The Comics Curmudgeon

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Friday one-liners

Funky Winkerbean, 9/21/07

Lisa’s friends have decided to poison her as an act of mercy, and if they kill Les in the process, it won’t really bother them that much.

Pluggers, 9/21/07

Pluggers don’t have health insurance, so they take their kids to the vet.

For Better Or For Worse, 9/21/07

Michael’s daughter has some sort of remotely operated mind-control chip installed in her brain.

B.C., 9/21/07

If you’re an ant, and half the people you’re at a party with suddenly get eaten alive, it’s not that big a deal, I guess.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21, 2007 at 02:23 am and is filed under B.C., For Better or for Worse, Funky Winkerbean, Pluggers.

484 responses to “Friday one-liners”

MB
September 21st, 2007 at 2:29 am [Reply]

It’s Goofy owning Pluto all over again.
Dingo
September 21st, 2007 at 2:38 am [Reply]

Actually, to me, this BC is funny. Scary, ain’t it?
Donald The Anarchist
September 21st, 2007 at 2:50 am [Reply]

FBFW Dammit, I didn’t learn how to program my dreams till after I hit puberty! (Which was probably just as well. Erotic dreams are SCARY the first time you have them. Kids shouldn’t get an off switch from life, much as they would like one, or they won’t learn anything…)

BC I seem to recall a rather well-written, amiable super-hero comic titled Zot that was published in the late eighties/early nineties titled Zot. It made BC look like whale sh%t. If the phrase ‘Zot’ derived from Johnny Hart’s comics, it was more than he deserved…
Hungarian Great Bela Tarr
September 21st, 2007 at 3:01 am [Reply]

Wait — I’m confused. What’s actually supposed to be happening in that final frame of FBFW? Punchline does not compute.

Is this like that scene in my acclaimed movie Satantango in which a decrepit alcoholic methodically pours his liquor from a jug into a bottle, and then from the bottle into a filthy cup, and the audience is left to wonder: why? Why the bottle?

Also: is “yah” a Canadian thing? Do Canadians say “yah” instead of “yeah?” Please advise.
mem
September 21st, 2007 at 3:10 am [Reply]

God, Pluggers is so… disturbing. Why on Earth does the dog plugger own a dog? It couldn’t be the portly rhino or the chicken-lady?

Next, we’ll see the chicken-lady chowing down on a deep-fried Thanksgiving turkey (you’re a plugger when all your meals are deep-fried), and the rhino ordering some ancient rhino-horn peen-enhancing powder off the internet (you’re a plugger when you scan your spam folder for good deals…).
Minx
September 21st, 2007 at 3:15 am [Reply]

Don’t thank us yet. You haven’t eaten Linda’s taco lasagna.

I took that entirely the wrong way…
MustacheMike
September 21st, 2007 at 3:19 am [Reply]

Wow, I thought it was just a poorly done bear plugger and I wasn’t getting Josh’s snark.

This is almost as bad as the Sly Fox with the at the restaurant with the Lion trying to eat the Rabbit.
Brown-eyed Girl
September 21st, 2007 at 3:26 am [Reply]

After reading BC, I looked back at the last panel of FW and thought “Conga line! ZOT.”

Who is that with Meredith in FOOB? It has the hips of a Patterson, but it sure doesn’t look like Mike. In fact, Meredith doesn’t look like Meredith either. She looks like a freakishly stunted Liz.

GT. I’ve decided that the specks in the background are a swarm of locusts. By the way, has Coach Thorp always had such a flat head? All he needs are a couple of neck bolts and he’s Frankenstein.
lesles
September 21st, 2007 at 3:38 am [Reply]

FW: lisa’s friends are all lining up and jockeying for first shot at les after lisa pops her clogs. ’cause nothing says hot in the winkerverse like a self-centred, smirking prick.
Lynngineering
September 21st, 2007 at 4:01 am [Reply]

FBOFW: “…remotely operated mind-control chip installed in her brain.”

Yes, and it comes fastened on the “Michael Coma card 1.0″, and, hey – the upgrade is ready Michael, what are you waiting for? Just sit back, relax and let your mind float downstream further…

It’s easy to forget or forgo the fact that this is all still Michael’s coma at work, the shift into this hybrid mash representing the obvious effects of the “September Solution” drug cocktail.

