reply]

It’s not a lawnmower, it’s a converted fertilizer spreader, and Trixie’s not wearing a diaper. Lois should be on the grass, not the sidewalk.

What’s with the dead leaves blowing around? In some parts of the country it might be considered springtime…
Desoto
April 26th, 2007 at 6:38 pm [Reply]

The only saving grace of H&L is that Lois has always been my #1 comic MILF
cheech wizard
April 26th, 2007 at 6:39 pm [Reply]

Before the syndicate editors rejected it, Trixie’s original caption was “Yow! I guess the Thurstons had Mexican last night.”
PeteMoss
April 26th, 2007 at 6:45 pm [Reply]

66 Teem says:

So the humor at this site is ironic and postmodern and I thought I was too old to be postmodern. Moronic sure, thatâ€™s meâ€“but postmodern? Live and learn. And I thought you guys were just funny and witty, in an often mordant sort of way.

I’m always a little confused about how to use that term, “post modern.” I just used it here so I could sound intelligent and clever and fit in with this crowd. Am I overreaching? Maybe Iâ€™m really only modern, like Scaduto, and the ironyâ€™s on me. I can live with that.

This inter-tube thing is swell!
Fiery Darts
April 26th, 2007 at 6:46 pm [Reply]

The fung-us joke was used a number of years ago in Zits. I suppose that we can rule out deliberate plagiarism because a) it’s been at least 5 years and b) despite the similarity in subject matter (kids in high school) the readership of the two strips form two disjoint sets.
Weasel Boy
April 26th, 2007 at 7:04 pm [Reply]

More balloon madness in Mark Trail. Mark asks and answers his own question while Cherry just looks on as he slowly descends in to insanity.
Junior Tracy
April 26th, 2007 at 7:07 pm [Reply]

This shows us what we already knew: that Archie, Marvin, and (most particularly) Hi and Lois are terrible comics. Dreadful comics. Atrocious comics. Worse-than-Nancy comics.

However, contrary to Josh’s repeated intimations, neither Archie, Marvin, nor Hi and Lois are in any way depraved comics. No doubt all three would benefit from a dose of honest depravity; I for one would be eager to see it, especially the sort of depravity than involves Betty and Veronica discovering a new side of ona another.

Regrettably, this will never happen. Even the merest scintilla of depavity in these comics would cause the Meridian, Mississippi Confederate and Shopper to drop them faster than a Democratic primary ballot.

Another dream crumbles to dust.
Uncle Lumpy
April 26th, 2007 at 7:09 pm [Reply]

#81 PeteMoss -

This from Wiki:

“. . . postmodern philosophy is generally viewed as an openness to meaning and authority from unexpected places, so that the ultimate source of authority is the “play” of the discourse itself. . . .”

I’ve also heard, “rejection of received texts.”

It’s you either way. Deal with it!
Steve S
April 26th, 2007 at 7:24 pm [Reply]

Maybe it’s not that Trixie is pre-verbal, it’s that she’s a mute dwarf with some sort of aphasia. I suspect Hi and Lois would be much more entertaining read that way.
PeteMoss
April 26th, 2007 at 7:25 pm [Reply]

85 UL

Damn, I ain’t nothin’ but another snarkin’ smart-ass.
holli
April 26th, 2007 at 7:33 pm [Reply]

Worse than a poo lingam?

Is that even possible?
stinky pete
April 26th, 2007 at 7:36 pm [Reply]

I Googled “postmodern irony” and this came back:

“Our contemporary culture is indeed nostalgic; some parts of it–postmodern parts–are aware of the risks and lures of nostalgia, and seek to expose those through irony. Given irony’s conjunction of the said and the unsaid–in other words, its inability to free itself from the discourse it contests–there is no way for these cultural modes to escape a certain complicity, to separate themselves artificially from the culture of which they are a part. If our culture really is obsessed with remembering–and forgetting–as is suggested by the astounding growth of what Huyssen calls our “memorial culture” with its “relentless museummania,” then perhaps irony is one (though only one) of the means by which to create the necessary distance and perspective on that anti-amnesiac drive.”

