CURSES UPON YOU!!!
Mary Worth, 4/27/07
WOO-HOO, VON’S HERE, YEAH! And he’s … well, he’s kind of underwhelming, actually. Typical boring WASPy Mary Worth dude. More intriguing is Vera’s immediate deployment of karate moves against him — she’s clearly been taking classes in physical and emotional self-defense. Also, now that Vera’s had dinner with Mary and received the old biddy’s tentative stamp of approval, she’s permitted call upon the creepy, silent cast of Charterstone extras for protection. Von’s right to cower; the close-mouthed creeps will shuffle at him wordlessly and then smother him with their poorly drawn hands unless Vera calls them off.
Dennis the Menace, 4/27/07
It’s also possible that George has just quietly died sitting up. In which case Dennis wouldn’t be so much “menacing” as “creepily affectless.”
Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/27/07
So here’s an odd little story: faithful reader Bob Byrd actually forwarded this strip to me a week ago. Apparently it appeared in place of Tank McNamera on the Yahoo comics page last Wednesday, which is pretty bizarre because the two strips are handled by different syndicates and Yahoo doesn’t even carry Rex Morgan. You’ll note that this is not the usual King Features in-house coloring job: the color palette is more muted, the flesh tones more realistic, and there’s not a bit of electric blue in sight. The graphic is also bigger than what King usually syndicates.
Anyway, it’s been fun sitting on this for a week and watching the strip feebly setting up Rex as having something like a shred of integrity, since I knew he would throw his highfalutin’ moral qualms to the wind as soon as he got rubbed the wrong way by some rich Brit. The good Dr. Morgan is a pillar of the community and he’ll thank you not to forget it; he doesn’t like being treated like a common chauffeur even if he shows up at the airport with a sign bearing the name of his passenger and doesn’t identify who exactly he is. Rex doesn’t really care about his friendship with Heather or even his stock portfolio, but treat him like the hired help and he will fuck you up — in this case, by driving you around reeeeaaal slow-like, which should be thrilling to watch.
Gil Thorp, 4/27/07
Oh man, not only does Clambake have vaguely obscene batting advice to offer, but vaguely obscene pitching advice as well! Yes, Mark’s big hands will be perfect — especially the left one, with its long, pretty fingernails.
It’s interesting to note that, while it took months of hectoring from the stands to get Lisa Wyche’s mom an unpaid position as an assistant coach for the girl’s basketball team, Coach Thorp has pretty much handed over his team to this deranged old coot in only the second week of practice. Gil is presumably hanging out under the bleachers smoking a joint or something while Otha Yancy holds hands with his pitching staff.
(By the way, unbelievably only one person has purchased Clambake gear so far. WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE? HE’S CLAMBAKE, FOR GOD’S SAKE! CLAMBAKE!!!!)
DIck Tracy, 4/27/07
That look of bug-eyed ecstasy in panel three comes from the feeling of climax that America’s greatest detective only gets from killing a perp with his bare hands. (The stiff, uplifted angle of his tie is suggestive here.) You might think that falling head-first into a smokestack and presumably being scalded to death is a particularly convoluted and gruesome way to go, and you’d be right, but you have to keep in mind that Dick Tracy has been leaving a trail of villainous corpses in his wake for 130 years or however long he’s been in the newspaper, and it’s hard to not repeat yourself. This is a strip that, in its first appearance in this blog, featured a pair of folks dying as a flaming wind generator plummeted to the ground, so expect the bizarre.
Hobbes Fan
April 27th, 2007 at 1:53 am
How I wish that second panel was actually of Tracy falling. It’s almost entertaining in a slapsticky way then.
ltrftp(not so first time)
April 27th, 2007 at 1:55 am
What I love about (DT) GT is that ANOTHER alien is taking the field (court, pitch, horseshoe box) and no one cares.
ltrftp(not so first time)
April 27th, 2007 at 1:55 am
What I love about (DT) GT is that ANOTHER alien is taking the field (court, pitch, horseshoe box) and no one cares.
ltrftp(not so first time)
April 27th, 2007 at 2:00 am
I swear that is Martin Mull as Von.
And that cop must be Tracy’s long lost identical twin.
treadwell
April 27th, 2007 at 2:06 am
I predict it’ll be until at least Tuesday before we get the big reveal that Tracy switched the diamond with the doorknob.
And again on Wednesday. And Thursday. And in the Sunday summary. And recapped on Monday.
RaJ
April 27th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Are the Wilsons hipsters? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of to explain Mrs. Wilson’s chair.
I do like the way the lampshade becomes part of the panel frame… also, I wish the Dennis artist would put as much time into Dennis’ poor hands (typically rendered as flippers) as he does into Mr. Wilson’s ear. It’s like, of course Dennis is menacing, he’s fuckin’ part dolphin.
Although the resemblance is always sort of there, Rex looks *particularly* like Stephen Colbert in that second panel. I’m also pretty sure no one holds a phone like that; I hate these artists who can’t suck it up and draw things from a front-on view, but insist on making it look like a character is clawing at his face, as if it were a mask he’s desperate to peel away. If so, good luck Rex: I hope that beneath this grim facade is the real you, finally ready to be welcomed to society.
The Eleusinian
April 27th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Von has totally destroyed Vera’s cover. She’s actually Waspy the Hag Slayer, and she’s come to destroy Mary with a smart left hook and a post-battle witticism. By showing up here, Von has completely endangered her mission! The cad.
Meanwhile, this Rex Morgan plot is looking more and more like it’s about to devolve into some sort of dubious consent gay BDSM scenario.
Proteus
April 27th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Wow Josh. Way to keep it rolling tonight! Can I pour you another pot of coffee?
michael farris
April 27th, 2007 at 2:25 am
Is it just me or was anyone else half expecting “Von” to be a woman?
Is it just me or is anyone else still half expecting that to be the case (at least in the past?)
Also, I think Vera and Von sound like possible names for twins (I think Von was Vonda before ‘transition’).
There is the possibility that “Vera” is the post transition name. In that case I look forward to Mary’s reaction when she finds out (I expect her reaction would resemble that of Maggie on Little Britain).
Mibbitmaker
April 27th, 2007 at 2:25 am
MW: Omigod, is that… a bunch of varied-looking Chinbeards swarming around our couple??? Vera and Von – both of you – RUN!!!
However, they will get to talk privately. About business. Von says: “I have a business plan that’s going through that’ll put you back in luxury! Your problems are solved. We just need our benefactor to arrive very soon. He’s being driven here by a…. Doctor Rex Morgan. You’ll be back in no time, baby!”
Moon Mullins
April 27th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Von and Vera have to be brother and sister, or possibly clones from the same stem cell line. Looking at panel two is like a Slylock Fox “find the six differences” between Von and Vera:
1. Vera has a ponytail.
2. Von’s coat is Raw Sienna.
3. Vera is shorter.
4. Von has an angry bespectacled woman’s head growing out of his thoracic vertebrae.
5. Von is wearing a tie.
6. Dang it, I can never find the sixth thing. It’s usually that one has less feathers than the other, but I can’t spot it now.
Trilobite
April 27th, 2007 at 2:28 am
The first time I’ve ever seen Dick Tracy show any emotion at all–hell, the first time I’ve even seen his eyes–and it’s because he’s cavorting in fist-pumping elation over tossing a lady into a smokestack.
That cop in the background looks disgusted by the whole scene, and I can’t blame him. He’s thinking “This psychopath has a badge? This has ‘Internal Affairs Investigation’ written all over it.”
Doug H.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Von and Vera’s big secret is that they’re actually transdimensional refugees from an SS Amerika cloning project. The blond hair, the blue eyes, the German features… Heck, he’s even named “Von”.
Now that Mary’s gone from Vietnam flashbacks to the Aryans next door, will we get to hear Ian reminisce about his glory days where he single-handedly won the battle by eating Erwin Rommel whole?
Mibbitmaker
April 27th, 2007 at 2:42 am
JP: Great, now how did Cedric’s wife know where they were??
MT: Uh-oh! Moustaches!! …Gee, I wonder if that means that they’re………………….villians? …NAH!
The guy in the middle panel. Isn’t that Brak’s dad? “Dad” has joined the MT stock company of actors.
Proteus
April 27th, 2007 at 2:57 am
Mibbit – I think Ced’s wife was that prostitue they met, which would explain a lot. Well, actually, it wouldn’t explain anything, but I think it would be swell.
The Avocado Avenger
April 27th, 2007 at 3:04 am
MW: Von is pasty. You know, there’s just nothing left to say about Von. He’s pasty, and that’s the epitome of his existence.
FW: I can’t get over how old and haggard these two young teens look. Is Westview High built on top of an abandoned nuclear waste dump, or Indian burial ground?
Jym
April 27th, 2007 at 3:10 am
=6= DtM (RaJ): Actually the hipster pen line is an homage to Ketchum. Probably the only thing I liked about this strip.
=14= JP (Mibbitmaker): We met Cedric’s wife earlier today (which is to say, a month ago). She was the one all bent out of shape over Cedric hanging around with beautiful women.
Dub Not Dubya
April 27th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Watch out, Von! Vera’s got the Amazing Spider-Brick in her left hand, and she’s not afraid to use it.
True Fable
April 27th, 2007 at 3:38 am
Oh, man! For some reason I can’t get any of the comics to display; something about the firewall that “protects” me. So I can’t get Judge Parker or Mary Worth or any of my other favorites. Grrrr. I’ll have to wait until later this morning when I can get to my desktop pc.
I couldl, however, see a few comics on gocomics and comics.com, neither of which had strips I like. But I’m able to comment on a couple featured here:
(DT)GT Clambake has a nifty foldable hand, which he displays in panel 2! Of course, this is only to be expected since he is shaking the hand of the Amazing Spare-Parts Android! Check out:
Panel 1: AS-PA has a freakishly large head tethered atop a lean slump shouldered torso and an ear attached to the back of his head.
Panel 2: One hand has firm, strong, square-tipped fingers which is properly folding Clambake’s hand into itself. The other has slender, delicate fingers with lovely nails even Lee’s Press-On Nails could not hope to best! Two guesses which hand he’s most fond of, and it’s largely because of the ’special lotion’ he occasionally applies to it. Urh.
Panel 3: He displays his shadow mode, which has unfortrunately affected Clambake as well. Clambake responds by giving AS-PA the finger.
MW Motion! I detect motion in Vera’s hair in Panel 1! This is indeed a red-letter day for Charterstone; all the inhabitants have now gathered in the hallway to see if it will happen again. Unfortunately, she has reverted back to displaying her spaghetti strand-like hair. But no matter! There was a hint of action in Mary Worth today! Maybe the inhabitants will finally find their way off the island and save Jack and Kate – er, away from the Gang of Four that is Mary, Toby, Ian, and Wilber. Freedom on the horizon! Huzzah!!
Old Bean
April 27th, 2007 at 3:52 am
I don’t follow Dick Tracy, but that strip is sort of awesome without any context. Man lectures coffin, to the understandable concern of a nearby policeman. Meanwhile, small person falls into bong near old-timey stereo. Then the final panel: Dick, frantic at the idea that someone, somewhere, isn’t okay! This is exactly how I imagine our glorious elected leaders – sitting bolt upright in the middle of the night with a sudden realisation… ‘Are you okay, George?’… ‘Yeah, but SOMEONE ELSE ISN’T!!’
jvwalt
April 27th, 2007 at 3:59 am
What the hell exactly IS Charterstone, anyway? It doesn’t fit any known category of real estate. Sometimes it seems to be an upscale condo development for well-to-do Californians who choose not to buy a house. Sometimes it resembles an independent-living center next door to a nursing home, to ease the not-yet-decrepit elderly into their declining years. Today, with all those people milling about the hallway, it looks like a tenement as depicted on a 1970s TV detective show: oddly clean but obviously downscale.
It’s also tenement-like in the constant coming and going of troubled people. They move in, have their lives taken apart by Mary Worth, the Mad Tinkerer of the Human Psyche, and then move out, clearing the way for the next exhibit in this awful parade of whitebread misery. You’d think that there’s be some sort of screening committee chaired by somebody like Professor Chinbeard, that would keep out the riffraff.
ChefMike
April 27th, 2007 at 4:07 am
Curtis: I know why Curtis is so surprised by Barry’s vocabulary abilities. Barry’s not really 8 years old, but a wise 80 year old sage trapped in a child’s body (sort of a bizzaro Clambake) and Curtis hasn’t figured this out yet.
MW: Much like Funky Winkerbean, we now have a picture of two lovers (well, former lovers) who could pass for brother and sister, and we’re going to have yet another week of ambiguously incestuous speculations.
Pluggers: I can’t decide; is this another “you’re a Plugger if you’re over 50″ joke, or “You’re a plugger if your dentist is fresh out of medical school”?
Also, in reference to the previous post, concerning nipples, we can now add the the naked turtle in Sherman’s Lagoon
Pinback65
April 27th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Poor Von took time away from his gig at Santa Royale Community Theater (he’s playing Rolfe in “The Sound Of Music”) to have a chat with Vera, and what does he get for his trouble? The disapproving head of Lisa Loeb growing Manster-style from his shoulder. Poor dumb sap.
John C Fremont
April 27th, 2007 at 5:57 am
# 5 – Hey, that would mean he Dicked the doorknob. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
(That last part was my Curtis homage.)
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
treedweller
April 27th, 2007 at 6:15 am
Since powered wheelchairs are designed to have a very specific speed range limited by electric motors and such, I can only assume today’s Crock is implying the prune juice makes the mother–and thus the chair– “jet-powered.”
EEEeeeww!!
Pozzo
April 27th, 2007 at 6:15 am
I propose a Curmudgeon Character Hall of Fame for those individuals who pass through strips long enough to grab our hearts, but don’t stick around long enough to grow tiresome. I’m talking Aldo, Molly, Fencepost Frank — and now Otha Yancey. Oh, sure, we all love Neddy, Margo, and Ian Cameron, but they’ll always be around. (And by “love,” I mean “lust after,” “fear,” and “want to bitch-slap,” respectively.
smacky
April 27th, 2007 at 6:24 am
MT: Ah, today we’re introduced to the two newest “slabs of meat” Mark will be pounding on in about two months, once he figures out they’re killing birds to make the land deal go through for the airport, or something equally odd.
3AG: At this point, no amount of fresh air will save Luann from permanant brain damage. Hell, by the time Margo gets home it will be time to start planning cancer girl’s next birthday party!
MW: Moy fooled me. I saw the rust colored sleeve and guessed she was going to fake us out and subsitute a drunken Professor Chinbeard, attempting a clumsy pass at who he hopes will be Toby 2.0 (a younger model with lower self esteem… yummy!). But no, it’s Von, who looks just like the guy who made the vague sexual advance to Vera at her office where she’s a “typist,” which HAS to be code for something. I mean, if you search Wikipedia for “typist” it redirects you to “data entry clerk.” Think about that: Wikipedia doesn’t even have a definition for Vera’s job. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typist) And Wikipedia meticulously documents every spin-off of the Brady Bunch, so if your job ain’t there, it doesn’t exist!
Kenny
April 27th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Wow! JOE ROGAN!? FEAR FACTOR JOE ROGAN?! I love you Clambake!
TB Tabby
April 27th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Look at today’s BC and F Minus. How could they both have such similar subject matters, and yet one is actually funny while the other is painfully not so?
criminallyinane
April 27th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Von = a young Christopher Walken?
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 6:41 am
RMMD: “It’s DOCTOR Chauffeur, I didn’t spend six years in Chauffeur Medical School to not be called ‘DOCTOR,’ thank you very much.”
Boy, Rex sure gets his medical school panties in a wad if you don’t acknowledge that he’s a highly respectable medical professional, despite that fact that the last medical thing we saw him do was agree to ‘Doctor’ Troy’s misdiagnosis of juvenile arthritis on his daughter.
And is that all you need to do to push him over the edge into corporate malfeasance? Toss him a little attitude? Margoboxcar, let’s drop him in France and let him deal with attitude. He’ll go all Bruce Banner on us in seconds. HURRAUGH! DOCTOR HULK PISSED! MUST CRUSH EIFFEL TOWER!
JP: And Cedric… OK, something just happened, only I’m not sure what. I feel like I’ve followed one of Little Billy’s dotted-line trails all over the neighborhood on his way to get a baggie of meth from next door.
Judge Parker: The strip where everything happens so fast that nothing happens for months.
Kermit the Forg
April 27th, 2007 at 6:51 am
Gil Thorp actually brings up an odd historical point. While there was a “Bullet” Joe Rogan who played in the Negro Leagues in the early part of the century and used a forkball, the Wikipedia article on forkballs links to a completely different “Bullet Joe” — “Bullet” Joe Bush, inventor of the forkball, who played during roughly the same years.
That must have caused a bit of confusion.
lesles
April 27th, 2007 at 7:03 am
#31 – that’s DOCTOR bruce banner.
man behind the curtain
April 27th, 2007 at 7:06 am
FBOW — So April yearns for lost opportunites. Well, if she wants to get it on with gerald she better hurry. With Warren blowing her off, I’m sure Liz is on the prowl and Gerald is fair game.
MW — Yes Vera and Von are brother/sister. Only the secret is that Von is the sister and Vera is the brother.
And it’s April 27th. B.C.and F Minus both about ski masks.What’s up with that? Is it National Ski Mask Day?
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
April 27th, 2007 at 7:20 am
MT: So, we’ve already been introduced to this story arc’s villains! After only a week of expositional packing? That’s some kind of record. They’re doughy white guys with questionable facial hair, so it’s obvious they’re going to end up getting a hard pounding from Mark. As soon as he finishes giving one to Cherry. (Expositional packing, that is.)