He may have had a chance to actually fight his way back to consciousness, there was some evidence there, but then a new author re-entered into the storyline in a 13th hour switcheroo: Lynn herself. Suddenly we are reading about her real life story, levelled to the surface of the same newspaper that prints the comic she writes, and by extension, Michael’s fantasy. Her dream marriage is destroyed, and by default, it seems as well Michael’s chances for getting out of this coma fantasy. Understandably, Lynn’s reality alters the life of the strip.

So now the hybrid of different sensibilities and mash-up is just the sign there’s been a protracted argument that develops as a fight underway, disturbing the already destroyed equilbrium between “characters” and “creators”. It can look like a dialog in a way, an inner dialog between what Lynn originally set up – Michael, the coma fantasy, and the return to one long dream of past – and Lynn’s nostalgia re-route, reengineering the moribound strip that in turn stands for her life, without much reason why other than another self-serving at the usual Patterson love-thyself feast.

The “argument” shaping into what will be the fight for FBOFW future, is taking place by virtue of the next generation – Meredith – and as we have been brought to understand, among other things, with this symbolic and longggg discussion topic about “Super Teddy”.

Just what is Michael’s “Super Teddy” to Michael in his coma, except the desire to keep living and possibly even consciously, such that, he makes a grab into his past for himself, this pair of eyes and a collection of buttons keeping the stuffings together. He gives the script to his progeny, she repeats what he can’t say: push the button, change the channel PLEASE, wake me up…

Anagrams for Super Teddy
“Super Teddy” also serves as a rich compendium of anagrams revealing Michael’s fantasy in overdrive:

For example, Michael will always be “Eddy Purest”. But contained within is another urge, if Michael can still manage then it’s “Eddy Erupts” and even then, the signal of the bedridden and the child who are still healthy, “Peed Sturdy” . As so many of the stories can attest to, bodily functions rule our lives, but he still has to be careful or its “Spurted Dye” suggesting bleeding and death, where even then, he imagines he would be “Dyed Purest”, colored the cleanest even in death.

This is Michael in a coma don’t forget, so it’s fear of acknowledging the command he is getting from the great Elly-Author in his mind: “Steed, Dry Up”! Or else, you will end up as…Used Dry Pet.

Thus “Eddy Rest Up” is what he knows he should do, rest up and gather energy as all around Lynn herself is changing the ground rules to his world.
Trick
September 21st, 2007 at 5:14 am [Reply]

Since the plugger is in fact a dog, it should have a human child as a pet. Then its knowing look of intense fear would be even more disturbing.
Brian
September 21st, 2007 at 5:15 am [Reply]

Meredith is trying to use the remote control to escape into another comic strip. Don’t do it, Meredith! You’d just wind up in Marvin!
Trilobite
September 21st, 2007 at 5:18 am [Reply]

A3G: I’ve already seen more of Nora’s life than I wanted to — it seems to be mostly spent crying that one single tear that indicates extreme emotional turmoil in the world of A3G. Frankly, I don’t see how Eric fits into that life, except as yet another thing Nora can be upset about, and she seems well-stocked on those already…what with the missing-presumed-dead husband, and the daughter who survived cancer but still dresses like a breakdancer from the ’80s, and the Marilyn Quayle flip-do. All Eric’s adding to her life right now is the potential for a showdown with a very angry Margo McGee, and then Nora will really have something to cry about.

Judge Parker: If I were Sam, I’d be a little less suspicious about what Mr. Caesar might want the winery’s land for, and a lot more suspicious about what Keith and Trudi are using the winery’s land for RIGHT NOW. The complete absence of any grapevines at all should be a hint, man.

Mark Trail: Three brave men with shovels cannot hold back the impending flood. Oh, if only they had some kind of construction equipment, like a bulldozer or something…

Mary Worth: I think this is just a minor setback for Drew: he was wily enough to only trifle with the affections of women who have basically no friends at all anyway, so it’s not like their bad opinion of him is going to contaminate the rest of his potential dating pool. Still, I’m glad Vera shook off the stupor she’s been in for the past few days and kicked Drew to the curb; you can see how betrayed she feels in that second panel. All we’re missing is the thought balloon: How could he treat me like that? He was like a BROTHER to me!