I have no flippin’ idea what this means but I’m going to repeat it often.
Jamus The Bartender
April 26th, 2007 at 7:53 pm [Reply]

This should help sum it up, Stinky Pete.
Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol-Postmodern.
Geoff Johns run on JSA and just about anything else-Memorial Culture/Museumania.
Hope that helps.
cyberpersephone
April 26th, 2007 at 7:53 pm [Reply]

I laughed at Bizarro today. An actual, out loud laugh, I feel wrong.
Uncle Lumpy
April 26th, 2007 at 8:03 pm [Reply]

#89 Stinky P.; #90 Jamus

Oh, boy – fake irony. Ow, ow, ow!
stinky pete
April 26th, 2007 at 8:22 pm [Reply]

I’m no lepidopterist, but has anyone seen Red Greenback this week? Red? Red? Be ye out there?
mingosthename
April 26th, 2007 at 8:26 pm [Reply]

and the infant reciprocated!
mingosthename
April 26th, 2007 at 8:27 pm [Reply]

Marvin: and the infant reciprocated!
Zamboni_Rodeo
April 26th, 2007 at 8:32 pm [Reply]

Is it just me, or is Marvin really just the human equivalent of Garfield? I even hear the voice of Lorenzo Music (who voiced Garfield on the old Saturday cartoon show) whenever I read Marvin’s thought bubbles. Think about it: the round, chubby build, the same orangey hair, the half-lidded, glazed-over “I’m bored by your presence” stare–if he ever breaks out with a pan of lasagna, I guess we’ll have our answer.

I don’t know which is sadder about that statement: that I can remember the old Garfield cartoon show, or that I admitted to reading Marvin…
Harold
April 26th, 2007 at 8:33 pm [Reply]

#7 Sergeant I.T.F.T.A. drew my attention to Marvin’s monogrammed overalls, and my first thought was Where’s Wendy? My second thought, of course, was …and Gleek?
Zamboni_Rodeo
April 26th, 2007 at 8:36 pm [Reply]

Holy cow, 1000 Lemons beat me to that observation way back in #24! Guess that’s what I get for commenting before reading.

Even still, perhaps that just means there’s something to the theory.
Christopher
April 26th, 2007 at 8:39 pm [Reply]

89: My immediate response is to say that I think museum-mania is actually a symptom of the opposite drive; that by confining historical reflection to certain limited times and spaces, we excise it from most modern discourse.

I find it gratifying to note that the same view-point is outlined in the footnote to the passage you cite, because I have no idea who the [margo] Huyssen is or what on earth “museummania” is.

I’ve never been to college, but my high school humanities teacher was big into semiotics and such, so that kind of language always gives me a warm nostalgic feeling.

As for comic books, I don’t think the distinction is quite so clear as you might think. It may seem radical, but I don’t think Morrison’s Doom Patrol is really post-modern at all.

There’s a patina of weirdness, of course, but that has always been a staple of the Doom Patrol, ever since its inception; A brain in a jar and a French Gorilla commando aren’t what you’d call ordinary.

Structurally, the whole things is deeply-rooted in classic super-heroics. There are a series of self-contained story arcs, each of which begins with the introduction of a big scary monster, followed by small scuffle with the monster’s henchmen, followed by the revelation of the evil plan, followed by the final confrontation, after which everything is reset to square-one.

It’s more like the Power Rangers then anything else.

I suppose that Morrison’s run could be considered a rejection of the previous run, but even if it contains an ironic rejection of the immediately preceding Doom Patrol, it’s still has a very un-ironic nostalgia for the original Doom Patrol.

It has touches of subversion here and there, by making the Chief a more overtly threatening character, but mostly it falls squarely within the template laid down by Bob Haney et al.
Harold
April 26th, 2007 at 8:41 pm [Reply]

#96 Zamboni_Rodeo: Fun fact: Lorenzo Music, the voice of Garfield in the cartoon series, also voiced Dr. Peter Venkmann in The Real Ghostbusters, a character originally played by Bill Murray in the movie Ghostbusters. When the time came for the movie version of Garfield, he was voiced by none other than Bill Murray. (Whether Murray was the first choice or whether he was selected because Lorenzo Music was unavailable due to being dead, I’m not sure.)
Ukulele Ike
April 26th, 2007 at 8:43 pm [Reply]

How come all four of the Flagston children resemble Lois (blond hair) and not Hi? Do they have a Swedish milkman?
Trilobite
April 26th, 2007 at 9:00 pm [Reply]

#99 — Very true. In fact, the series’ creator said in an interview that he felt Morrison’s run really captured the spirit of the Doom Patrol.