True Fable
April 27th, 2007 at 7:21 am
OMFG! Am I reading this right, is she unsympathetic to a garbage can lid, if it can’t reach supreme satisfaction as Marmaduke’s latest bitch?
Perky Bird
April 27th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Josh, if you’re wanting more folks to buy “Clambake” gear, maybe you should put your design on a thong. For Pete’s sake, with all the genitalia jokes that swirled around both Clambake’s name and your drawings of the clams, I would have thought the thong would have been an obvious choice! Or does it just take a rather immature thirty-something Federal employee with too much time on her hands to point this out to you?
Tweeks_Coffee
April 27th, 2007 at 7:31 am
DT: Queenie barely fits down that stack. This could’ve been made even more gruesome if she would’ve gotten stuck head first and either suffocated or scalded even slower.
MT: Oh thank God for crooked real estate developers! This story was looking to be without villains for a week or so. Now we get to look forward to mark pounding on a couple suits in the near future.
MW: Von bears a strong resemblance to Mary in that first panel. Perhaps he was trying to disguise himself so he could slip unnoticed through the halls of Charterstone.
Mutts: Not much to say here, I just wanted to point out that I love the name of the deli.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
April 27th, 2007 at 7:37 am
DT: No wonder Dick’s alarmed! In Panel 1 of the 4/26 strip, Queenie is soaring toward a ship whose smokestack, when scaled against its doorways, appears to be a good six feet in diameter. By Panel 2, it has shrunk to two-thirds of that. Then in today’s strip, Queenie is stuck in a rapidly narrowing flue little more than two feet wide. But wait, ships don’t shrink… Egad! Tracy’s just realized the Queen of Diamonds is ABSORBING the carbon from the ship’s exhaust and adding it to her diamond body’s carbon lattice! Soon she’ll rip her way out of that smokestack and rampage across the Vegas landscape like The Amazing Colossal Man!
Or, she’s dead, we’ll get a couple more days of wrapup, and another equally stupid villain with another equally inane plot will come along next week.
And before this plotline wraps up, I am forced to ask once again: Where in the world could a casino named “The Desert Diamond” possibly loom 100 feet above a [margo]ing shipping canal?!
Montag
April 27th, 2007 at 7:39 am
(DT)GT: I’m not qualified to comment on Gil Thorp because I only read it when it’s on here. Nonetheless…
1. I think Clambake is missing an index finger there. (Potentially great unexplored back story.)
2. It’s hard to tell, either that’s a right handed mitt — and therefore Mark throws with his meticulously manicured left hand — or that’s a really poorly drawn mitt.
3. I realize what I’ve just said there, but perhaps I am correct and Mark uses those talons for digging in on the knuckleball grip.
4. If Mark is a south-paw knuckle-baller, what the fork does he need a forkball for? Mark needs a pitch he can throw for a strike when he needs to.
5. The forkball, too, is hard on the shoulder and elbow. Clambake is a charlatan!!!
6. The use of silhouette in the last panel does nothing to refute any of the above.
Also, I really like the astoundingly two dimensional light tower in the first frame.
Phil
April 27th, 2007 at 7:43 am
You can’t hear it, but panel two takes place right as Vincent Price’s monologue ends, just before Von turns around to reveal he’s a zombie.
Phil
April 27th, 2007 at 7:43 am
You can’t hear it, but panel two takes place right as Vincent Price’s monologue ends, just before Von turns around to reveal he’s a zombie.
Abbey the Wonderdog
April 27th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Rex caught one glimpse of his “package” and knew this was something to pursue.
He is calling June to tell her that he is delaying Avery.
Little does she know he is taking him to the golf course and is going to let Avery use his own personal ball washer.
BARK! BARK! BARK!
Widdle Jeffy
April 27th, 2007 at 7:46 am
Nobody tells you anything Jeffy cause you are a moron.
AAckTTpth
April 27th, 2007 at 7:56 am
With apologies to the Violent Femmes (and fellow Curminions – it’s still before 7am here in the west):
When Mark is-a pitching, he’s throwing crap and he’s so screwed up,
I’ll come along and show you my forkball and you can catch for me.
Lemme go pitch, like a Clambake in the sun!
Lemme go pitch, big hands, I know you’re the one!
When Bozich is batting he’s pulling his head and he’ll swing and miss,
I’ll come along and stare at my hole and now you’re swinging great!
Lemme go pitch, like a Clambake in the sun!
Lemme go pitch, big hands, I know you’re the one!
doug rogers
April 27th, 2007 at 8:03 am
I know that complaining about the art in (DT)GT is de rigeur for here, but, what is that? An earthworm pitching? Where are the guys *SHOULDERS*?
forsooth
April 27th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Josh, you’re fantastic at what you do. Hilarious. You even find great snippets for your shirts and what not. But …
you are terrible at designing these shirts. Only a handful (Aldomania, for example) are attractive. This clambake thing is a goldmine, but the design needs serious help.
Hogen Mogen
April 27th, 2007 at 8:14 am
MT: No one has noticed that orange shirt villian is Mark’s army buddy Lt. Dan!
MW: I love all the mean stares from the Chatterstone extras, but especially the Wilbur-with-a-goatee-wannabe on the far right. Von turns out to look a lot like Josh Hand, but a little more effete with a slightly unsettling upper lip. How unsettling? Note the cowering woman in panel two, and her man bravely putting on a battle hardened face to ward off this strange danger and protect his mate. Another unsettling aspect of Von is the fact that angry looking women’s heads materialize on his shoulder. This dude is just scary.
Dennis Jimenez
April 27th, 2007 at 8:23 am
I know it’s unlike me to gripe (OK, all I do is gripe here) but Luann just wasted a whole week on a stupid bit that might have been worth a one day strip. Ha ha – Luann wants Brad’s old room and her folks won’t give it to her cuz they’re not supposed to know they’re sorta frozen in time, and she’s heading off to college/tech school/sheltered workshop, soon enough anyway. My sides are spitting, Pepsi is coming out my nose, I can’t breath.
I love the funnies.
Hogen Mogen
April 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Foob: April admits that she would have done the roadside gig with Gerald, had she only more time.
Funky: Darrin has the motive, the opportunity and yet –
- and yet – can’t shake off the image of his abandoned comic geek friend.
Rex: Hugh, don’t tick off Rex. Just look at JP to see what a chauffer is capable of.
Sugardoots
April 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am
GT: I, too, would like to learn out more about Clambake’s “split-finger hard-on” described in frame three. Is more information available on the internet?
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
April 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am
For some cryptic reason, the first panel of today’s Piranha Club appears to contain a shoutout to deceased Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff.
Ran
April 27th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Don’t be put off by the hordes of ungly trolls living charterstone, before they met Mary these were normal people, but now they disapprovingly watch each other, like Mary taught them too.
I don’t know what lame story line the twins are actually in, but in my mind they are Aryan super offspring (Ubermenschen Sekundärteilchen) and they have been ordered to mate and produce the ultimate human being! Even though the are Brother and Sister! Vera is hesitant but Von is seeking to bring here back into line. All of there diologue from now on are euphanisms for their incestual relationship.
John C Fremont
April 27th, 2007 at 8:30 am
FW – Jeez, Darin, she wants to do it! She REALLY wants to do it. Hey, bud, what’s your problem?!
JP – So Cedric’s married, so Neddy won’t be getting involved (i.e., “doing it”) with him – so she could still fall for me. My fantasy world is safe… for now.
Ran
April 27th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Did anyone notice that Vera has pickpocketed Von’s wallet?
Hogen Mogen
April 27th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Dick Tracy: “Yes, but someone else isn’t! That barge captain is going to have a mess in the boiler room! Quick, get someone to help shovel some coal in there!”
Laura Jane
April 27th, 2007 at 8:41 am
~~Trying To Make Sense of the Comics~~
This morning while sitting at my desk and reading Gil Thorp I practiced shaking hands– I was attempting to recreate the scene in panal 2 in a natural way and failed. I could not extend my right hand in a shake while holding my left hand parallel at the wrist. I’m convinced that Mark Jeske’s (Ueske’s?) extra hand is snaking out of his waistband in order to touch the new alien master with an almost human-like nickname.
Then while reading Mary Worth I was surprised to discover that Vera was attending night school in a little community college. I wasn’t sure why Vera was carrying around a brick, but then I decided that must be a small, leather-bound book and congratulated myself on realizing that Vera is taking a poetry class. Can Sylvia Plath references be far behind?
Finally while studying Mark Trail I spoke the dialog outloud to see if it came close to sounding natural. It was so patently artificial that I must assume Leo and his partner know that they are being bugged and are playing a very deep game.
Justafoob
April 27th, 2007 at 8:42 am
Why would Apewill tell Liz anything about her love life?
She would run to Shan…non to tell her so that she could get some reassurance that it was ok to want to knob-bob with Gerold.
Tell anything to Liz and you are likely to get an hour of her whining about Warren and how he is a jerk and so is Paul and I almost got raped by Howard Erk and why are men so petty and I have to find an apartment and Granthony is always hanging around but he is cute and has kids and when are mom and dad going to move my stuff and I have papers to grade and the kids in my class dont nows know grammer and my cat hates it here…. What were you saying about me Apewill?
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 27th, 2007 at 8:43 am
RMMD: As you imply, Rex was always going to join the good fight. He just needed to find a reason petty and egotistical enough. Sad to say, that makes him a fairly realistic doctor.
(DT)GT: “Now son, we’re gonna try something different now. I’ll be the pitcher for a while, and you catch.”
Lockhorns: I’m confused by the linoleum sidewalk and blank sky. Do the Hateeachothers have a beauty salon in their kitchen? Or are they at the edge of the Matrix?
MW: Von’s in sad shape as much as Vera. He showed up at her apartment in a bathrobe.
MT: Is Elrod even trying here? Crooked official #1 is just Diver Dan with a huge beer gut. Crook #2 is the Mirror Universe Mark.
JP: Does Angela have a blonde wig and hot pants? More light shed on this marriage.
9CL: We get it! Death is a huge pussy! John Donne said pretty much the same thing 400 years ago.
A3G: Is Alan the face of white flight? Not that the New York City of this comic strip has any ethncs living in it.
Big Dog: He’s gonna hump that trashcan any minute now.
andreavis
April 27th, 2007 at 8:44 am
#11 Moon, I agree, I said a week ago that I thought Vera ‘n’ Von are siblings. She’s clearly perfected her spaz-chop technique after years of fighting Von over who gets a piece of their nanny’s pie. Oh, wait, that came out wrong….
DtM: what is Mrs. Wilson knitting? She’s holding the needles all funky, like she’s stabbing that pile of pink spaghetti. Maybe she’s making George an artificial heart, to extend his bleak exsistence on earth. That way, when Dennis reaches adulthood, George can legally beat the crap out of him.
Also: GT: Clambake, a forkball IS hard on your arm! Have your supple young pitcher throw a knuckleball, it’s what kept Phil Niekro in the majors ’til he was in his late 40’s. On second thought, teach him whatever you want. I loves ya, Clambake!
Montag
April 27th, 2007 at 8:44 am
#54 Ran,
Ha-ha! Yeah. Nice lift!
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 27th, 2007 at 8:46 am
#47,
I noticed, Hogen Mogen. Although I got here a little later. Didn’t know the Pope would be so aggressive in making up for lost time.
Motorposus
April 27th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Would I get in trouble for expressing the thought that perhaps the design for the Clambake gear is…I dunno…vaguely obscene?
Hogen Mogen
April 27th, 2007 at 8:47 am
MT:
Facial hair – check
Openly discussing nefarious plans – check
Profit over environmental conservation – check
Yep, they’re villians.
But what confuses me is exactly how this is illegal. They own land that the airport commission will choose to purchase. I’m sure that the further development of this story will no doubt show our two new baddies doing illegal things to influence a legal sale up to and including blowing up a road or holding someone at gunpoint. How any of this relates to bird strikes is the mystery to be revealed by that Jack Elrod, master storyteller.
Cockblocker
April 27th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Everytime I read Dick Tracey lately, I can’t help but hear Queen’s “Killer Queen” run through my head. So as to possibly infect a few others, I’m going to go through the chorus here.
She’s a killer queen!
Gunpowder gelatine,
Dynomite with a laser beam,
Guaranteed to blow your mind!
ANYTIME.
MrP
April 27th, 2007 at 8:53 am
“I NEED to talk to you… Please!” is Mary Worth WASP Dude slang for “halp I’m being followed by zombies need shelter”.
treadwell
April 27th, 2007 at 8:54 am
47: “Note the cowering woman in panel two, and her man bravely putting on a battle hardened face to ward off this strange danger and protect his mate.”
He also seems particularly proud of the manly patch of chest hair he has grown on his t-shirt.
Foobar
April 27th, 2007 at 8:54 am
http://www.fbofw.com
It’s Mike’s 31st birthday! Hooray Mike!
SatanicMechanic
April 27th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Wow!! Hi& Lois managed to corrospond and actually funny joke with an environmental message! Both are rareities on our comics page (don’t get Get Fuzzy, afterall). I might just have to change my religion! Er, um, GET religion!
This is all assuming that the joke isn’t ripping off something else, like Funky Winkerbean last sunday. Al Gore is rolling over in his– hmmm… wait….
Hogen Mogen
April 27th, 2007 at 8:57 am
#67 – Foobar – “Have a fantastic and stupendous day!” Aaaggghh. That and those faces of Patterfoob. Double aaaggghh.
bobbaloo (aka bob byrd)
April 27th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I notice the “real” RMMD strip today is colored differently. I like the yahoo version better. But what I’m really writing to say is that one reason to love Get Fuzzy is that Darby Conley is not afraid of the male nipple….or unsightly male body hair….thankfully he is still content to just describe cat turds and hairballs in shoes–some things we just don’t need to see. (now that i got a mention by Josh, my next goal is to get a comic idea published in TDIET or Pluggers. Onward!)
Proteus
April 27th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Thanks so much for the link to Marmaduke having sex with a trashcan. He looks so happy. It is sad that he won’t be able to “get his lid off.” This should be the start of a series, with him humping cars, trains, and entire metropolitan areas. “Cause he’s a BIG dog, get it?
Meanwhile
April 27th, 2007 at 9:06 am
GT: Is Mark Jeske going to get into a stand-up comedians’ feud with Carlos Mencia over who’s stolen which material from whom?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsq1uTLBHBc
Normally, I’d say this portends a tedious month for Gil Thorp, but we’re talking about Gil Thorp, so it may just be the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in the strip’s long and homogeneous history.
calico
April 27th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Yo Mikey the Old Prince Foob (soon-to be King)!
You really put the Mike in the Patterson.
MW – You know what? Von looks EXACTLY as I pictured him!
I’m not sure if that is supposed to be funny, or sad. Maybe a touch of both.
Brother or Ex-boyfriend, I cannot tell yet. Maybe Cousin?
TurtleBoy
April 27th, 2007 at 9:08 am
A3G: has anyone ever, EVER, thought to themselves the words “the city that never sleeps”?!!? Pine, pine, pine, whine, whine, whine…throw yourself out of a boxcar window, Alan. This schmuck is clearly vying with Tommie, LuAnn, Eric,…hell, every single character in this whole goddamned strip besides the lovely Ms. Magee for the coveted Most Useless Comics Character Ever award.
Suicide_Blonde
April 27th, 2007 at 9:11 am
MW: So, Von is really Christopher Walken in “A View to a Kill”? Huh.
calico
April 27th, 2007 at 9:12 am
MW, again – I adore the way Vera has been working with Dancing Dent – the slashing hand is a riot. Next she’ll be throwing dollar bills at Von.
JP – yes, the lovely kinked-out scene of the punks lashed together made my morning yesterday.
However, I wonder too, why is the male nip made out to be so profane in drawings?
Here’s a little letter from a Phish fan a phew years ago, and their response. This is my Friday dedication to all the overlooked male nips of the CC board:
“I have three nipples and seeing as you seem to like nipples and haven’t written a nipple song lately would you write a song about me?
_____
Dear _____:
YES, here it is:
The best nipple is always the third
Like the triple nipple of the Coriander bird
Two’s company; three’s a crowd
But I bet that third one makes you proud
Where’s that nipple, by the way?
Up top, below, or can’t you say?
If I had three, know what I’d do?
I’d pierce it through to the other two.
jules
April 27th, 2007 at 9:15 am
MW: Vera and the Charterstone Zombies would be a totally excellent name for a band.
(DT)GT: What is wrong with Mark Jeske in the first panel?! Seriously, I have never seen anyone so totally out of proportion. And I’m very interested in his left-hand manicure. Why only manicure your non-pitching hand? Doesn’t your pitching hand deserve love too, for all the hard work it does? For shame, Mark Jeske.
TDIET: Arfo’s wife Fussina is super neat! And their kid Herkie is peachy keen!
MT: Oh Lord. The only people more boring than Mark Trail are politicians. At least Mark brings out the Right Hook of Justice every now and again…maybe he’ll bring it out for these guys! In about 12 weeks!
Mike
April 27th, 2007 at 9:21 am
MW: It’s not Martin Mull or Christopher Walken. It’s Macaulay Culkin’s finest performance since “Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.”
Phil
April 27th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Special guest star: Rudy Vallee as “Von.”
juggernaut
April 27th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Okay, Funky Winkerbean, you win. Cancer, fine. Destruction of livelihood, fine. More cancer, fine. Deafness, fine. A teenage boy who DOESN’T want to have sex w/ a more-than-willing girl??? Too depressing to contemplate. I’m off to slash my wrists.
commodorejohn
April 27th, 2007 at 9:28 am
FOOB – I can’t believe nobody has made an obscene comment about April’s claim to have “filled [her] face with mouthwash.” But I’ll leave that to Dingo or someone. Personally, I wasn’t expecting the final panel, but I’m not really surprised. After all, as everyone knows, teenage girls are just hormone-fueled fucktoys for teenage guys. Damn you to Hell, Lynn.