Phantom: “…My very BEST student! Suddenly INATTENTIVE! Not doing her WORK! English exam FLUNKED! Failing to understand proper SENTENCE STRUCTURE! Just FRAGMENTS!”

Rex Morgan: Okay, this is just sick now. Shame on you, Wilson. Let it go already, man.
willethompson
September 21st, 2007 at 5:19 am [Reply]

I’m with Dingo. The new BC has an almost Gary Larsonesque quality (hides behind rock waiting for ‘mudges carrying torches and pitchforks to lynch him…)
Scherzo
September 21st, 2007 at 5:26 am [Reply]

FOOB:
GAAAH! Lynn has forgotten how to draw! Look at those Liliputian hands! And that bloated, enormous, bulbous head on Meredith! What the Sam Hill is going on with that child?
Scherzo
September 21st, 2007 at 5:33 am [Reply]

P.S.
Lio is so very, very wrong today. And so funny.
gleeb
September 21st, 2007 at 5:45 am [Reply]

13. Yes, Tenni’s teacher is speaking in sentence fragments. But there is a possible excuse. That is, that he is not speaking English, but a local Mawitaan language, and his fluency is victim to his fear that the two-fisted President of Matiwaan will hear of this and hold him responsible.
AhClem
September 21st, 2007 at 5:48 am [Reply]

Baldo – The last panel contains a slight hint of a Batuik-esque smirk. The implications are frightening: it means that the smirkoma has become malignant, and is starting to metastasize into other strips.
Cheeky Wee Monkeys
September 21st, 2007 at 5:50 am [Reply]

YEAH BABY! A TECHNOLOGY JOKE! Technology’s always funny, right? I’m going to make a comic where it’s nothing but a young person saying “iPod” to an older person all day. And I’ll win the hearts of millions.
John C Fremont
September 21st, 2007 at 6:00 am [Reply]

Cassandra Cat has arrived. Film at eleven.

(Hee-hee!!)

Phantom – Tendai and I are reacting exactly the same way to this story line. And the principle? He’s not just white, he’s Mark Trail white.

MW – Looks like Drew’s gonna be all alone with his K-Y gel tonight. At least he’ll have his memories. In the first panel, he’s radiating angst or something, but by the second panel, he’s devolved into Claude Akins. Actually, Claude Akins is a big step up for Doctor Cory the Younger.

RMMD – I’m glad Rex gets his windshields from the same place as Mark Trail. Yep. Removes all color. I wonder if Rex is wearing any pants. These are the issues that keep me awake at night.

JP – Aww. Dispite all the tension, Sam and Red are still bound together with the rings of love. But why is Red still wearing clothes?

Thanks again to Bob Weber and Josh. My shirt rocks!
Pozzo
September 21st, 2007 at 6:10 am [Reply]

#6 – Minx: I’m with you. I thought maybe the ladies were there to supply Les with some other services he’s been missing since his wife was sick.
Frank Parsnip
September 21st, 2007 at 6:12 am [Reply]

Trilobite: re Jugs Parker, I think you hit it on the head. Screw water surveys and sitting in Keith’s office hoping Sophie will find little tidbits of secondhand info… By taking a simple walk around the vineyard’s vast veldt, he should be catching on that Flattop McMullet is, at best, bottling Chilean swill barrels as premium cab because it sure as hell ain’t growing on any vines here. If his penis actually functioned, he ought to give Busty the rogering of her life as thanks.
Keg of Curd
September 21st, 2007 at 6:19 am [Reply]

Oh, well done, Ziggy! There sure are a lot of Starbucks these days! Ho! *wipes tears from eyes* Oh, man. LOL. There are a lot of Starbucks, and Ziggy totally nailed that. Laid bare for all the world to see.
Luban
September 21st, 2007 at 6:25 am [Reply]

NutCrunchGate continues as the Chicago Tribune public editor weighs in on cartoon censorship.
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 6:28 am [Reply]