Man, I’d kill for someone like Grant Morrison to take over a serial comic like Mary Worth or Mark Trail, except that after the talking-potato incident, I’m halfway convinced that Mark Trail is already weirder than anything else on the comics page.
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 26th, 2007 at 9:12 pm [Reply]

#99 & 102,
Morrison and his friend Peter (X-Statix) Milligan have been writing the most vital funnybooks for about two decades now. Any comics section that could claim Morrison’s “Mary Worth” and Milligan’s “Gil Thorp” would be a must-have.
Proteus
April 26th, 2007 at 9:15 pm [Reply]

Archie makes a penis sculpture out of his dirty clothes. He draws little sperms on the wall to look like they’re coming out of it in all directions. He calls it feng-shui. Jughead pets it.

OK. I see nothing wrong with this.

It isn’t funny, but funny is not what I look for in Archie. What I look for in Archie is Betty and Veronica.
True Fable
April 26th, 2007 at 9:24 pm [Reply]

#101 Ukulele Ike, Hi Flagston is one of those paunchy, jowley, pasta-dough guys who are inexplicably matched up with a svelte, often buxom woman who by all rights should have passed him up for something human from the get-go. Of course, Lois realizes that now, which is why this comic strip is so heavily laced with bitchery and open hostility. She’s stuck with four kids who are by turns lazy, loud, filthy, unruly and in the baby’s case, damaged. The secret thrills she gets screwing her male real estate clients when she’s supposed to be “showing a house” (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more! are just enough to keep her from using the handgun she keeps in those ugly out of date purses of hers.

For Hi’s part, he got lucky but now he’s just paying rent on that thing. They got along better before Lois wised up and got a career of her own, but that was because he married her when she was too young to know anything but her mother’s Lynn Johnston-like mantra, a woman is nothing without a man to validate her, and by that I mean marry before any tom-foobery. Now it’s just go to work, put in your time, grab a bottle on the way home and blame the empties on Thirsty next door, and stash it in the garage because that lazy oldest son is more like his Uncle Beetle Bailey every day and the twins will never grow up without one killing the other off, and that baby is hopefully not his because even Hi’s sad, depressing life does not deserve ownership of fathering that freak of nature.
He goes to bed and dreams of happier times when he and Dagwood and the boys used to go watch Foxy Fritzi down at Cassandra Cat’s Strip Club and Pawn Shop, and life was good.
Oâ€™Fogeyette
April 26th, 2007 at 9:26 pm [Reply]

I’ve been gone for a while, and now I’m back, and this friggin thread is still going on. I know how to end it. Any bird lovers out there? I posted some bird singles ads on my nature blog today, after watching a lot of foreplay out in the yard. Here’s the link: http://backyardbirds.blogspot.com/

See y’all in the morning!
Jamus The Bartender
April 26th, 2007 at 9:35 pm [Reply]

99. I don’t disagree with any of the above Christopher. I suppose I should have said that Morrison’s DP had a postmodern sensibility in comparison to books like JSA in which a lot of time is spent in pleasant nostalgia for times past (WW2 and such) while Doom Patrol pushed the edges of the envelope with a discourse about Albert Hoffman, the chemist who first synthesized LSD, and the Crazy Jane character who was based on real life classic paranoid Truddi Chase. (I think that’s the right term, classic paranoid)
At any rate, I know this is all off topic, but it sure as hell beats watching Liz get dumped by some jerky boy for the umpteenth time.
Uncle Lumpy
April 26th, 2007 at 9:48 pm [Reply]

#107 Jamus -

Topic?! We don’t need no stinkin’ topic!
Crooow
April 26th, 2007 at 9:49 pm [Reply]