The Other Jeff
April 27th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Von, you might as well have your conversation in the hallway and save Mary Worth (and more importantly, us) from the long, drawn out excersise of dragging the information out of Vera, who will either resign to being assimilated into this little community of gossiping busy bodies or be driven to madness until she seeks the sweet release of death like that lucky bastard Aldo.
Phil
April 27th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Oh, Rex. I miss the meth lab.
William Sommerwerck
April 27th, 2007 at 9:34 am
“Yes, Mark’s big hands will be perfect — especially the left one, with its long, pretty fingernails.”
No, that’s a brief guest appearance by Mary Worth. She at first thought she wanted to help, but between the 2nd and 3rd panels changed her mind and ran off.
Gabe
April 27th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Riiight, Josh. Tons of teen males turn down girls begging for sex. We call them “confused.”
I’m sure he’ll find the right
girlsomeone eventually.gh
April 27th, 2007 at 9:49 am
MT — Why am I seeing people? Overly-verbose people in an office? Are the animals in the desk drawer? Under the ashtray? WHERE ARE THE MARGOING BOXCAR ANIMALS, ELROD??
JP — So, I’m sure this has been covered, but Cedric had the punks strip down to their undies so that, what? He didn’t even take their clothes with him. Married or not, that grin in panel two says he’s still relishing the moment.
(DT)GT — I like clouds, especially big fluffy clouds, and I know that when I want to see them, all I have to do is turn to any outdoor scene in Gil Thorp where they’ll be propped up against the horizon. I wonder why they don’t fall over?
FBoFW and FW — I know this has been beaten to death, but honestly, all these people have grown so ugly they’d look better if they were beaten to death.
andreavis
April 27th, 2007 at 9:52 am
FW: This strip is bugging me (again.) It’s not because of the non-sex sex storyline (I actually think it’s kinda touching that the boy is saying no) but rather, the birthparent search storyline. I just don’t get what Jess thinks she’s going to get out of it. Push Darrin into finding out his birth parents… so you can get closure with your own dead dad?
It makes no sense: if I were adopted, I would assume I’d only be finding my birth mom. I’d presume that the birth father didn’t know about me. And I wouldn’t expect to find closure in SOMEONE ELSE’S parental relations. Maybe the money Darrin spent on the P,O, box would be better spent on Jess’ therapy?
Harold
April 27th, 2007 at 9:53 am
On-topic: #77 Jules, Mark Jeske’s left hand has such long fingernails so he can more easily scuff and doctor the ball. By the way, is Clambake giving the secret Masonic handshake? And I’d really like to see Mark “Big Hands” Jeske palm Clambake’s skull like a basketball. Come on, you can do it!
Off-topic: This is the most popular and active blog I regularly visit, and I know that when we all pull together we can accomplish great things, like stuffing the ballot box for a natural wonder to be that state’s…errr, something, I forget. (How did that work out, Dingo? Did we win?) Anyway, I am going to abuse this forum by asking anyone from North Carolina to go here:
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2007/04/calling-anyone-from-north-ca rolina.html
Or, hell, you can just skip my intro and go right to the source:
http://whimsicalnbrainpan.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-out-of-my-hands.html
See if you can help a neighbor!
If you’re not from North Carolina, you can help by directing others to this girl’s post. Let’s see if we can make a difference!
blueberry
April 27th, 2007 at 9:56 am
FW has been sort of creeping me out with its teenage look-alikes making out. Today, thanks to Mary Worth, I finally understand. It’s the…
Comics Law of Blonde Pairing:
1. If the cartoonist creates an unnaturally yellow-haired, young yet somehow aged-beyond-his/her-years character, this character must interact with a second unnaturally yellow-haired, young yet somehow aged-beyond-his/her-years character.
2. The characters must be of the opposite sex, although there is no need for the artist to actually draw them that way.
3. The interaction must involve cryptic double-entendres, annoying thought balloons, and/or vague references to uninteresting off-screen action.
Shanghaishrimpo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Yesterday, (4/26) the final panel with that creepy hand on Vera’s shoulder — EEEEEEEEK! Ben thought it was a woman’s hand… with hairy knuckles. I thought it was the hand of Howard Hughes.
At first, in today’s panel, I thought that all those angry people were possibly Von’s henchmen (and henchwomen). Now that I had my coffee I can see much more clearly.
O’Fogeyette
April 27th, 2007 at 10:03 am
FOOB: Start small rant: April’s lips are pissing me off as much as Darin’s nose pisses off Poteet. The ONLY way she could have grown those lips is either through injection of “filler” or by constant use of one of those lip-pump things. In either case, the message is that you’re only attractive if you have big, pouty lips. You see this all the time on tv anchors and starlets and aging former starlets. Sometimes the lips look good, but most of the time they look like jelly doughnuts smashed onto the face. I once co-wrote a book about these “non-surgical” cosmetic treatments, and the doctors I worked with seemed to think that every woman NEEDS such enhancements. Now it’s not just “older” women in their twenties or beyond, but even teenagers. Sometimes even kids. The whole thing makes me sick. Lynn has a lot to answer for come Judgment Day, and one of the items highest on the list is encouraging invasive cosmetic treatments among very young women. /End rant.
Len
April 27th, 2007 at 10:08 am
I think it would be cool if the manager of the sandwich shop Corey keeps frequenting looked like Dagwood Bumpstead.
And was the complaint about “gratuitous nudity” of animal mascots from a week ago a slam on the treatment of McEldowney’s Pibgorn?
The strip is titled “Watch Your Head.” A Curmudgeon somewhere back asked what it meant. It’s set in a college, and the lead character is a nerd. Maybe if Corey was a champion basketball star, it’d of been titled “Watch Your Body.” But he ain’t, so it ain’t.
Corey Thomas, you read the CC sometimes. Since he didn’t mention you in his interview, I think we need MORE take-offs of “Curtis.” Yeah, and an unemployed “Boondocks” cast, too!
http://www.comics.com/wash/watch/archive/watch-20070426.html
buschap
April 27th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Today’s Bizarro – Somebody’s acting on “the urge”.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 10:12 am
TDIET
4/12 . . .
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070412&name=TDIE
4/24 . . .
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070424&name=TDIE
4/27 . . .
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070427&name=TDIE
You think Mrs. Scaduto’s on his case about spring cleaning or something and these are his passive-aggressive responses? Why three of these in 15 days?
Dingo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Josh, I don’t know if you mean that the pitcher could scratch out the eyes of Lisa Wyche for Coach Gil or something, but in matters of sex between two men, long fingernails is NOT a good thing.
For that matter, based on this drawing, Mark Jeske is one baseball player I’d never want to see in the showers.
Joshua
April 27th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?
Specifically, I’m thinking Rex/Margo slashfic. We all know they’re meant for each other. Can they subdue their clashing Type-A personalities long enough to make a relationship work, or they descend into a rapid downward spiral of break-up/make-up and angry sex?
…
Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I just wrote that about characters from two comic strips that don’t even read. Damn you, Josh! Damn you and your corrupting influence! (Good name, though.)
Dingo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Harold, the results of the Illinois Tourism Council contest are to be announced on April 30.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 10:19 am
#92 O’Fogeyette
My point exactly in #87. Those lips have been pissing me off for two weeks now and obviously they aren’t going away. But it will be worth it if they continue to make you say things like they look like jelly doughnuts smashed onto the face.
BWAHAHAHA!
Perky Bird
April 27th, 2007 at 10:21 am
The Washington Post carries this strip, “Brevity”. I usually pay it little attention, but today (4/27), it shows us what our beloved Molly the Bear is up to since leaving Mark Trail so abruptly.:
http://www.comics.com/comics/brevity/index.html
Dingo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:22 am
April didn’t get her wish
That night ‘lone with her knave
She planned on serving him some fish
Parents! Burma Shave
Anonymous lurker
April 27th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Hey Josh, check out today’s Heart of the City:
http://www.gocomics.com/heartofthecity/
(april 27).
Isn’t (old) Dean wearing one of your shirts?
Harold
April 27th, 2007 at 10:24 am
#95 gh, and the 4/12 “neat desk / messy desk” cartoon is a repeat of one that he did a few years back that I used to have pasted on the entrance to my cubicle. Was it Red Greenback who recently had his idea rejected by Scaduto because something similar had been run previously? THE URGE…
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 10:26 am
#65 cockblocker – I seem to hear the muse calling…. lemme see what I can do over lunch (that is, if gh doesn’t get there first!)
zeeba
April 27th, 2007 at 10:26 am
JP: Angela was the dark haired smoking chick that followed Abbey and Neddy to school, but I don’t remember her following them any more after her jealousy talk with Cedric. So, the question remains, how did she know they were lost, unless the blonde lawyer prostitute called and told her.
4/27
Comics that made me snicker today (not wa-ha-ha, but huh-huh):
Dilbert:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/4/27&name=Dilbert
Lio:
http://www.uclick.com/client/sea/lio/
MG&G:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070427&name=Mgoose
OBH:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/4/27&name=One_Big_Happy
And now, a moment of silence for the end of the sweet romance between little zeeba and little croc in PBS. It’s a tribute to the talent of Pastis that he made me care so much for an unrealistic anthropomorphic couple of animals, while I could care less for the more realistic (I guess) human teen romance in FW.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 10:31 am
#104 willethompson
The only previously un-parodied Queen song I know is Bohemian Rhapsody [did someone do that one already?], so it’s all yours. I’ll pretend to hum along.
T. Chicana
April 27th, 2007 at 10:35 am
MW: I think Von looks like David Bowie in his absolute most androgynous state ever. Like when he was caught in bed w/ Mick Jagger. But I know that David Bowie would never be caught dead in a jacket like that! It looks like something my high school friends and I would’ve salvaged during our thrift-store phase in the early 90s. It think it’s…pleather. Now, what millionaire wears a pleather jacket that went from a pimp’s back into a Salvation Army bin? A CRAZY millionaire, that’s what.
SecretMargo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Curtis: Not to be a total curmudgeon (wait…), but “vehement”? “Incongruous”? How would those be proper words to describe either “graphic novels” or Curtis himself? “Look, Spidey beat up those guys! He’s so vehement! Or should I say … incongruous?”
No. You shouldn’t. Bah, I hate “difficult” vocabulary deployed like a magic spell or religious incantation invoking “smarts” instead of as words that convey specific meanings. Bah I say! And get the [margo] off my lawn!! I work hard to keep it so verdant and sylvan!
Josh
April 27th, 2007 at 10:43 am
#37 Perky Bird-
http://www.cafepress.com/joshreads.127972102
May God and/or the General Accounting Office have mercy on your soul.
To all you haters who say my t-shirt designs are terrible: well, duh. I’m not a graphics pro and I never take more than about 10 minutes. But this is clambake we’re talking about here. CLAMBAKE!!!
Motorposus
April 27th, 2007 at 10:48 am
FBoFW: You know that saucer-eyed piteous expression these Foobs often wear–the look an astute Curmudgeonite once called “Satan Goosed Me”? Well I’m getting good and sick of it, especially in combination with bird-nest-y hair and jelly doughnut lips.
#105: Don’t be sad, Zeeba. Little zeeba will be home from school this summer.
Shea
April 27th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Meanwhile, back in Foobville, is it just me or does it look like April got an eyelid lift and some botox for her Sweet 16? She has had that permanently-startled, bug-eyed, Marty Feldman thing going on ever since.
Perky Bird
April 27th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Oh, Dear Lord, Josh! You took my suggestion! It’s so tacky that it’s wonderful! Now I guess I’ll have to actually buy one..not WEAR one, mind you, just buy one.
I just hope our Inspector General isn’t monitoring our web usage too much!
SecretMargo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:51 am
109, Josh — Ooooh, and they’re MADE IN THE USA!!!!
That graphic just made my day.
Size up for a looser fit! Take heed, Magee. We all know you’re a “panty-minimalist” under all at polyblend and sass.
Gabe
April 27th, 2007 at 10:53 am
I’m boycotting Mudge gear till I get a potato shirt. POTATOOOO!
Also, is that you begging for change in today’s Mallard Filmore, Josh?
SecretMargo
April 27th, 2007 at 10:55 am
113 — all that polyblend and sass. Sigh. I got excited. Wait, no. I got vehement.
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 27th, 2007 at 11:04 am
FW: If you use your nose, it doesn’t count as sex.
MW: Proof that V & V are twins.
MT: I concur: The new bad guys are Diver Dan and Gary Dent. The Powerful Point will be no match against the Fist o’ Justice. Maybe, following Dan’s lead, Gary will throw money at Mark.
MF: Underqualified for anything.
Dinette Set: The Nagina t-shirt is funny. Actually seeing an old woman wearing a Nagina t-shirt would be world-altering hilarious.
FC: Life is not like Family Circus. You always know what you’re gonna get.
FOOB: Make up your mind Apwil, is it going to be guilt or disappointment?
GT: It looks like Mark Jeske is grabbing a giant fountain pen by the nib.
PBS: I’m so glad the Columbus Dispatch picked up this strip recently.
Phantom: There’s more than one? Same clothes? The dog whatshisname is like Lassie, constantly replaced?
Pluggers: If your fillings are older than your dentist, your first dentist was not a plugger.
Quiqmans: Funny if you block out the real world.
Coincidence Corner: Two animals named Prince rebelling against their owner (Ballard Street and Rubes).
Ribinin
April 27th, 2007 at 11:07 am
#63 Motorposos – I’m sure Josh will refine the Clambake shirt design.
Hear that, Josh? It is on vaguely obscene. It needs to be worked until it is definitely obscene.
BTW, put me down for thongs in all available colors.
queek
April 27th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Rhymes with Orange was sweet today.
Today’s Speed Bump was amusing. Quiet desperation in cubicle land, as opposed to Hagar’s take on liquid stress relief a day or so ago.
MossMoses
April 27th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Von looks more like Macaulay Culkin then Cap’n ‘Roo. In fact, with a ponytail, he could be a Vera Shields impersonator. That vicious Frank Cannon karate chop didn’t seem to deter him but it sure attracted plenty of nosy freak neighbors. What’s the Vegas line on Vera inviting him in?
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.macaulay-culkin.com/images/culkin-is-quite-dashing_297×500.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.macaulay-culkin.com/pictures/culkin-is-quite-dashing.html&h=500&w=297&sz=18&hl=en&start=11&um=1&tbnid=ymtDo5RH-2nl5M:&tbnh=130&tbnw=77&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmacaulay%2Bculkin%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN
Flipper
April 27th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Today’s Charterstone extras certainly don’t have poorly drawn hands.
Twoclubs
April 27th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Man! Those are some pretty crowded hallways over in Charterstone. What, is it welfare day and people are rushing to get their mail first thing in the morning? Was there a fire drill and people are going back to their hovels?
Either way, Von & Vera sure make a nicelooking (and RICH!!!) couple dontcha think? I bet they name their children Vinnie and Volga.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 11:43 am
#121 Twoclubs
And drive a Volvo wagon.
calico
April 27th, 2007 at 11:56 am
RM – I wonder if Rex’s idea of taking the “Scenic Route” involves a bottle of Johnny and a plunge off a cliff.
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 27th, 2007 at 11:57 am
MW: I think Von looks like David Bowie in his absolute most androgynous state ever. Like when he was caught in bed w/ Mick Jagger.
So that would make Vera Angie Bowie, wouldn’t it?
“Curses on you, Ziggy. On you and your Spiders from Mars.”
Still very little about the Foob face-full of mouthwash. Must be like Jess Darling, too easy.
Anon
April 27th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Rex’s idea of the “Scenic Route” involves a bottle of Johnny, a handful of poppers, and a stop at the “driving range”.
He hopes he can see a lot there!!!
J’ai mis
April 27th, 2007 at 11:59 am
(Finally, this is apropos…)
Bing Crosby IS Dick Tracy in……………… Dick Tracy in B Flat. An operetta!!!
Also stars Dinah Shore, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, and others. There’s romance! Crime! Booze! Crooning! Giggling! You’ll give it two thumbs up, even if you only have one hand! Xtreme!!!!!!
calico
April 27th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
#94 – great one – it’s like “TDIET Goes Wild!” *
* Sorry for all the quotation marks today, Magee.
Alan Vanneman
April 27th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Thanks for the Dick Tracy backlink. It’s been too long since I’ve seen “unbeknownst” in a comic strip.
yellojkt
April 27th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
anonymous lurker (#102): Han Shot First shirts can be found in various conditions of cleanliness being worn at any reasonably sized science fiction convention. Don’t ask me how I know.
yellojkt
April 27th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
In the Funkiverse, french fries are potent erotic symbols known to induce vomiting in overly frisky drunk teenage girls.
lesles
April 27th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
MW: all i can think with that last panel: “please … can we go inside? [whispered] i see dead people”.
don’t worry, von. hang around charterstone long enough and you’ll get used to it. why, you’ll even start to see them in the mirror.
andreavis
April 27th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I’ve placed my order for Clambake merch– just a coffee mug, though. I could not order a thong, in the interest of public safety. My large ass + tiny thong = defiance of physical laws. I am looking forward to its arrival, so I can drink forkballs with my shirt on inside out!
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Josh, I’m no geologist, but if you’re offering a ‘clambake’ thong, wouldn’t a thong printed with “You’re pulling your head, son – lock your eyes on one hole, get set, and swing†be more appropriate?