Not only was Marvin’s friend dumped for an infant, the kid’s a thalidomide baby. Poor Carl.
Poteet
April 26th, 2007 at 10:02 pm [Reply]

# 19, 28, 41 — Bootsybooks, AppleGirl, and O’Fogeyette, I see your point. Actually, babies used to frighten me when I was young because I was afraid that someday I’d look at one and suddenly want a baby of my own. Once I realized that wouldn’t happen, certain babies appealed to me on a time-limited basis. But not in comics and not on TV and usually not in movies. Though I did like the baby in WILLOW.
Poteet
April 26th, 2007 at 10:10 pm [Reply]

# 106 — Yep, I’m a bird fan, O’F, so thanks for the photos. We have a different set of avians up here, but with the same urge to merge.
SecretMargo
April 26th, 2007 at 10:13 pm [Reply]

Aaah, one more look at the JP porn boys before bed ….

Le plancher est tres frois, mais tes culs est tres chauds!

And now, bon nuit everyone.
Phil
April 26th, 2007 at 10:13 pm [Reply]

Hey, Ukulele Ike! The first “Ukulele Ike” (Cliff Edwards) was one of my favorite performers. That’s all. Good name choice.
queek
April 26th, 2007 at 10:16 pm [Reply]

“I like children.

par-broiled.”

– W.C. Fields.
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 26th, 2007 at 10:28 pm [Reply]

#107, Truddi chase and Crazy Jane both had what is now known as “dissociative identity disorder”, which is less medically controversial than “multiple personality disorder.”
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
April 26th, 2007 at 10:43 pm [Reply]

Lois Flagston resembles Naomi Watts.
Marc
April 26th, 2007 at 11:03 pm [Reply]

Karate Chopping Vera™:

Disrupting and disgruntling Charterstoners (hehe) since 2007!

Parts sold seperately.
John-
April 26th, 2007 at 11:04 pm [Reply]

Feng Shui “jokes” in a strip that still feels like 1950s America makes about as much sense as Snuffy Smith Googling his own name.
Allie Cat
April 26th, 2007 at 11:14 pm [Reply]

FBOFW – The problem is, I think Gerald would love to stuff it. Into April’s boxcar – or at the very least, her clambake.
Harold
April 26th, 2007 at 11:26 pm [Reply]

#118 John, was there ever a strip where Snuffy Smith Googled his own name? “Maw, you oughta see this here – this feller makes movies with some barenekkid girls and sum guy with a shotgun!” (Sorry, it’s been about 25 years since I read this strip regularly.)

Honestly, how many people did “Snuffy” Smith have to kill to earn that name?
dreadedcandiru2
April 26th, 2007 at 11:49 pm [Reply]

FBoFW: 4/27. So Apes outs her stupid, stupid little stunt to the Grieving Widow, eh? Liz seems to have gotten the point (Men are importuning pigs) too. Strange, but you know what the say about stpopped clocks. Wait until Deanna hears about how she endangered her babies. SHE’S gonna wanna get Apes a new home – juvie!!
Gadge Cubic, Mole Preener
April 27th, 2007 at 12:07 am [Reply]

I’m trying to figure out what article of foul clothing Jughead’s touching. It looks a bit large for a sock – although maybe Archie is tremendously well-endowed in the foot department.

More frightening is what’s causing the enormous athletic sock to stand up. Some commentors have already suggested that repeated usage of said sock for certain intimate solo performances might lend its normally floppy fabric a degree of rigidity as the dried matter provides an armature of sorts for the sock.

The other possibility is that it’s covering up Archie’s prized “Fatty Arbuckle” vibrating dildo.
Dingo
April 27th, 2007 at 12:10 am [Reply]

If the men of Gasoline Alley looked like this, I’d have much more car trouble. Uncle Walt and Skeezix never had it so good.
Dingo
April 27th, 2007 at 12:16 am [Reply]

By the hammer of Thor! Look at that Charterstone hallway. There’s more riffraff roaming that passageway than a fraternity house date with Lindsay Lohan. I’ve seen cozier set design on the underground shelters of Lost. And would someone please tell me what’s so scary about blonde-haired people that the latina has to hide behind her husband?
Dactyl
April 27th, 2007 at 12:17 am [Reply]