Lammergeier13
April 27th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
FW: Jess has got to be the most bipolar, codependent bitch ever! A week or two ago, she makes it clear that she ‘doesn’t want to go all the way’, and now she’s practically humping the guy’s leg, even while bemoaning the fact that ‘he doesn’t find her attractive’. THEN, she wants him to find his true parents, but insisting that she only wants to help him because he should WANT to find his true parents! Whore, would you please BACK THE FUCK OFF? These are two of the fugliest characters I’ve seen in a long time (though no rivals to FOOB), and we’re being forced to watch their socially maladjusted attempts at sexuality. It… It just hurts. End rant.
Gabe
April 27th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I’m no teenage male, but I used to be. Again, not buying “hetero teenage boy turning down sex from attractive (FW standards) girl.” At least he would get a handie or oral. Just not believable, unless they plan to reveal he’s sexually confused.
Splinky
April 27th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
In further support of Josh’s Dead Mr. Wilson theory, I’d just like to point out that Dennis’s expression is basically the same expression that Macauley Culkin used in The Good Son after he tried to push Elijah Wood out of a tree. Perhaps Dennis has become less menacing in the “tormenting with a slingshot” sense because he’s trying to cover up his menacing in the “bodies piling up in the basement” sense.
Josh
April 27th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
#134 Lammergeier13 — While the problems in this relationship are legion, Jess has always been the one pushing to get it on. The only thing she’s ever made clear is that she does want to go all the way, and it makes her feel sad that Darrin doesn’t.
Josh
stinky pete
April 27th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Mind you, I’m not the UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and
Small Island Developing States, but, ah, ah, …, ah, crap.
Mountain Mama
April 27th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Josh is on line the same time as I am. That just makes me feel all happy inside. Hi, Josh. I can’t tell you how happy this blog makes me.
And I still want to be Moose Jaw McGill in my next life.
JimmyKirk
April 27th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
For a mere $29.99 you can own the Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Vol. 2: 1933 – 1935, including an interview of Gould by Max Allan Collins!
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=15121&si=129
Foobar
April 27th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Oh, the mouthwash thing. See, I wasn’t thinking what YOU were thinking. I was thinking, for some reason, that she was chugging mouthwash like cheap hooch. You know, in the manner of a hobo, or person of street-ness, apparently. Wine in bed leads to Listerine abuse. It’s a slippery slope.
man behind the curtain
April 27th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
RMMD — At what point will Hugh realize that Rex isn’t the chauffeur? When he gets into the 2002 Toyota Tercel? When Rex hands Hugh his bags? Personally, I always thought the lack of a hat was a dead give-away.
SecretMargo
April 27th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
114: Gabe, I thought you were making some sort of joke, but then I checked in with the Duck and … no, it’s more like an honest question. That seems to be an intentional likeness, and a fairly flattering one. Josh’s recent DC-based public recognition would have conceivably put him on the radar …
As for the “joke” — is this an uncharacteristically liberal-esque critique of the administration’s fiscal policy, wherein even the most qualified workers are finding themselves downsized and discriminated against by companies looking to save money by intentionally hiring the barely qualified for part-time/benefits-and-seniority-free temporary posts?
Oh right, that’s not really possible. The Duck’s just imagining the homeless to be condescending liberal types in turtlenecks who are too lazy to put in an honest day’s work. Carry on, then.
SecretMargo
April 27th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Oh, one more thing before I stop frantically posting every damn thought that flits through my head –
Rex Morgan, you are such a petty, petty bitch. Call me?
cheech wizard
April 27th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
105- zeeba – I think the hooker was Angela, in a blonde wig. And bustier. And fishnet stockings. And – um, where were we?
Oh, yeah. Cedric’s wife’s a ‘ho. But I’m sure he’s ok with that, since they’re all very sophisticated and continental about that kind of thing. I’m sure she doesn’t mind his getting his jollies by undressing street punks at gunpoint.
My actual prediction is that Angela is posing as a French Whore for her sociology research – and that her comment about being an art student was a snippy little dig at Neddy when she realized who she and Abby must be. Although seriously – what are the odds of a chance encounter like that in a city the size of Paris?
man behind the curtain
April 27th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Unsolicited Batting Advice St Classic Thong
Josh this would make great stripper attire as well.
Motorposus
April 27th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Hey, Josh,
The thong is a piece de resistance, so I’m done making fun of your vaguely/incontrovertibly obscene clams.
But I do wonder whether you’ve considered a Curmudgeon gear design contest.
Mack
April 27th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Today’s Crankshaft bores me both as a comic book fan and as an archaeology major.
NotThatGuy
April 27th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
AAAAAAAAAAAAH! CHARTERSTONE IS FULL OF ZOMBIES!!!1!!!!
commodorejohn
April 27th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I HAVE FOUND THE LONG-LOST INSPIRATION FOR SLYLOCK FOX.
bats
April 27th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
34. Oh, man, what a great story premise, and One Ripped from the Headlines (I assume they have headlines in Canada)…
With all the incidents of female teachers getting it on with their underage male students (we just had a situation like this here in Tucson…a 24yo student teacher…a 17yo kid…at a Catholic high school, no less), can you imagine the uproar of Liz being caught with Ger?
Man, maybe she’ll end up sharing a cell with Howard. THEN we’ll see who the bitch is!
O’Fogeyette
April 27th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
99 gh: Thanks. I posted pretty much before I read anything except Josh’s comments because I knew I would be out all morning, and because this has been ticking me off for a few days. The question is, why is Lynn doing this? Do you suppose she has an actual reason? Maybe she wants us to feel so bad when she ends the current strip that we won’t miss it. Nah….
116 Dean Booth: You live in Columbus? That explains everything! (Columbus: hotbed of great humorists. Something in the drinking water, I think, it certainly isn’t the ambience.)
DTGT: Back to the alien theory! No real humans have hands as stiff and stylized as those displayed in panel two. And Clambake only has two fingers on his. I’m thinking Clambake is the alien officer primarily responsible for figuring out what earth life forms are like. So far, he’s not doing too badly considering that the aliens themselves are sessile mushroom-beings from the planet Zygon.
Preteena: Disgusting, but very funny today. And I think this may be a rerun. http://news.yahoo.com/comics/preteena
Foobar
April 27th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
151- You assume incorrectly. Our sentences don’t even begin with capital letters. And all the verbs in the story are placed, alpabetically, in a footnote on the back page of the sports section, which only covers eating contests and spelling bees.
Foobar
April 27th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Or is it “alphabetically”? We Canadians are an exotic and mysterious people.
Mibbitmaker
April 27th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
MW: V&V – Are they siblings? Are they spouses/dating? Vera and Von: the White Stripes of Charterstone. And if Von is Christopher Walken, is he going to try and get Vera interested in investing in cowbells?
(DT)GT: The feminine hand on Mark Jetski’s wrist isn’t his, it’s Jess from FW. She’s really desperate to have sex with someone by now. Jeske = Jess Key.
Curtis: Maybe the big words are there because they’re checking out indy graphic novels, where the variety of non-genre stories allow that sort of thing? Oh, yeah, right; comic strip creators took an oath to keep the comic books = superheroes the only way the medium addresses the subject. They just looove Tom Batiuk!
If they were checking out old Mad reprint volumes, Barry would be going, “potrzebie… furshlugginer…axolotl… osszefogva…. veeblefetzer”
Foobaphobe
April 27th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Re commodorejohn’s reference: Everything on the Lileks site is well worth a visit. It’s far and away the funniest site I know of. His Gallery of Regrettable Food is without peer! But check out the rest, because it’s all good. And his books, especially Mommy Knows Worst, are (you have to believe me on this), funnier than every Family Circus, Funky, and Foob ever written.
D.A.Pennington
April 27th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Awww April.
Only if you had more time.
Time.
Like in 9 months, you’ll have plenty of time to take care of that bastard you would have spat out of your twat.
I’m sure your saintly family would do what’s best and wisk the child away to some adoptive parents up north in MittaRomneyForPresidentwaki where he’d be raised as a tribe member.
Years later, as the tribe grew and grew more restless, he’d descend south, as a warrior, slaying the white men as he travled down to Toronto.
Pillaging and taking the women and children as slaves.
Yet only to be stopped by a “very special” Degrassi Jr High.
Poteet
April 27th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I just wrote a long comment and tried to post it and the evil spirits made it disappear. That’s just one of the bad things that have happened since I started reading DT. I’m going away to sulk.
Proteus
April 27th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
O’Fogeyette and gh: I figured that the gimmehead lips and pop eyes were Lynn’s way of drawing April with makeup on. To symbolize adolescence – that she thinks she’s older than she is. Though why she keeps her makeup on 24/7 may have something to do with needing characters to stay recognizable. Unlike Gill Throp, where indistinguishable characters are part of the je ne se qua.
Buck Ripsnort
April 27th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
[Insert brilliant connection of FW incest set-up to MW Vera&Von incest set-up]
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
#152 O’Fogeyette
The question is, why is Lynn doing this?
Beats me. But coming at this topic somewhat more dispassionately than some [you know who you are], it seems she’s growing progressively more sadistic toward her characters and readers. Assuming she has a horde of true fans, why would she want them to be blind-sided overnight with such physically unappealing characters [frumpy Liz and April the . . . Mess] who apparently aren’t going away? If this is her version of New Cokeâ„¢, the Lynnions may turn on her. Maybe Lynngineering’s right and it’s all Michael’s dementia at work. Or maybe Lynn’s jealous that the bad drawing in (DT)GT gets more attention here than Foobville does.
cheech wizard
April 27th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
FW – ok, Jessica really, really wants to. And Darin really, really doesn’t. So she’s going to get really, really pissed, accuse him of not really liking her, really, and dump him. For real. Next, she takes up with some jock who you just know doesn’t have Darin’s forebearance, and every time he sees them together he can’t help but visualize them going at it like rabbits on Red Bull. Then of course, she’s going to get pregnant, and probably HIV as well, and end up giving birth to an autistic AIDS baby with a cleft pallet. Who then dies.
Oh, and did I mention the jock dumps her as well?
Meanwhile, the whole business has put Darin off from finding his real parents, at least until Jessica comes weeping back to him. He files the paperwork and gets the results back a week after Lisa finally succumbs to her cancer. Now he’s haunted by Jessica’s words that she would have done anything to know her father and realizes he’s blown the opportunity he had. This is about the time he’s diagnosed with ALS.
He and Jessica get back together and finally share a tender moment, gently wrapping their lips around the muzzle of the shotgun the other is holding before pulling the triggers on the count of three. Crankshaft bitches about having to mop up afterwards because the janitor’s out sick with the Ebola virus. The end.
AppleGirl
April 27th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
FOOB – Weird. I just read Liz’s monthly letter, and she describes the type of basement-in-old-house apartment she specifically wants to avoid, yet that’s exactly what she ended up with. She wanted to be in an elevator building. How hard would that be to find? Get on the waiting list, and they’ll call you when one becomes available.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
#159 Proteus
Or that.
#158 Poteet
: (
If I could do a frowny thing with a teardrop, I would.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
April 27th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
#143 SecretMargo — Yeah, today’s Mallard Fillmore kinda threw me, too, because as you point out, it’s consistent with two different interpretations. It can either be read as sincerely lamenting the fact that educated people often find it difficult to obtain work in their field, or else it can be read as insinuating that the overeducated are silly timewasters who ought to have been learning more marketable skills.
monkeylamb
April 27th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
#102, #129 The “Han Shot First” shirts are from the webcomic PVP http://www.pvponline.com/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/pvp/swag/712c/
Lynngineering
April 27th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
FOOB Oral Exam:
“mouthwash”
Well, “mouthwash” could of course have red-flagged a lot of readings, but as it’s Michael’s Coma Fantasy for me, I see it as belonging to the usual bad script – April is giving a description of her situation and suddenly offers some info detail which wouldn’t be necessary, it’s not like Liz would stop the story to ask “How did you get rid of the wine stench” – she has NO idea of this total reality herself. Just didn’t have some resonance which it really, really, should. In quotes.
“Lips” – well, Dee anyway transformed to a doll-bot, so the lips are sort of part of the package. Liz acquired the package of pillow-lips, but mostly in combination with that cow-expression she is given occasionally, I guess it depends on artist and scene plot requirements. You don’t need those lips when brushing the dog, (and I do mean brushing the dog, no metaphor. ) Now since Michael’s coma kicked in, it seems all the woman except Mom have those lips when he focuses on them, and in Apri’s case it is just over-the-top drag queen as search pattern…
“open mouth”
as in Elly expression – I won’t go there….
Anon
April 27th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
What is wrong with guzzling mouth wash? Mallard Fillmore has done it for years with no noticeable effects.
lesles
April 27th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
#162 cheech wizard – i don’t know … it seems a bit upbeat for FW.
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
#163 gh – : º (
Lammergeier13
April 27th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Josh: Thanks, this whole torturous ‘teen angst’ thing so prominant in FW and FOOB is really getting to me. It’s like an angst-ridden train wreck that I can’t look away from. God, I wish all the characters in FW and FOOB would end up in an angst-ridden train wreck. Anyway, I just have to add: #157 D.A.Pennington, #162 Cheech Wizard, I love you guys.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
#170 willethompson
I’ll forward it. Although it looks a bit like Emmett Kelly. But he was a sad clown!
Poteet —
: º ( ™wt
Wally LimpingBean
April 27th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
If the teens in the Funkyverse were in a train wreck, they would walk away.
But then be diagnosed with brain CANCER.
cheech wizard
April 27th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
#157 D.A.Pennington, #162 Cheech Wizard, I love you guys.
Is this a Bud Light ad? But thanks, Lammer.
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
#155 Mibbitmaker
I come to you in my hour of need. I was trying to work the Yiddish word for problems into a parody recently and I could not find it on Google, but I remember it from an old Mad Magazine Tarzan parody: “They got such ____.” I think it starts with tsch or some other unlikely consonant combo. You got that issue?
If you don’t, I’m guessing Uncle Lumpy, linguist extraordinaire, might.
Uncle Lumpy
April 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
#175 Aw, gh -
You mean tsuris?
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
#176 Uncle Lumpy
How could it be otherwise? I bow to your eminence.
Tabby Lavalamp
April 27th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I suspect the long nails on Mark’s left hand are so he doesn’t feel gay if he looks down while masturbating.
Lammergeier13
April 27th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Archie: Ha, ha! Jughead’s going to give himself cancer! I really wish Archie would just suddenly slam on the breaks.
Blondie: Dagwood’s carpool should take advantage of the fact that they’re out in the woods, far from the city, and finally get rid of the dumb galoot. Of course, with his snoring sounds, it’ll sound like someone is slaughtering a bull moose with an adnoid problem. Then Mark Trail will arrive to save said moose using his Left Hook ‘O Justice, especially on that heavily mustachioed guy in the back seat.
Blondie
April 27th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Dan’s back! Yay! And it looks like he brought an Americanized Otto form a couple stories back. Yay!
MonkeyHawk
April 27th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I’m so proud to be associated with a cyber community that can mention linguistics without using the term “cunning.” It’s almost as if we’re grown-ups or something.
On the yesterthread that mentioned sounds people learn and unlearn as they learn to speak, I was reminded of this piece. It’s a long listen, but fascinating.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21
“Musical Language”
fizzy logic
April 27th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
#176 – Oy. Uncle Lumpy’s a real maven when it comes to languages, and he’s a real mensch,too. I’m glad he’s part of our mishpoche – he keeps us from looking like a bunch of schmendriks.
Allie Cat
April 27th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
#118 – Queek – I loved today’s Rhymes With Orange. In fact, my mother called me to make sure I’d seen it because she loved it too!
When’s the last time anyone’s mom called them about, oh, I dunno – Hi & Lois?
Steve S
April 27th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Mr. Wilson is only feigning sleep because he’s losing so badly at checkers to a semi-retarded seven-year-old. Look at that board!
gh
April 27th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
#182 fizzy logic
Maybe we go from curminions to curmishpoche? Works for me!
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
So, instead of curmudgeons, we’re just a bunch ot alter-cockers? Oy! I could plotz!
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
OK, it was suggested way up the thread to work up something about DT’s Queen of Diamonds based on Queen’s ‘Killer Queen.’ Who lives in Queens, for all I know.
Killer Queen (of Diamonds)
VERSE:
She keeps the Kooh-i-noor diamond
in her pretty cabinet
A fistful of emeralds
in a hamster habitat
A couple of rubies
are pasted to her boobies
Beneath an outfit copied
From a playing caaaaard
Her watch needs no improvement
It has a multi-jeweled movement
(but her face would stop a clock)
CHORUS:
She’s the Killer Queen!
First she’s nice, now she’s mean!
Break your nose, bruise your spleen!
Guaranteed your ass to kick…
Got it, Dick?
She’ll hurt you with her Tae Kwan Do
Beat you ‘til your blood do flow…
Have a go?
VERSE:
She wanted all the candy
So she contracted with a gang of hoods
Then she robbed the robbers
And made off with the shiny goods
The Blue Eye of Mondozzi
Would dangle from her schnozz, she
Had a thing for jewelry
She was that way incliiiined
But then things stopped going right
She got into an awful fight
With a square-jawed named DICK!
CHORUS:
She’s the Killer Queen!
First she’s nice, now she’s mean!
Break your nose, bruise your spleen!
Guaranteed your ass to kick…
Got it, Dick?
She’ll hurt you with her Tae Kwan Do
Beat you ‘til your blood do flow…
Have a go?
BRIDGE:
Oh yeah for sure, she’s an angry lass –
Punch you in your Chester Gould!
All at once she sees the diamond
And she follows it to her doom!
Now she’s in a smokestack, smokestaaak,
(She’s sure dead, you betcha)
CHORUS:
She’s the Killer Queen!
First she’s nice, now she’s mean!
Break your nose, bruise your spleen!
Guaranteed your ass to kick…
Got it, Dick?
She’ll hurt you with her Tae Kwan Do
Beat you ‘til your blood do flow…
Have a go?
Bill_S
April 27th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
GT: in the third panel, I can’t help hearing Clambake saying “When you can snatch the forkball from my hand, Grasshoppah, it will be time for you to leave”
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 27th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
#64. Hogen, my guess is that the land won’t be suitable for an airport because it contains too many birds (greatly increasing the risk of bird strikes). Mark will catch them out on their land clubbing baby birds. Or he’ll find the eyehook they use to hang their bats and deduce the entire plan.
stinky pete
April 27th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Completing a series of lists that really doesn’t need completing, herewith a list of sidekicks to Canadian superheroes:
Bucky Boisbriand
Haddock Boy
Izzy Iqaluit
Ebony Whitehorse
Kid Chilliwack
Scrappy Leduc (alter ego of Gilles Archambault)
Harvey the Halifax Kid
Wilfred Laurier, aka Johnny Expo
Hamilton Tigercat
Nan Nipissing (sidekick to Sassy Saskatoon)
fizzy logic
April 27th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
#187 – wille – Dare I say brilliant?(diamond pun!) I certainly was able to follow the plotline better there than in DT. Love it! Mazel tov!
Galevav
April 27th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Dennis sure is mild now that he’s on Ritalin. On the other hand, he seems to be winning.
I’m waiting for the caption, “You know, some day this will probably be used against me as character evidence.” I suppose the days of Dennis actually causing trouble are gone. …Not that it was any funnier then, either.
I’m wondering exactly when Wilson suddenly got so chummy with the kid. Was there some kind of reconciliation strip, did Dennis ‘get religion’ and change his evil ways (sing those last four words), or is Mr. Wilson just lulling Dennis into a calm before he kills the kid for years of suffering?
It’s a little unsettling that the link to the “Clambake Thong” has apparently been opened on my computer.
Fetter Lumpische
April 27th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
#187 Wille
Lovely parody — I especially enjoyed “Mondozzi/schnozz, she”!
queek
April 27th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
183: at least since before BC was last funny. . . .
the RwO strip does give another reason why pirates are better than ninjas. *runs for cover*
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 27th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
#87 gh: “WHERE ARE THE MARGOING BOXCAR ANIMALS, ELROD??”
Sorry, gh, my guess is that we’re going to have ubiquiplanes for a few weeks. (That’s actually a bit too close to what I expect — I should have done one with a giant homeless person.)
Motorposus
April 27th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
stinky pete, I’d like to add to your list, but can’t figure out how to fit “Mtigwaki” in there.
Barfo "Barfy" Barfwell
April 27th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Re. Dennis the Menace and the “quietly died sitting up” comment: my sister’s boyfriend died yesterday while sitting in a chair two days after his sudden quadruple-bypass surgery. Winkerbean territory.
Jamus The Bartender
April 27th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Dick Tracy’s Crimestopper’s Textbook.
This week’s lesson. How to get rid of an inconvenient corpse.
If you want to avoid a lot of paperwork, and a lot of pain in the ass questions from those pansy liberals in Internal Affairs, a factory smokestack is usually the way to go.
Simply lure your victim…excuse me, the “fleeing suspect” in the direction of the industrial park, tell him/her things like” There’s nowhere you can run to. Give yourself up.” Invariably, he/she will find their way towards the smokestack in question and jump inside to keep from listening to you anymore. Problem solved.
There are those who absolutely swear by the “pig farm” method of disposing of victims, but who has time to dismember a fleeing suspect? Not you. It does help if your handgun “accidentally” went off in the suspect’s direction, wink wink. Plus, even the most dedicated of “officers” from Infernal Affairs would think twice before bringing their DNA doohickeys and Discovery Channel gadgets to a pig farm.
And remember kids. Homeland Security is scanning your thought beans for YOUR PROTECTION! Think right. I’m Detective Dick Tracy.
Ukulele Ike
April 27th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Well, I love Clambake, but I don’t want to buy the t-shirt because it has two floating vaginas on it and I fear the ridicule of the populace at large.
However, I DID just buy a Molly-the-Bear shirt for a co-worker’s b-day gift. And A “Boat-Wrestling” shirt for myself, because Gadge Cubic looked so awesome in it as he lunged into that skiff.
Oh, and I would happily take a blowjob from FW’s Jess. Especially if she put that Hallo’ween French Maid outfit back on. Come on, Darin, get creative.
willethompson
April 27th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
#193 Fetter Lumpishe – Oy gevalt! Recognition from die ubermenschen! Und on der Shabbes! Mazel tov! Und this ter der goyim! (Goyim, nicht sheygetz!)
pesch
April 27th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Ike, from your mouth to God’s ear!
Gabe
April 27th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Curses upon you, exceeded server bandwith!
stinky pete
April 27th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Hey, we’re back! Go Bulls!
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 27th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
GT, 4/28: OMG, Ken Burger, catcher and grandson of Perry Mason’s nemesis, disses Clambake! Apparently, he thinks Clambake’s forkball advice is incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.
From Wikipedia: “Not known to many is the fact that Burger DID actually defeat Mason twice on the television series—once in The Case of the Terrified Typist.” MW should give him a call!
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 27th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I’ve heard that captal letters use more bandwidth than lowercase. Perhaps CHENNUX was the cause.
Uncle Lumpy
April 27th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
#206 Dean -
I blame #200 Wille – calling somebody “ubermenschen” invokes Godwin’s Law.
Poteet
April 27th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
# 206 — Dean, I immediately thought of Chennux, but he’s been impressively genial lately, so (with emphasis) I DON’T want to blame His Imperial Snarkiness unless he claims credit. Maybe we’re looking for another entity that has reason to hate CC. Maybe there were evil emanations from the Foobiverse.
MonkeyHawk
April 27th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
#206 — Dean Booth –
Trust me. After last weeks audit, Chennux can’t afford to buy a vowel, much less a capital.
Poteet
April 27th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
# 164 — Aww, gh, how very nice of you (sniff). Thanks, I feel better now.
# 172 — I can’t resist, sorry…
Don’t cry for me, willethompson..,
The truth is I never left you
And all my sulking
Was just self-pity
Because my comment
Was far from witty.
# 187 — BWAHAHA! Wille, I bow.
reader-who-posts
April 27th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Crock: Screw ethanol, now we have the technology for prune juice-powered wheelchairs! Or maybe it was the powerful release of her bowels that propelled the wheelchair to ticket-wothy speeds? That would be awesome…if by awesome I mean “unbelievable disgusting “.
FW: There is really a very simple, logical reason for Darin not to want to have sex with his girlfriend. Two words…penis cancer.
GT: When I was 16 I had an old man introduce himself to me, immediately compliment my big hands and say they would be perfect…and let’s just say my therapist and I are still trying to sort that out.
RMMD: It’s nice to see that the terrifying lost signal issue is resolved, but has anybody explained why the hell a doctor is picking up the son of the founder of a company he owns a whopping 500 shares of? If I owned stock in a company that can’t afford to get a limosine for it’s board members I’d sell as fast as I could.
Dean Booth (Tyler Bid Page)
April 27th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I forgot to mention that the summer before I started college I worked as a typist. After a week at the typewriter, however, I was promoted to Alphabetizer. And, because of my most awesome alphabetizing skillz (rooted in a thorough knowledge of the alphabet), I soon became manager of Alphabetizers. True.
Tad
April 27th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
#52
I don’t know about the Kristen Pfaff connection or anything, but I followed the link: Piranha Club went off the deep end somewhere along the line, and I think I have no choice but to alert the authorities.
Mibbitmaker
April 27th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
I don’t care for the remakeovers of Liz and April (Hey, Mibbit, join the club!). Besides the obvious, it reminds me of the Popeye theatricals in the 1940s. First, when Popeye (and sometimes Bluto) got his navy uniform for the war, he kept it long afterwards. More to the point, they – gasp! – changed Olive Oyl! It’s all like “Hey, we gotta update the beanpole. Give ‘er the modren goils’ hairdo; real fordies! An’, yep, some boobies, too. Why’s them two ol’ salts go al gaga over such a pipe cleaner broad, anyway? An’ no spinster outfit, for that madder.” (Okay, I like my fantasy animation executives talking like the cartoon characters of the time)
Tats
April 27th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
A3-G: A few days ago I said this:
A3-G: “Brr, Luann’s studio gives me the creeps. Oh, well. Luann is probably fine. I’ma get a churro!â€
I thought I was joking. Clearly I underestimated Margo’s reprehensibility as a person. Good show, Margo. Good show.
MW: Von, just like everything else in Vera’s storyline, is completely monotonous. I don’t know why I’m complaining about being bored by a Mary Worth strip; it’s like complaining about being stoned at a Phish concert.
FBoFW: April has a bit of the Vera Shields Syndrome, too, what with ending every strip with a horrified expression and a private thought — much, I’m sure, to the consternation of the other member of the conversation.
Mam'zelle Hepzibah
April 27th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Re: shirt designs, I’ve often thought Josh should do a Threadless kinda thing. The phrase challenge is issued (”Le plancher est tres froid!”), we all put up design notions, and the people decide! The winningest one, by sheer numbers alone, would get to go on CafePress. Lord knows Josh has enough to do just keeping us fully curmudgeoned day in and day out.
jailbird
April 27th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Josh. I am a mother. I certainly can’t walk around wearing a t-shirt with clams on it resembling a woman’s hoo-hoo, now can I?
Poteet
April 27th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
This is pathetic, but it’s late at night and I need the therapy.
Yesterday
I could read a strip and snark away
Now I-hate-DT is all I say
Oh I believe in yesterday
Suddenly
I’m no longer snarking wittily
There’s a sharp chin hanging over me
Oh yesterday came suddenly
Where’d my snarking go
I don’t know
I couldn’t say
Dick has fried my brain
Now I long for yesterday
Yesterday
Snark was such an easy game to play
Now it’s DT-ranting all the way
Oh I believe in yesterday…
Marion Delgado
April 28th, 2007 at 12:12 am
I want serious abasement. I want Anthony to take April’s virginity, with her blind drunk, at least. And get caught. and Mom Foob STILL insists Liz has to marry him. And Molester Foob Dad agrees. I want Grand Guignol, and I think Ms. Lynn Johnston is just the woman to deliver it!
Marion Delgado
April 28th, 2007 at 12:17 am
Oh, and when Luann dies pathetically in Alan’s arms, and her paintings ironically sell for more than Albert Pinkham Ryder’s original paintings, you will ALL regret your snarky remarks about this brilliant slice of postmodern life, reminiscent of “No Exit” reinvisioned as a reality TV show in a parallel world where Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo.
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 28th, 2007 at 12:21 am
The Saturday 9CL http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/4/28&name=9_Chickweed_Lane
does have a nice Looney Tunes hommage, I have to admit.
Trilobite
April 28th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Saturday, on chron.com, I think it was the 28th of April…
A3G: Alan is being pulled somewhere…by a strange sense of urgency…also known as “Time to make a late-night booty-call on LuAnn.”
Phantom: Finally. I was starting to think this storyline was going to end with the Phantom marrying Old Man Mozz, since he loves him so damn much.
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 12:44 am
4/28:
MT: Aaah! Run for your lives! Mega-Skunk spraying stink urine on downtown Cincinnatti!
Archie: I am embarassed to say this strip was so dumb it actually made me laugh.
Artist formerly known as Ben
April 28th, 2007 at 12:45 am
4/28
A3G: Alan, pulled on by a mysterious force, fails to notice the man in a straw boater doing a sweet soft shoe.
Ziggy: The bland little roundster’s pets are now plotting against him. I’m sure the police will find gruesome remains in the pantry within a couple of weeks.
SFx: Rough trade funny animals on meth! Especially disturbing are the cat’s multiple botched piercings.
FC: Dolly takes tattling to a new level by snitching on Jeffy to God.
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Gettin’ late, and if’n I did a full song parody it would be lost in the shuffle like my last few late nighters might have been, as a new thread will likely be up by the California morning, and only the serious read posts past 200 anyway.
So a few songs parodies have been trying to worm their way through my grey matter recently, with all this teen sex in the soaps, and I was close to a John Cougar Mellencamp “F-U-C-K in the U-S-A,” then decided to abort.
But that “Farmer and the Cowman should be Friends” song from Oklahoma! kept running through my head all day, and I have to get a little of it out or I’ll toss and turn all night. And before anyone points it out, I know Darin and Jess aren’t siblings, but so many occasional posters still think they are, and the cadence works…
Oh, Darin and his sister should have sex,
He should plow her like they saw on Cinemax.
But Darin is afraid to hose,
while Jess just wants to fuck his nose,
But that’s no reason why they cain’t have sex!
Mibbitmaker
April 28th, 2007 at 1:13 am
4/28:
MT: A skunk. Yeah, real subtle, Elrod!
JP: She was jealous of Neddy because she knew that beret girl and Cedric shared a homicidal need to destroy punky thugs.
MW: Good, Vera! Now, say the same thing to Mary and you’re home free.
RMMD: Mr. Eliot (too stingy to have an extra “l” or “t” in his name) is either Dr. Westfall (sp?) from “St. Elsewhere” or Les Nessman from WKRP.
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 1:17 am
4/28 TDIET:
Didja ever notice that everyone in this panel owns a wide-screen TV but puts the couch four inches perpendicular from it, so they have to watch it sideways over their shoulders? And they keep bright lamps on top of the TV, which must obscure the view of the programming? Do they destroy their eyes and need chiropractors? Oh-h-h-h yeah-h!
Tats
April 28th, 2007 at 1:18 am
A3-G: He’s being pulled to help Luann? Oh, dear God, Albert Pinkham Ryder’s ghost is Lassie.
FBoFW: She’s breaking up with Gerald over that? Man. Her birthday song was full of [BOXCAR].
TDIET: I guess the husband’s clothes were in those boxes? Oh, yeah-h!
MW: Vera Shields says “thumbs up to standing your ground!” But her eyes say “I think I left the iron plugged in…”
rich
April 28th, 2007 at 1:29 am
DT: Oh, brother…I get the feeling Dick is delivering that quip in a bad Groucho Marx impression: “…but this is ridiculous”
Archie: At least he didn’t use it on his “male.”
RMMD: “…by the way, I loved you in ‘Working Girl.’”
JP: Wouldn’t Abbey’s next line be “…and does your wife have a reason to be jealous of my 18-year-old daughter, Cedric?”
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 1:44 am
#229 rich:
Even worse, Neddy is 16. But that is the age of consent in Canada and probably France.
AppleGirl
April 28th, 2007 at 1:53 am
RMMD – Cedric is strange, but he’s so buff I luv him anyway.
Chennux – Text me!
Mibbitmaker
April 28th, 2007 at 1:53 am
FOOB: Yep, and later, Liz is going out for beers with Eric, Sudds, and Chipper. Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger might drop by, too.
A3G: Strange sense of urgency, eh? Like Mark Trail’s figuring out the Diver Dan scheme: getting it after it’s been obvious for ages (at least to us!).
FC: He only knows that much, Dolly. Jeffy’s……… stupid.
Lockhorns (aka, The Hateeachothers): Actually, when you’re not looking, she’s taking that thing to haul your car to the car crusher.
(DT)GT: Uh-oh. It’s probably about time he was called on all the furshlugginer advice, but I’d really like to see this scenario happen to Mary Worth.
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Today’s anachronistic Peanuts:
Most who will read this will be totally dumbfounded by the prices and unable to fathom the possibility. I actually remember when candy bars were a nickel and a small popcorn was a dime. I’m not sure I remember movie prices being thirty-five cents but I didn’t pay for the movie, a grownup did, when I was little.
My first job that had a payroll check with taxes deducted was when I was fifteen, in an ice cream store. A single-dip cone was nineteen cents, and with the penny tax it came to an even twenty cents. Yesterday I was in a Baskin-Robbins and that same cone was three-fitty. Have the prices for everything else gone up eighteen-fold in the past thirty years?
Jeez, I’m becoming a codger.
Len
April 28th, 2007 at 2:05 am
Grim Reapers to the left of me! Grim Reapers to the right of me! (Are there really more than ONE G.R.?)
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/4/28&name=9_Chickweed_Lane
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/4/28&name=Speed_Bump
rich
April 28th, 2007 at 2:05 am
233, Moon: No, you’re becoming a Plugger!
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 2:17 am
#218 Ah, My poor dear Poteet, my queen! Have you dicked the doorbell one time too often? Dear, dear queen of snark, rest your weary head on my shoulder and remember… Dick Tracy’s nose is useful as a bottle opener. Here, my queen: have a beer.
#187 willethompson: once again, a fully singable masterpiece! Except for the part where it says “Punch you in your Chester Gould” at which point I burst into uncontrollable laughter so I messed up the timing. But your work – flawless!
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 2:48 am
TDIET WHAT? They moved and lived there for a whole YEAR with all the boxes still piled up in a very visible room? Evidently they moved into a similar tract home where the only difference in the layout is the windows. But my word, they are some lazy sumbitches.
OOoooh! I found the differences, Slylock! The window is square, there’s boxes in the dark room, they are watching tv and there’s knicknacks on the end table! Did I get it right? Huh? …oh. never mind.
DtM Either Dennis is showing Margaret the worm in his mouth in the second panel, or that’s a very interesting tongue. wonder how it got that way, Joey?
Something about DtM’s artwork I want to mention here. Ever since its inception, Ketchum & company have drawn those little curliques on the characters’ elbows and knees. I would just like to take this opportunity right now to say, they gross me out. STOP IT! One of the many reasons I dislike this strip so much. Another reason is, its tired old ass is still in print. Take the windfall from the Dairy Queen ads and run, folks!