RMMD: So this is all it takes to make Rex forget his principles? I’d like to think that Rex is angry that Hugh Avery would treat any human being that poorly, but I strongly suspect Rex’s real problem is that Hugh mistook him for a driver, when Rex did in fact pick him up at the airport wearing a suit and carrying a little sign with the guy’s name on it. Clearly, Rex is a Classist Conniving Closeted Creep.
(Yes, I worked way too long on that.)
Proteus
April 27th, 2007 at 12:19 am [Reply]

4-27 MW. At last, Von baby! And look – Vera Von are… disturbingly identical. Twins? At least brother and sister? So is the drama going to be about the inheritance, or the incest? In any case, I am boggled by how crowded the halls of Charterstone can become. Panel two introduces a cornucopia of walk-ons: the young man protecting his terrified mate; the stern secretary; and Doctor Darkchin, whom I predict will dominate the snark traffic for a day.

Meanwhile, in Mark Trail – Hey! Aren’t those the guys who tried to build a road through the Lost Forest? I can’t wait to see Mark punch the mustache offa that guy.
Trilobite
April 27th, 2007 at 12:59 am [Reply]

4/27 ahoy!

Mary Worth: Apparently Von is a chubby-jowled young lad wearing a short trenchcoat. After all the weeks of buildup, I was expecting him to have a flaming skull for a head and be dragging a half-dozen starving peasants behind him in chains. Seriously, screw you, Vera. I hope Mary ends up making you marry this shlub.

Mark Trail: A land deal, being planned by suit-wearing white guys with facial hair? Sounds like it’s time to get mentally prepared for a month and a half of meandering, half-insane “plot” before the inevitable Right Hook of Justice is delivered. But at least that one guy has rockin’ sideburns, and the other guy looks kinda like Tony Stark, or maybe Gary Dent, or maybe that jerk director that Tommie in A3G is hung up on.

A3G: Alan is apparently a clean-cut folk singer who just finished shooting a Christmas special with Pat Boone circa 1964. I like how he can’t easily remember LuAnn’s name: probably he’s still a little baked from the afterparty in Pat’s hotel suite.

Spider-Man: Just in case you thought only criminals and journalists had lopsided, wrinkly faces…here are a couple of ugly cops for you to look at, too.

Judge Parker: Usually Neddy comes off as utterly naive (believing a hooker’s sarcastic comment about being a PhD student, for example), but I guess she’s worldly enough to have assumed that Cedric was of the “golfing buddy” persuasion, judging from how surprised she is that he’s married. Hey, he can cook, and toss a Luger from one hand to another while threatening to shoot punks…he’s something of a catch!

Gil Thorp: I have no joke here, I just like saying that I always heard the split-finger was hard on the arm, even if you had big hands. (But if the alternative is being forced to go to The Bucket…)
Pozzo
April 27th, 2007 at 6:17 am [Reply]

Whenever I find myself at a crossroads, I look at my “WWJD” bracelet and ask myself, “What Would Jughead Do?” The answer is usually “Have a hamburger and take a nap,” but really, when is that ever bad advice?
tymime
April 27th, 2007 at 10:05 am [Reply]

Good gad, Josh, it’s just dirty laundry. It’s probably growing mold.
Blondie
April 27th, 2007 at 3:33 pm [Reply]

No way is that about baby sex.
Up until about 5th grade the farthest you go in a relationship is repeatedly insulting/ punching each other.
Desoto
April 27th, 2007 at 3:55 pm [Reply]

# Ukulele Ike says: How come all four of the Flagston children resemble Lois (blond hair) and not Hi? Do they have a Swedish milkman?

Am I the only one out here who sees the uncanny resemblance between the lazy, hair-in-the-face son Chip and the lazy, hair-in-the-face neighbor Thirsty? At least that would explain how slim, tiny-nosed, Lois could produce four fat ugly golf-ball nosed tow-heads.
foobetit
June 4th, 2007 at 6:15 pm [Reply]

Chip’s friend has a really nice “Italian leather male carry all hand bag” panel 3. So much for the macho mall game.

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