(DT)GT What? That young upstart dares to speak so boldly and dismissively to the Great Clambake? Who the hell do you think you are, boy; Mickey Freakin’ Mantle? You’re talking to CLAMBAKE, son! Call him CLAMBAKE!!
now go sit on the bench until I’m ready to get my Louisville bat/equalizer and get all Tinker to Evers to Chance on your scrawny little ass, because it will only take three strikes with it and you will be OUT.
rich
April 28th, 2007 at 2:49 am
FBOW: So our suddenly grown-up little April and her sis are having a heart-to-heart adult conversation, as equals, for the first time.
Well… as much as this Hallmark moment made me gag (and excusing the fact that after 30 years Johnston still doesn’t know how to draw a nose …or lips, for that matter) the artwork in today’s strip was top notch. There were a lot of nice subtle touches — Elizabeth’s glasses on the bed in panel 2, the cat getting up to leave in panel 4…
There’s also a pretty clear message being delivered that, as dopey and immature as April and Gerald’s relationship may be, it’s still considerably more substantial and grounded than anything likely to emerge from the doomed Wizabeth-Warren-Pornstachio triangle.
CrabbyGenes
April 28th, 2007 at 3:40 am
To #238 Rich: I get the idea somehow, that you might be a former FBOFW fan, like me. Or not? At any rate, it’s nice to see credit given where credit is due. You’re right about the artwork in the Saturday strip. And I say that even though I can’t stand the way Johnston draws some of her characters these days.
I have most of her book collections, and there is some superb artwork in the earlier books. I’m thinking of the fill-in sketches that were printed between some of the comics. Michael and Elizabeth were growing up when I was raising my own kids, and some of the typical family moments Johnston captured were priceless. A few that come to mind–a drawing of 3-year-old, wide-awake Elizabeth continuing to read her own bedtime story after (a much younger) Elly has fallen asleep on the bed beside her. Elly sitting at a table in her bathrobe staring fixedly into space while toddler Elizabeth combs her (Elly’s) hair and makes it into a wild hairstyle. An eight-year-old Michael with a devilish look on his face, plotting some mischief against his hapless younger sister.
And I remember some great comic sequences too, particularly one in which Elizabeth flushes five toothbrushes down the toilet. I still laugh out loud when I remember that one. Why is the recent similar series when widdle-Robin flushes Ned down the toilet so UN-funny? I still don’t understand what in the world happened to this strip, why it has gone so downhill.
Please pardon my serious tone in a blog full of snarks. But God, this comic used to be so great!
dreadedcandiru2
April 28th, 2007 at 5:25 am
239 Well, CrabbyGenes, I’m pretty sure that if you were to ask Lynn about her characters and artwork have gone down the crapper, she wouldn’t have the foggiest notion what you were saying. In her mind, the artwork is still as good and the characters as likeable as when then the thing started. That’s the reason guys like me hate the strip so much; it turned into a steaming lump of shit and its creator doesn’t even realize it.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 5:46 am
No need to apologize, CrabbyGenes. I sometimes get into serious territory myself. And I agree with you, I can recall a time long long long ago when I enjoyed FBoFW. But the level of common sense, humor, and timeliness, to say nothing of reality check-ability, has taken a nosedive way past the line of acceptance with me. I personally think Foob has marketed itself so much, the handlers have forgotten what got them there, it’s just a shrill shell of itself now. It’s the same way for Garfield, BC, and yes to later Peanuts. Strips that drag on go into the danger zone of losing their souls.
In my humble opinion, of course. :)
Plasma
April 28th, 2007 at 5:58 am
I don’t get this Peanuts.
Is the joke that there was once a time when you could go to the movies for under a dollar?
Or is the joke about the stupidity of running decades-old strips years after the cartoonist has died?
Trilobite
April 28th, 2007 at 6:31 am
I don’t know, man. I think the joke is that reruns of classic Peanuts cartoons are still often the best thing on the entire comics page. I just haven’t figured out whether the joke’s on the readers, or on the newspapers.
calico
April 28th, 2007 at 6:42 am
#237 – You wrote “Ever since its inception, Ketchum & company have drawn those little curliques on the characters’ elbows and knees. I would just like to take this opportunity right now to say, they gross me out. STOP IT!”
Just like the little piggy-tail top that should grace each and every DQ cone and cup, eh? Haha!
I’ll never look at a DQ cone the same now.
Today’s strip would have been better if D Man just told Margaret to shove it up her trombone.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 7:07 am
#243 Trilobite: That’s what I mean; the classic Peanuts were funny and as they are placed in the pages next to strips like Momma and The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee and Sylvia, they are proof that the old strips outshine the new, hands down.
I meant to convey that the last years of Peanuts was strained for me. I quit following it so loyally because I quit caring. It brought the occasional smile to my face but that was it.
Peanuts never got as bad as B.C., though; never. Peanuts was like walking into a house and saying, “I’ve been here before, I wanted something different.” I walk into B.C.’s house and said, “I wonder how it is still standing with so many walls missing.”
Laura Jane
April 28th, 2007 at 7:08 am
GT: A Porkball!!?! Now I know for sure that McLaughlin is just making this stuff up. Porkball, indeed. During coming weeks we’ll probably have to watch Clambake introduce:
The Stinkball
The Ballball
The Thrustball
The Blueball
The Hairyball
The Taintball
The Bendoverball
Oh wait…he’s teaching Mark the Forkball. Nevermind.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 7:10 am
There’s a DQ just down the street from me, calico. I might go in and have a cone in your honor. But you’re right; I may have to close my eyes and get rid of the little curl on top and that’s gonna be messy. :)
Today’s strip should have said: “You can’t play first fiddle either, and that’s for damn sure!”
Frank Parsnip
April 28th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Crouching Dog, Hidden Snake
(a two-panel comic in which the words are, as always not synched to the mouths)
Von: Very good… Where did you learn your kung-fu?
Vera: I went to the Shao-lin Temple to learn how to beat the Manchu and to avenge my father.
Von: Let’s spar some more.
Vera: OK.
Frank Parsnip
April 28th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Betcha Clambake can throw all sorts of freaky pitches with his hand only having two fingers.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 7:24 am
#242 Plasma: Holy crap, when was today’s Peanuts originally run?
Thirty-five cents for the movie. Okay, maybe 1955 or so.
Ten cents for a popcorn. Hmm, They had ten cent bags when I was a kid in the 60’s and into the seventies.
A nickel for a candy bar? 1912?!
Interrobang!
We had Buck Night at our local drive-in theater on Tuesdays. Every car would get in for a dollar a car. Then everyone decided to try to pile into cars and trucks like frat boys used to cram into telephone booths, until the manager got wise and changed it so the whole carload would get in for a dollar a person. Of course, all that trouble just to watch Pillow Talk or The Sons of Katie Elder, or the year the theater showed The Longest Day every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night ALL SUMMER LONG.
I still love that movie, though.
But I digress.
Ukulele Ike
April 28th, 2007 at 7:38 am
#233, #250: I recently located my old copies of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S COMICS and NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VERY LARGE BOOK OF COMICAL FUNNIES.
Y’know how you go into a comix shop these days and an “album” (oversized softbound book, as opposed to a comic magazine) runs you something like $29.95?
In 1975, these two ‘Poons, thickly packed with delicious humor, each sold for $2.50. TWO FIFTY.
And I remember paying around twenty bucks back then for a “lid” of “grass,” instrumental to the full enjoyment of the above volumes.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Crap.
According to this I’m a Plugger.
And according to this one of my co-workers is guesting in Archie today.
Gadge Cubic, Mole Preener: We found that runaway you were looking for, here.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 7:48 am
#251 Ukelele Ike: Back in the day when living was cheap and life wasn’t.
And “Inna Gadda Davida” could make that bag stretch even further!
O’Fogeyette
April 28th, 2007 at 8:00 am
218 Poteet: GREAT Parody!
DTGT: Ken Burger must die! He’s dissed our beloved CLAMBAKE!
9 CL: HAHAHAHA! It’s very funny today, even though it’s Thorax.
A3G: True story: When I lived in NYC I once felt I was being pulled somewhere with a strange sense of urgency. It turned out a crazy lady on the bus had grabbed my muffler and was trying to drag me out into traffic.
MT: Why are Diver Dan and Rex Morgan plotting to sell land that is wholly occupied by a 90-foot tall skunk?
commodorejohn
April 28th, 2007 at 8:10 am
#234 – Yes, there are. Many.
FOOB – So, let’s recap…April and Gerald have a totally, 100% mutual, nobody-pressuring-anybody macking session. Gerald tells his buddies about it (kinda dumb to risk Mama Foob hearing about it, but hey, teenagers lack the capacity for rational thought, as everyone knows,) which April totally did not ask him not to do – I mean, since every teenage male in this strip is at heart a stereotypical sleaze, and since most guys that age in the real world would brag about it, it’s a friggin’ given that FOOB teens are going to talk. Now, despite her significant part in the whole affair (as they say, it takes two to tango,) and despite the fact that she made no indication this was to remain secret, April is pissed enough about it to consider breaking up with him. And to top it all off, Liz, who’s given Paul the cold shoulder ever ince their breakup, and who raspberries Warren just for having to miss a date, describes herself as someone who can remain “just friends” AND THEN GOES ON TO MAKE HERSELF THE MARTYR. This strip is like a symphony of narcissism. But don’t worry, Granthony awaits with open mustache. And hey, April, I’m sure it will be revealed that he has a younger brother.
ThisWas
April 28th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Everyone’s A Critic
If Josh ever wants a Coat of Arms for Comics Curmudgeon, today’s ‘Non Sequitur’ might be a good prototype.
I enjoy the 24-hour snarkage here at CC. But sometimes I am a tiny bit sympathetic to the cartoonist who has to crank out 6 or 7 triptychs per week, under deadline, and be consistently amusing or insightful.
Was there ever any feedback in the archives from cartoonists writing in their own defense or are there any relevant blogs which I should wander off and read?
jules
April 28th, 2007 at 8:42 am
4/28 – (DT)GT: Oh nice! Mark Jeske is a southpaw, thereby rendering moot my entire manicure rant from yesterday. Oh well, at least he’s treating his pitching hand with the love and care it deserves…
FW: There goes Darin into the dark, unattended post office…I figure he’ll be mugged, and then Lisa will come in to check her PO box, and find her long-lost boy lying there bleeding to death, and she’ll save him. Or maybe she’ll find him, but not in time – this is Funky Winkerbean, after all. No happy endings in Funkytown!
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 8:57 am
#256 ThisWas: Hey, if we could do it we would do it, and I for one and I’m fairly sure everyone else, admire cartoonists for having the guts to try. There are a few who raise our ire, but for the most part we’re just pickin’.
There may be a few feedbacks from actual cartoonists in the archives, although I don’t recall seeing many. I can only remember talking to Mark Tatulli from Lio, who happens to be talented and a very nice fellow too. Cartoonists are generally cranking out 6 or 7 triptychs per week so I don’t know if they come here specifically to get feedback for their work or not.
Yes, everyone is a critic. Everyone. That’s why this is called the COMICS CURMUDGEON; it is understood that we are going to be cranky and snarky about some strips. That’s why we have 24-hour snarkage.
There are a lot of strips I do enjoy and I will mention how much I like them. Many strips I don’t respond to because I have nothing in particular to say about them, good or bad. I’m sympathetic to the cartoonists, but like actors they place themselves out in the middle of the open where others can see the fruits of their labors.
Lynngineering
April 28th, 2007 at 8:57 am
FBOFW:
Sure, we all know there was once a FOOBville in Canada which gave some space between the characters that consisted of normal light (not haloes) and air to breathe (not sanctified) and experiences that more closely resembled an everyday continuity and reality, or at least reality-check every now and then. And no, the woman didn’t all have to turn into Elly nor have collagen-implants.
The production of the strip FBOFW became it’s own lead character, and it felt like some hidden psychology a bit too upfront at times. I don’t have a problem with the marketing – that may actually help to force a balance or give character’s a well needed stability. I have a problem with the strip itself – Lynn – becoming the story. As more her life enters in, she scripts her real storyline of success etc.. as more the strip flattened out.
Thus my belief in considering it Michael’s fantasy since the fateful fire. It avoids just following Lynn’s route, and its strange need to take her characters down the road she insists upon. Instead it just makes it readable, in my mind at least. And like the train-wreck FBOFW is now, I want to watch it go till the tracks get set up in a closed-circuit in September.
That’s the difference to Mary Worth et al. Those are to infinity and beyond, as Josh pointed out, even entropic if not moving backwards in time. But they always were in a way. FBOFW changed course somewhere.
For me, Michael’s dreams also account for the strip’s underlying darker tones, the unaccountable spiralling inwards into fantasies and childish mind-games where he, King to be, and then the family is center and safe, and the world is not. The narcissistic to extreme routes further on to paranoia, and here too.
The recent “conversation” between April and Liz just screws every character up – it sounds like the immature Michael’s idea of how his sisters would speak about relations with boys. The non-symbolic “Mouthwash” is the hardest word there, and revealing, Michael wants them all to be washed of any contact, and “dirty” sides, rather than probably what they REALLY would be saying, feeling and being PISSED about…
And this is just him in autodrive, just going on to plot out Liz’s further fall…
ChefMike
April 28th, 2007 at 9:07 am
FC: Dolly shouldn’t be concerned about that. If he starts reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards, however…
Curtis: I agree with others whove said it before that using overly sophisticated adjectives, especially just to complete an insult, is a waste of breath.
MT: Mark is going to have to come down to these guys with some stern words, and Fists O’ Justice to keep them from building yet another airport too close to his Federally protected Wildlife reservation. The arrival of the giant skunk in the last panel just tells me this plotline’s gonna stink.
stinky pete
April 28th, 2007 at 9:07 am
233 Moon, According to the consumer price index, prices have quintupled since 1972 (35 years) and have gone up roughly 10 times since 1947 (60 years).
According to Box Office Mojo, average ticket prices in 1945 were 35 cents; in 1972 they were $1.70. Adjusting those prices for the CPI, the 1945 price comes to about $3.50, the 1972 price comes to about $8.50, in today’s dollars.
In Peanuts’ heyday (early ’60s) average ticket prices were about a buck.
Of course, one problem with the CPI is that it does not take into account changes in quality. There’s no way to compare a TV in 2007 to a TV in 1972; many of the things we buy today did not exist in 1972. Whether movies are any better today than they were 35 years ago is another question.
SecretMargo
April 28th, 2007 at 9:20 am
256: I think ‘Wylie’ himself was humourless enough to leave a thin-skinned comment a while back:
http://joshreads.com/?p=457
As I said re: Mallard Fillmore, when you actually hate a strip, there’s little fun in the snark. You gotta have the love to make the myopic attention to and riffing on minutiae resonant (as the depth of feeling in the FBoFW comments reveal). I love words, and usually grin when reading Curtis, which is why the current “big words” storyline gets directly under my skin without passing GO or collecting $200. “Incongruous”! Aaugh! That one really gets to me! I’m still mad! Or am I … dissentious?
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
April 28th, 2007 at 9:22 am
The unspoken final thought in today’s FOOB:
Liz: “But… it’s really, really hard.”
April (thinking): “So was Gerald!”
Unrelatedly, I was quite pleased yesterday to find this reference in the timeline of history in “America: The Book,” published by those fine folks from The Daily Show:
“749 A.D.: First printed newspaper appears in China; contains only obituaries, ‘Funky Winkerbean’.”
SecretMargo
April 28th, 2007 at 9:26 am
259: Good God, you’re a good writer, Lynngineering. Speaking of loving words and all.
Lynngineering
April 28th, 2007 at 9:34 am
#264 – this thread had nice twists in it today
Sheilagh
April 28th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Curtis is just lame. If anyone were going to use “big words” to excoriate Curtis, they’d go with stuff like “rebarbative”, “limaceous,” or “gelogenic.” Does Billingsley have any clue what “vehement” and “incongruous” MEAN? “Vehement” isn’t opprobrious at all, and “incongruous” is just, well, incongruous in this context.
I’m just sayin’. The mot ain’t sufficiently juste.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 9:43 am
#259 Lynngineering -
FOOB became its own lead character – I think that’s exactly right. It went from “I can’t wait to put what Elizabeth did into the strip!”, to “What should Elizabeth do for THE STRIP?” When characters serve this big dead mechanical thing, it’s no wonder their motivations seem arbitrary from a human perspective.
That’s why your coma metaphor is so scary apt. I also think it’s why people hate this strip, instead of giving it a shoulder-shrug. These characters will do anything at all to serve THE STRIP — as though the audiences isn’t even there any more.
It also suggests that the problem isn’t that the characters are based on Johnston’s kids — it’s that Johnston’s kids aren’t around any more, so the characters have lost their footing in real human motivation.
I used to really like FOOB, but now it just irritates me. And Johnston should never, ever give interviews.
stinky pete
April 28th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Re Curtis, I saw part of the joke as the misuse of the big words. Most 10-12 year olds would not know those words, so is it surprising they’re misused?
Cabbage
April 28th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Maybe Clambake-san can teach him the Gyroball. In all seriousness, throwing a split finger is probably no worse for the shoulder than any other breaking pitch.
Of course, the best pitch to throw at the high school level is the old take-the-other-team-out-drinking-the-night-before-the-game ball.
SecretMargo
April 28th, 2007 at 10:00 am
267: I understood the humour to lie in being surprised that a little kid suddenly busted them out correctly, which is what made it galling when they weren’t, especially since they are almost, but not actually, appropriate. So it seems more like the author doesn’t quite know how to use those words, or is banking on his audience’s vagueness in that regard, and either of those options is maddening.
I’m correcting papers right now, which probably makes me more sensitive to the issue than others, perhaps. But like my man Rex, it’s the petty stuff that really gets me going. Rowwr! Usage complaints!!
And once more: “incongruous”? Ugh. Sheilagh said it best: not a mot juste but a mot that’s just lame.
Josh
April 28th, 2007 at 10:17 am
#261 SecretMargo — Thanks for putting up the link to that Wiley visit so I didn’t have to. I don’t know for a fact that those messages came from The Man Himself, but he is notoriously thin-skinned. When Scott Kurtz, author of the incredibly popular Webcomic PvP contemplated offering his comic to newspapers for free if they’d include a URL to his site, Wiley went completely ballistic. More info can be found, of course, on the Internet:
http://www.websnark.com/archives/2004/12/wiley_blinks.html
Mark Tatulli (of Lio and Heart of the City) comments here on occasion, as does Ces Marculiano (writer of Sally Forth, who has apparently taken to amping up the Ted-Sally sex quotient specifically to make me feel oogy). The only other comments I’ve ever gotten from artists and their associates have been a couple from Chris Browne (current Hagar the Horrible artist) and a couple more from his son, who seemed kinda pissed at fellow commentors whom he felt were being mean to his dad but didn’t argue with anything I wrote.
I should add that other than Wiley, every cartoonist I’ve ever had contact with has been incredibly nice and gracious to me, even if I had been mean to their strips. I think they’re all generally actually really nice people, not least because (a) they’re naturally funny and good-natured, (b) being a cartoonist is kind of a dream job and who cares what some jerk on the Internet says and (c) if you have the slightest bit of self-awareness, it’s hard to take yourself super-seriously if your job is professional cartoonist.
Josh
Sheilagh
April 28th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Ha! I emailed Wiley once, and his response had “I am a thin-skinned dick” written all over it. Glad to know it wasn’t personal :-)
Key Lime Pie
April 28th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Those Charterstone hallways are like Grand Central Station.
calico
April 28th, 2007 at 10:35 am
#272 – Is Key Lime Pie another Mary Worth specialty?
What does Mary do on her days off the strip, I wonder?
Re: Mark Tatulli, I just want to say I really like “Lio” now.
Thank You.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 10:36 am
#270 Josh et al. -
R. Stevens of Diesel Sweeties showed up at the end of January. And David Willis of Shortpacked is a reader and occasional poster – his great Funky Winkerbean parody has more than a whiff of Josh hommage.
John C Fremont
April 28th, 2007 at 10:40 am
A3G – I think what’s really bugging me today is that Alan’s looking a little Nimoyish in that last panel. I mean young Nimoy, when he was a singing sensation, when he could be spotted in a Neru jacket on Mike Douglas. Even Alan’s shirt/sweater combo looks a little Star Trak inspired.
Foob – Adding to the issue of lips, my theory on those jelly doughnut looking things is that they’ve been punched in the mouth so many times for their endless sanctimonious speechifications, that their lips are permanently bruised and swollen. This starts at around the age of 16.
MT – Man that skunk is pissed off! Also, I meant to mention this earlier, but smiling Cherry Trail looks like Dr. Ruth Adams from This Island Earth / MST3KTM.
MW – Remember Wacky and Packy? If you do, you need help. None the less, it looks as though Von is quoting Packy – “Wha’d I do? Wha’d I do?!” And where did the crowd in the hallway go?
Phantom – So does this mean we are officially finished with the dropping-Mozz-off-at-his-house storyline? Drat! That was just getting interesting!
SFx – Ha! I already knew the answer to this one. I’d make a great third grader!
9CL – Yes, in my mind, Thorax even sounded like the WB sheepdog. Or would he have been the wolf that looked like Wile E. Coyote?
FW – The post office box key – great, Darin’s found another way to not have sex with his girlfriend.
JP – No way Neddy is as old as 18. And stop mocking the beret. She like’s fine that way.
Coffee – I’ve had way too much!
Killer Queen – At the time, I could never hear the “dynamite with a lazer beam” part without thinking filtering it through the lens of Good Times, so it always turned into “Dy-no-Mite with a lazer beam,” which made no more or less sense then the original. And what is there about adding a lazer beam to dynamite that would make it more effective? I ask you! Of course, now I hear it filtered through the lens of MST3KTM, and think about moths equipped with lightning bugs.
Has the new thread started yet?
I should nap now.
John C Fremont
April 28th, 2007 at 10:48 am
# 275 – Please ignore the word “thinking” from the above rant. Take that as you will.
odinthor
April 28th, 2007 at 10:51 am
To add my iota to Josh’s comments above: Going by my experience with cartoonists (Hey, Phil Yeh, you out there reading this? Brent here…) and writers of ha-ha stuff generally, they tend to look on everything as fodder for jokes anyway, so, any crack about what they’ve drawn/written, they’ve probably already thought of themselves in six different increasingly lurid versions. Same way, I’m sure they usually know we’re mainly just, um, joshing (so to speak) with a certain degree of affection. Fr’instance, I made a comment the other day about the guitar in TDIET looking to me more like a cello “or viola da gamba” (because of its large size relative to the size of the person playing it); but actually I find TDIET very enjoyable, interesting, worthwhile, and refreshingly “different.” And so, to those who might think that people here are just a bunch of bitter, spite-filled, venomous haters…well, yes, we’re that too, but we do that in our off-time as a change of pace.
MonkeyHawk
April 28th, 2007 at 11:02 am
The soda fountain at a drug store in the little Kansas town where I grew up kept the “nickel Coke” long after it was profitable. It’s where we all hung out after 6th and 7th grade, going next door to the record shop where we could listen to 45s “before we bought them,” but rarely bought them because they cost a dollar.
Downloads today? About a dollar.
Cokes today? About a dollar.
Three times the size of that quait little 6-oz. nickel Coke, but way more expensive at the Kwikee Mart.
I’m old enough to remember when a nickel candy bar only cost a dime. The long agonizing process was especially the crime of Curtis Candy Company, which kept the size of the wrapper the same for ages but kept reducing the size of Baby Ruths and Butterfinger bars.
For a brief time when I was really little, the Coke machine where my Dad worked raised its price from 5 to 7-cents. You couldn’t get a bottle with just a nickel; you had to add two pennies. But if you put in a dime, you didn’t get change.
It was an odd, even other-worldy time, when three or four uniformed attendants checked the oil, the air pressure in all the tires, and washed all the glass for five dollars’ worth of 28.9-cent-a-gallon gasoline. At least some of the uniformed men were half-wits who couldn’t get a job anywhere else, but made a relatively decent living, raised a family, and put food on the table for their half-wit families.
On my oldest sister’s 21st birthday, the entire family went to the fanciest restaurant in Kansas City, had five lobsters, and the most remarkable service I’ve ever received in a restaurant before or since. My Dad left a $10 tip and we were all both amazed, and agreed it was worth it. The waiter taught me how to eat a lobster, was there with a match almost before my Dad pulled out a cigarette, made us feel as if the only reason he’d awakened that morning was to serve us dinner.
So that $10 tip — depending on how you calculate inflation was what? $100 today? $300? I dunno — even when nickel candy bars cost a dime, was a big chunk of change.
Okay, so there’s a point to this: the “classic Peanuts” strips this week have brought back the phenomenon the feature became during its prime. “Happiness is…” was one of Shulz’s cultural icons. It was pre-Woodstock (the festival and the bird). It served the revolutionary 1960s as a bit of nostalgia even then, of childhood slights and plusses that, for Charlie Brown and the rest of us, were slipping away.
Which is why “Classic Peanuts” bugs me today. It’s not the 35-cent movie ticket or the nickel candy bar so much as the “Peanuts” characters when new were already nostalgic; pseudo-grown-ups in and of their time. I don’t think, when I was growing up, that I ever related to “Peanuts” characters as peers even when I was, I assume, about their age.
They always spoke to me as adults, with grown-up sensibilities, filtered through a 6-year-old’s logic. “Psychiatric Help — 5 Cents,” wasn’t about any kid-oriented experienc, but it told me a lot about grown-ups.
I don’t know which is worse; to have continnued “Peanuts” with new writers and artists into the 21st Century or going back 40 years into a different reality to remind us of an era that was slipping away even as the Lucy-pulls-away-the-football gags were new.
With the original creators at the drawing table, “Pogo,” and “Peanuts,” and maybe even “Dick Tracy” somehow reflected their times. The zombie strips hold on to something that simply doesn’t relate to today.
Oh, and you darned kids! Get off my lawn!
queek
April 28th, 2007 at 11:03 am
hey, MT, can we in Michigan borrow that gynormous skunk?? Its Draft Day, and we could use it for a proper response to the Lions GM.
PBS: a continuing “d’AWWWWWW” at the zeeba/croc kids
Galactic Emperor Chennux®™©
April 28th, 2007 at 11:03 am
ATTENTION EARTHERS! PREPARE TO EXPERIENCE NOSEBLEED FROM SUBSONIC OVERTONES DIRECTED AT YOUR OTAL CAVITIES! CHENNUX SPEAKS!
CHENNUX’S PLANS FOR EARTH CONQUEST HAVE TAKEN A NEW, EVIL TURN! HAVE EARTHERS NOTICED BANDWIDTH LIMITATION MESSAGES ON THE JOSHREADS SITE? CHENNUX IS SLOWLY CHOKING THE CAPACITY OF THE ONE CALLED JOSH’S SERVER! SOON, YOU WILL BE STRAINING TO SNARK MARY WORTH! OR HAVE TO WAIT HOURS TO MAKE YOUR PUNY FEELINGS KNOWN ABOUT FOOBIANS! HAHA!
TO PREVENT FURTHER ATTACKS ON THE JOSHREADS SERVER, CHENNUX DEMANDS TRIBUTE! YOU WILL PROVIDE POTATOES! LOTS OF THEM! CONVERT YOUR POTATOES TO CONTRIBUTIONS IN THE ONE CALLED JOSH’S TIP JAR! HE WILL THEN BE GIVEN SUBSPACE ACCESS TO THE POTATO EXCHANGE MARKET ON TUBERLOX 5 TO PURCHASE TRIBUTE!
WEIGH THE CONSEQUENCES WELL, EARTHERS! EITHER CHENNUX GET POTATOES, OR YOU WILL SIT IN FRONT OF DARKENED MONITORS HAVING TO WRITE SONG PARODIES THAT NOBODY WILL EVER SEE! I’M TALKING TO YOU, GH! AND YOU, WILLETHOMPSON!
IN OTHER GALACTIC NEWS, CHENNUX NOTES THAT THE ONE CALLED MONKEYHAWK STILL THINKS SOMEONE NAMED FLOYD RUNS THE UNIVERSE AND THAT CHENNUX IS FINANCIALLY EMBARRASSED AT THE MOMENT! NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!
(applgrl – hny, tak it EZ with gecs goldcrd – it has 18% apr – ok?)
STILL, CHENNUX ADMIRES HIS SPUNK AND INVITES HIM TO DINNER! BY WHICH I MEAN HE SHOULD BE DINNER! NOTHING LIKE MACERATED SIMIO-AVIAN COATED WITH VELVEETA AND DONE A LA MAGMACANNON! HAHA!
OH, AND THE ONE CALLED POTEET: CHENNUX TRIED THE 15 YEAR LAPHROIAG AND FOUND IT WASN’T WORTH THE EXTRA POTATO.
REMEMBER: POTATOES TO JOSH OR MARK TRAIL GETS IT!
END TRANSMISSION!
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 11:13 am
#261 Secret Margo: That was a cool nugget. I recall the other cartoonists stopping by but didn’t know about Wiley. I actually have never cared much for NS, though I wish I had little Danae’s t-shirt. When Wiley veers political in the strip it is usually ham-handed and pedantic, as if the proles who read comics couldn’t possibly understand subtlety. If he really was the poster, the “I’m smarter than you” crack seems to fit right in.
Also of interest in that old thread, besides a total of only 46 posts: the comment by someone who seems really upset there was negativity towards Foob on this site. Perhaps a Lynnion? I notice that handle doesn’t post here anymore.
calico
April 28th, 2007 at 11:13 am
FOOB – Since when did April become a Geisha Girl?
Phil
April 28th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I am enjoying this “Wiley” talk, as I have known as a reader that he has been pompous and pretentious since at least the mid-nineties. He has become, in a way, my main comics-page foe — a true Pretender. He has made Sally Forth, Cathy, and even Get Fuzzy look like minor annoyances.
My other comics-page adversary, believe it or not, is Patrick McDonnell. We get it — we like Krazy Kat, too. I’m just no sure that turning the comics page into a living museum is the way to change it.
I’m going out for coffee now.
calico
April 28th, 2007 at 11:34 am
O Great Emperor Chennux,
Please let it be known that very Good Potatoes are being offered up this most recent Earth and Sun Cycle in your mighty and powerful honor, as per The Order of the Toasted Kitties.
May the Tubers be with you always!
jamoche
April 28th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Von and Vera – they’re either siblings, or they met on eHarmony…
Motorposus
April 28th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Gaw-lee, Sheilagh. “Gelogenic” isn’t even in Webster’s New World Dictionary. I’m guessing it means “laugh inducing”?
When poor usage or grammar shows up in a strip, I sometimes wonder whether the strip has crossed an editor’s desk. Are strips edited for grammar/spelling? For that matter, are they edited for funny? These Curtis strips would have been pretty cute if the ten-dollar words made sense, or it were clear that the kids were misusing them.
Sheilagh
April 28th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Motorposus — you’re quite right, it’s more or less a synonym for “risible.”
I probably overdid it with the sesquipedalian suggestions — Curtis would have been plenty funny with “execrable, noisome, and risible” or something like that — you know, words that aren’t a HUGE stretch but beyond the ken of 8-year-olds. But it bugs me that Billingsley seems to have just grabbed some vocabulary at random. What’s a good word for “phoning it in”?
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
#287 Sheilagh -
Telepoetic.
Poteet
April 28th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
# 280 — Your Imperial Impetuosity, I humbly confess to not quite understanding your desire for large quantities of potatoes. At this time of year on some parts of our modest little planet, it is possible to eat fresh peas right off the vine, and wild asparagus, and any number of other vegetables that, to some of us, seem just as good as potatoes or better. However, you’re in charge, so I’m offering some organic Yukon Golds. Enjoy! And please have mercy and don’t do that bandwidth thing again.
Sheilagh
April 28th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
I’m 50 years old and I remember nickel candy bars. You could buy them at the snack bar of the neighborhood pool where I went swimming daily, all summer long, for my entire childhood. Of course, I rarely spent a nickel for a candy bar… I rarely had a nickel. Kids didn’t necessarily have pocket money back in the dark ages (though you could often scavenge coins from the bottom of the pool, under the diving boards). My particular favorite was a Sugar Daddy — do they still make those? They lasted a way long time, given they only cost five cents.
There was penny candy, too — Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls.
Does ANYTHING cost a penny anymore?
willethompson
April 28th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
#287 Sheilagh –
Telescating.
Poteet
April 28th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
# 235 — Sir Fable, my True Knight, thanks very much for the beer. I feel better now. And I don’t like those DtM curlicues either. They don’t annoy me as much as Darrin’s nose, but they do annoy.
# 253 — BWAHAHA! Excellent muffler story, O’F. And thanks!
Susie Derkins
April 28th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
#254 commodorejohn–
Yes, I was thinking the same thing about today’s FBoFW. Since when could Liz remain “just friends” with her exes? Or does this just apply to the sainted Granthony? In any case: Shut up, Liz. You ain’t that noble. (Yes, I used “ain’t.” An’ what are you going to do about it?)
JP–Um…I assume this indicates that Cedric likes ‘em young? They would make quite the pair…
FW–This looks awfully ominous. Is Big Nose going to drive himself into a tree? Or would that be getting off too easy?
PBS–Awwww…that’s genuinely touching. Go Pastis. PBS is one of the few current strips I actually enjoy (along with Get Fuzzy).
And I actually found “Baby Blues” amusing today. So sue me.
commodorejohn
April 28th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I garage-saled this morning and picked up the first two Hägar The Horrible collections. Man, that strip was awesome back in the day. And…well, I can’t think of a girl in the comics more attractive and bad-ass than the Honi Hägarsdottir of 1974. I’ll have to scan and post some strips to show you what I mean.
fizzy logic
April 28th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I didn’t weigh in on the “I remember when” thread a few weeks back, so I thought I’d do so here, since we’re talking about one of my favorite food groups, candy! I was born in 1966, and I thought I could remember buying candy bars for a nickel. After doing a bit of reasearch, I see that the price changed around 1969 from a nickel to a dime. So I probably wasn’t buying candy bars then, although I may have been accompanying my older brothers to do so, and could possibly remember something so important in my life as the insatiable quest for sugar.
I do remember the hilltop store a couple of blocks away in our residential neighborhood (never to be allowed in today’s zoning) where they had a glass case full of penny candy where you could point to the goodies you wanted and they put them in a tiny paper bag for you. I also remember going there with my friends in the neighborhood to buy cigarettes for their parents – I know they closed the store before I turned 8 – can you imagine anyone today selling cigarettes to a 6 year old? Too funny! But they knew it was for the parents, not the kid.
The whole point of the Peanuts strip was the feeling of having the world on a string by having money in your pocket – and knowing what to do with it. That’s a great feeling and was wonderfully conveyed in the strip, I thought. All for about fifty cents.
Flasshe
April 28th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
MW: I agree that Von is Vera’s brother. I think he’s at Charterstone in order to carry out his family-mandated honor killing. Either that or it’s Family Portrait Time.
MonkeyHawk
April 28th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
#296 — Flasshe:
I’d opt for the honor killing angle.
If it’s family portrait time, I fear six months of Margo preparing her latest party design: the Olin Mills retrospective at the Met. Or MOMA’s waifs-with-big-eyes collection. Or Tigers-on-black velvet, Bullfighters-on-black-velvet, or Elvis-on-black-velvet, or Elvis-as-a-bullfighter-on-black-velvet, or Elvis-as-a-matador-fighting-a-tiger-on-black-velvet at the Gugenheim.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
MW: I agree that Von is Vera’s brother. I think he’s at Charterstone in order to carry out his family-mandated honor killing. Either that or it’s Family Portrait Time.
MossMoses
April 28th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Mary Worth sure empowers downtrodden women. She gives them the fortitude to overcome intractable problems like abusive relationships and alcoholism just by virtue of meddling in their lives. If not for Mary Worth’s nosy intervention, Vera might be languishing in the Santa Royale womens shelter or worse yet, getting beaten up by Von. The androgynous Von should either move on or switch sexual preference. He’s not welcome in Charterstone and we know all to well what happens to stalkers there.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
April 28th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Hi everyone,
I just thought I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that today’s Jumble admits an alternative, more scatological final answer.
***spoiler alert***
SWISH TRUTH LAVISH CRAFTY
FART WAS a SHITT
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
295 Fizzy:
I had almost forgotten about riding my bike to the store as a little boy to pick up some smokes for my mom. As a reward I’d usually get to buy a dime’s worth of penny candy, which sometimes could fill a whole sack (because remember, some of the treats were two for a penny, and those licorice whips were really long and took up a lot of space.) And of course the man at the store knew the cigarettes were for your parent, and never thought twice about selling them to you.
Nowadays, if a seven-year-old asked for cigarettes, he’d be in protective custody in minutes. For all I know, Child Protective Services gets involved these days just because a parent smokes.
Did anyone else have a smoking lounge in their high school, like ours did? I was in high school from 1974-78.
The big rise from five cent to ten cent candy bars in 1969 was tempered by the fact that you could still get a single Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for a nickel, while the two-pack cost a dime like the other bars.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
#300 Moon -
Penny candy from the corner store, check. (By the way, you can still get that stuff here,, just not for a nickel.)
Smoking lounge at high school, check. After lunch, juniors and seniors only; shut down around 1965.
Ice-cold nickel Coke (cane sugar, dammit!) from one of those old lever-actuated machines outside a gas station in Cimarron, NM in summer, 1963. Still remember the shock as it hit my throat.
The streets in summer smelled like lead and motor oil, everybody smoked, and drunks were funny.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
April 28th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Growing up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, it was common for parents to send kids to the store to buy cigarettes for them as late as the 1980s. In fact, it wasn’t until 1989 that they started putting an age limit on the sale of cigarettes (the age was 16, later increased to 18 or 19). And my high school had a smoking area for the students when I started there in the 1986-87 school year.
I remember as a kid, asking my mom how old you had to be to smoke, and I remember her saying, which was the truth at the time, “Well, you don’t have to be any particular age. It’s like drinking coffee. If you’re old enough to want to, then you can.”
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
April 28th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
But of course, in 1986-87, there was no smoking indoors at the school.
I seem to remember as a younger child in the early 80s, seeing ashtrays indoors in places like museums and art galleries.
Nina
April 28th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
MY SHRT AND MUG CAME TODAY! YEAH! THANKS! THEY ARE GREAT! !!!!!!!!
willethompson
April 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Wow. Just answered a ‘thank you’ from Harry Paratestes, so thanks for YOUR thanks, Nina/New-Me. You and gh can toast each other from across I-20 with your mugs!
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
“Von or Vera?” – a new masterpiece beyond the vale by Ed Wood Jr.
willethompson
April 28th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
#306 TF – wouldn’t that be beyond the ‘veil?’
Nina
April 28th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
TDIET: True story, my ex-son in law has been in his new house for 6 years and he still has a garage full of boxes he has not opened..
Lynngineering
April 28th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
ok, if everyone else is:
nickel candy bars – of course. The milk came delivered to the door every day, a metal container next to the door awaiting delivery. (I recently saw a photo from my childhood times, the city gas station, and the sign showed gas back then was like, 29 cents a gallon. Eons ago.) Going for smokes: the store was also down the street, with a running tab, and I too was sent. I learned quickly how to get candy added to the tab whenever I had to go. I can to this day still recall the particular rhythmn of the gaps between the uneven concrete squares of sidewalk on the way back and forth. In the hot summer there was the smell of dried, cut grass and bumblebees to deal with along the route. Eventually it was all made easier by the bike: the banana-seat stingray. And newspapers made your hands dirty by their ink. Oh, and probably their content too, but I was too young then. God, don’t even get me started on getting sidetracked at ravines…
Nina
April 28th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Lynngineering, You sure brought me back to my youth. Those were the days…….. I can smell them now
Moon Mullins
April 28th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
One thing I really appreciate about this community is that folks can start talking about just about anything, and it becomes a fun and often illuminating diversion. So refreshing after some other types of message boards I had frequented in the past, where the “board secret police” would go ballistic if anyone went “off topic.”
dorko
April 28th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
BC update:
philly is dropping bc when the live strips finish, and replacing it with… shermans lagoon? oh well, i guess a lame live cartoonist is still better than a dead lame cartoonist.
also, the pickles story line this week is oddly pluggery with grampa pickles stapling his pants together…
beergoggles
April 28th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
fw – teen boy doesn’t want to have sex with a real live girl and has a post office box his parents don’t know about — me thinks our boy going to post office for his mail order pornography
a3g – hummmm… big city in the middle of the night – after meeting up with ‘midnight cowboy’ earlier – i don’t think he’s going out for a visit to luann – something seedier…
jp – i’m still standing by my theory of cedic – canadian butler/pimp – he had his boys out to collect more american students to become street walkers but his wife knows he’s be linked to these girls’ disappearance
mt – i’ve got a question, could a icelandic puffin be big enough to take down a gulfstream
mw – vera has been surgically transformed to look like von’s long lost twin sister in failed attempt to scam money
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I grew up in a town very much like Roopville: small and longing for its own heyday back. We had two grocery stores, one for each block of Main Street. One store had a decent collection of candy bars and a few penny candies, but they had the best comic book rack and nice proprietors. The other store had meager pickings as far as comics went, but their glass-covered, multi-layered candy displays were works of wonder and awe. Its owner was a sadistically mean old guy who hated the kids who frequented his store but knew the kids liked his candy selection but the adults with the serious dollars liked the other store better.
The Tulsa World had eight full-color pages of comics on Sundays back then; oh, glorious comics! I loved the great big Prince Valiant that was always on Page 4. I actually followed Gasoline Alley and hated Slim as much now as I did then. I was slavishly devoted to Peanuts and drew extra figures in the huge blank spots in the Nancy strips to fill in the empty space and to startle the next one reading the comics.
Now even large papers are lucky to have four or six pages of Sunday comics, and they are all freakishly huge. I suppose it’s because they don’t want to have to pay for the rights to run them? I miss the days of flopping down in the floor on my stomach and propping myself up by the elbows with my chin on the heel of my palms to read the funnies. It was a slice of kid heaven and my own kids only got to experience a pale shadow of it.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
#307 willethompson – is it veil? I always thought it was vale.
In that case, er, yeah.
Lynngineering
April 28th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
#314 – True Fable: the newspaper comics were wonderful if you lived, as I did, in a smaller town – and one that stuck in my mind from then was Alley Oop. Probably the story of the prehistoric Alley in the timemachine tales made sense…. in IOWA.
Browsing/buying comics was tough, the trip to the bigger city was needed for a real range and later MAD magazine.
Mr. O’Malley
April 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Despite all the talk about cartoonists visiting here, everyone seems to have missed the big tip o’ the hat we got in today’s Brevity.
Motorposus
April 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
In Atlanta we still had home milk delivery in the 70s, maybe even into the 80s. Mathis Dairy, it was. It was unhomogenized milk, so you had to shake it vigorously—something I still do to milk now, just from habit.
Some Guy
April 28th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I took my sone to his kid baseball game this morning and there, with the other team, was an older African-American guy offering batting advice to his grandson. Clambake lives!
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
#311 Moon Mullins – I like that aspect too, and I think that even though we go off in odd tangents, we always return to snarking comics which is the focus of this place.
Mr. O’Malley
April 28th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
The Family Circus family are Catholics? Up until now their church visits seemed very Protestant. Maybe they are getting more ethnic. At some point they will turn into the O’Keanes.
Folklore: The Protestants made the Irish give up the Os and Macs in their names before they would give them soup during the 1840s Famine.
Mr. O’Malley
April 28th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I can also remember when laundries used to come around to your house to pick up and deliver shirts and other washables.
Department stores also used to deliver stuff to your house rather than leave you to carry them home. We used to take the subway downtown to go shopping, and the truck would come around later with your stuff. They kept doing that until the 1970s, I think.
If gasoline prices keep going up, we’ll probably have to revive some of these concepts.
SecretMargo
April 28th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
TF & wille: I did a google search on both versions, and “veil” seems right (the correspondences there were titles of published books, etc., while the other instances were in … less edited milieux, like fanfic sites), there was an interesting academic article on Green Zones and urban planning around London (in 1948!) that employed “Beyond the Vale” as a little pun. This counts as the nerdiest moment of amusement I’ve had in a while, and I am a professional academic. I love this place.
I am too young, however, to participate in the nostalgiafest (your comments remind me not of my own youth, but that portrayed in Stephen King novels like It, which I read while young), although I’ve found while teaching that the fact that I remember a) the advent of the internet, b) cassette tapes, c) who Oliver North is, and d) what the Cold War was like, at least at the end of it, dates me already, and makes three decades seem like a billion.
Harry Paratestes
April 28th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
You know what, Lynngineerign? I still have the metal box that out milk used to get delivered in. And by the way, did anyone ever get potato chips delivered to the door by the Charles Chip man?
Harry Paratestes
April 28th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
So in Arlo and Janis, is Janis crossing her fingers that Arlo comes out with good news from the physical, or is she hoping the-rotten-SOB-is-going-to-die so she can pick up with a younger man? Wait and see.
True Fable
April 28th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
#316 Lyngineering – I grew up west of Tulsa. It wasn’t the end of the earth but you could see it from there. I think the reason we had so many good comics in the stores was because nobody would have gone all the way to Tulsa to look in the big stores just for comics. “Can’t stand that Tulsy drivin’, it’s only worth it if you’re going to Cain’s Ballroom!”
My sister sent me to the store with her hard-earned money to buy certain comics, mostly specific Marvel comics, very rarely a DC. There was nothing else to do so the stores ordered a little entertainment at a dime an issue – 25 cents for a big special issue.
Harry Paratestes
April 28th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
OBH: A depiction of pitiful suburban trash: an obese man in a drag costume made from Italian restaurant tablecloths, balefully eyeing a flowered muu-muu as a sartorial upgrade. The little girl should rip off his peruke and beat him with it.
willethompson
April 28th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
#315 TF – actually, the phrase is ‘beyond the Pale’ as the regions of Russia far away from Moscow where the Jews were permitted to live (Eastern Poland, Belorus, Ukraine). Beyond the ‘veil’ is a reference to your transvestite movie by Ed Wood.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
#324 Harry P. -
Yes! It was like a huge gourmet thing – and he brought big metal tubs of Snyder’s Pretzels.
But I thought his name was Charles Chip, because my Mom called him “Charlie.”
Poteet
April 28th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Since it’s food nostalgia time, we had a milk chute built into the wall next to our kitchen door, and milk in glass bottles used to be delivered there. The milk chute had an outside door for the milkman (that was the term back then) and an inside door for my dad and mom. And we had a candy store next to my grade school that had a large selection of weird candy. I wasn’t supposed to go there without permission and I was an oldest-child dweeb, so I obeyed. I think my younger brother went there whenever he had the moolah:-).
Josh
April 28th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
#328 wille — actually, to be totally pedantic, there are two different phrases under consideration here. “Beyond the veil” is a poetic way to talk about someone who’s dead, the “veil” being a metaphor from what separates us from the Great Beyond of the afterlife.
“Beyond the pale” originally meant someone or something uncivilized. The “Pale” in question was actually in Ireland. For much of the middle ages, though the English claimed to rule all of Ireland, they didn’t really control anything but the land around Dublin, which they protected from the Irish with an enormous wooden fence, made out of individual wooden stakes called in archaic English “pales” (also the origin of the word “palisade”, referring to a whole row of pales). The word came to mean the area protected by such pales; the English Pale was the area of Ireland controlled (and in large part inhabited) by the English before Elizabeth really got the conquest of Ireland underway. The Irish, who the English saw as being barbaric were, of course “beyond the pale”, thus the phrase.
The phrase was already seen in print in the 1600s; Catherine the Great didn’t establish the Pale of Settlement till 1791.
Josh
fizzy logic
April 28th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Dying thread, if not dead, but I thought I’d revisit. Yes, we had a milk box – can’t remember when that went away, but I do see a milkman still delivering in our neighborhood here. I’m sure he gets some raised eyebrows when he tells people what his job is – you just don’t think anyone gets milk delivered anymore.
And we had a smoking area, outside, not inside, during my high school years of 1981 – 1984. (The unofficial pot smoking area was further out).
A summer camp I worked at in college had the refillable (small, thick) bottles of the sugar coke available to the counselors – I don’t remember how much they cost, but it was an ancient machine and couldn’t have taken more than a quarter. How they found a supplier for that I don’t know, but that was the best tasting coke ever. A nice contrast to the food.
Josh
April 28th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
On the note of Coke with real sugar (which I too prefer to corn syrup, though I’ve actually switched to Diet now) — look for non-chain Mexican take-out joints run by actual Mexicans. They often import Coke from Mexico — 12oz glass bottles, real sugar.
I’ve also heard that if you live in a part of the US with a significant Jewish population, you can find 2 liter bottles of Coke made with real sugar around Passover (sugar being always kosher, but corn not being considered OK by most Ashkenazim for Passover). There’s supposed to be a way to tell which is why by the bottlecaps, but I don’t know the details; it may be an urban legend.
Josh
commodorejohn
April 28th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Josh’s right – you can get sugar Coke (add me to the list of supporters) from real Mexican restaurants or from the “ethnic” section of some grocery stores. Believe me, corn-syrup Coke doesn’t even compare. This I discovered on a missions trip to Mexico some years ago. When it’s sweltering and humid out (although I was in a pretty nice part of the country weatherwise, inasmuch as there was humidity to go with the heat,) nothing but nothing beats a cold sugar Coke.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
High-fructose corn syrup is the bane of civilization. And I blame Iowa!
Vince M.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
No urban legend that; the sugar-formula Coke has yellow bottle caps. I don’t normally drink sodas but will lay in a few bottles when they’re available.
King Folderol
April 28th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
MW – Von looks just like Frank Nitti, the creepy dude in the white trenchcoat in “The Untouchables.” Maybe Mary will throw him off the roof and nonchalanty tell Jeff that “I left Von in the car.”
DM – I’ve developed a sad theory that Mrs. Wilson also finds Dennis annoying and simply keeps him around because she doesn’t want George’s 250 pounds of old man flab bouncing up and down on top of her anymore. And now I must stop speaking.
GT – 1) I think Mark Jeske should worry less about a new pitch and worry more about the townsfolk that will soon be chasing this 12-foot tall freak through the Gothic countryside with pitchforks and torches.
2) Panel 2 is a non-sequitor: those “big hands” are perfect, all right, but the “pitch” Clambake is about to make to Mark is as old as mankind.
DT – What are the odds of falling perfectly into a smokestack?
Poteet
April 28th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
# 335 — Uncle Lumpy, feel free to blame Iowa for high-fructose corn syrup. No one hates the health and environmental horrors wrought by massive industrial corn more than some of us who live here (including some farmers). I could rant long, but will spare everyone. It’s more fun to rant about Foob.
Dub Not Dubya
April 28th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
333 Josh:
More information on kosher for Passover Coke can be found on the Internet. I was lucky enough to snag a couple bottles in Providence this year.
Also, in Canada and I think in Europe, they use real sugar in Coke.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
#339 Dub -
Europe uses beet sugar. Don’t know about Canada. Japanese Coke tastes different (better), but I don’t know how they sweeten it.
Uncle Lumpy
April 28th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
#338 Poteet -
I also blame Iowa for ethanol in my gasoline, protectionist trade policies, overpriced caskets, chiropraxis, extended presidential campaigns, and malaria.
Well, OK — not malaria.
Poteet
April 29th, 2007 at 1:05 am
# 341 — Uncle Lumpy, I’m not sure malaria could be all that much worse than the extended presidential campaigns.
Poteet
April 29th, 2007 at 1:10 am
# 341 — And Uncle Lumpy, don’t forget the famous fake rain forest, voted most outrageous pork barrel project in the entire US of A in 2005 or thereabouts. Whether it will ever be built is another story, and an entertaining one, but possibly only to Iowans.
Victor Von
April 29th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
There’s no way Mark is shaking Clambake’s hand in the second panel. He’s gripping some kind of stylized war club that he’s been using as a baseball bat.
I read a collection of the early Dick Tracy cartoons not too long ago. One of his early adventures ends with a midget locked in a shower stall and scalded to death by his obese, super humanly strong female partner.
Yeah, whatever else is true, Dick Tracy is still true to Chester Gould’s strangely glaucomic vision.
Poteet
April 29th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
# 344 — Victor, I remember that story (also from a collection). I’m pretty sure I read it when I was young and that it caused my excessive fear of too-hot shower water. Thanks a lot, Chester.
Vince M.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
337 – re. DT: There was Not-Blofeld at the beginning of ‘For Your Eyes Only’.
And I think it may have happened at least once to Sylvester the cat.