Someone on this site has predicted Vera’s demise in her faulty car. Now I must admit that I didn’t really think that would happen, I mean there are more ways to kill of a character than car crashes surely, and Aldo took that slot only last year! But I am giving much more credence to the Vera’s death by car theory, based on the “don’t try to stop me” in today’s strip. It just rings ominously to me.
Would the ‘mudge who developed that theory please stand forward and also accept my apologies for not recognizing their sooth until now?
Jamus The Bartender
September 21st, 2007 at 6:43 am [Reply]

Dick Tracy’s Crimestopper’s Textbook
Today’s Lesson: How To Let A Know-It-All Punk College Student Have It WITHOUT Letting Anyone See Ya Do It.

Howdy Folks….as you can see from Jamus’ sad whinings about his coke-snortin’ cat girlfriend, the OL’ DETECTIVE IS BACK IN THE SADDLE. And none too soon, it seems, if recent news reports are anything to go by…but first some background.
Okay….this last summer, Yours Truly decided to take Mr Emperor Chennux’ flagship the Tarzana Nights on a bit of a joyride, starting with blowing up the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge. Well, that didn’t happen, as I had a hell of a time figuring out the controls of the ship. I swear to Christ they use potatoes as buttons….or batteries, i’m not sure. Anyway, I spent a little time in jail…broke out….hid out under April Patterson’s bed…got busted again….I decided to lawyer up. Joanie Caucus from Doonesbury was a big help, and she owed me one from the time I declined to beat some sense into that stoner hippie Zonker. Anyway, I called in THAT marker, Joanie presented a case to the D.A., based on the fact that the court had to believe I was ….flying around in a spaceship from another planet.
Well, folks, before you could say, “O.J., put those cards down.” I was free as a bird, and except for an incident at Goldberg’s where I cut up Mike Patterson’s pretty-boy face a little, things have been running smoothly….Tess and my family still won’t see me, my case is under investigation by Infernal Affairs, and things are looking up right now.
Which brings me to today’s lesson. Seems a bright boy decided to shoot his mouth off during a speech given by that loser who tried running against Bush back in oh-four. HAW. I still get tingles when I think of that one. Anyhoo, Jamus sent me the video on my Wrist Youtube….I still watch it over and over. “DON’T TAZE ME MAN…DON’T TAZE ME MAN….” HAW, HAW, HAW…..I never get tired of it. Anyway, congratulations to the fine officers of the University Of Florida Campus Police who knew when to step in, but the ol’ detective just wants to give a few pointers.
1. Do NOT use the tasers until you’re ABSOLUTELY SURE you’re away from any video cameras, cellphone cameras, what have you. I remember when I was the only one who had a special camera on his wrist…now, any John Q Neer-Do-Well can get his or her hands on one. Makes our job that much more difficult, i’ll tell ya that. I know things have been more mellow since Bush got into the White House, but there’s a time and place, which leads me to..
2. Most buildings have a boiler room. Large places with lots of pipes and spiders…very private. Usually it’s some janitor named Stan down there with his Penthouse magazines waiting to die. Give Stan twenty bucks to make himself scarce for an hour or so…then TAZE TILL THE COWS COME HOME.
3. Now….as everyone who’s read Dick Tracy knows, i’ve always been an advocate of high technology. But….there’s something to be said for the old-fashioned lead pipe or billy club. And, let me tell ya, the billy club doesn’t make that incriminating BZZZZZZZTTTT noise for MSNBC and The Pope to hear too, if ya know what I mean.
Well….that’s it for now. Once again, the ol’ detective’s hat is off to ya, U of F Campus Police, let me know how things go with infernal affairs, and until next time, it’s the ol’ detective sayin’….right is alive and well in America. I’m living proof.
Gimme some goddamn whiskey.
Dick Tracy.
Trilobite
September 21st, 2007 at 6:51 am [Reply]

I’m not convinced Vera’s car is necessarily going to take the high, dry dive off of Deadman’s Curve just yet. It’s not like she angered Mary Worth, after all…and we all know that death only stalks those who earn the biddy’s wrath.

Drew, on the other hand, might be in for a rough time. There’s actually some hidden potential for drama in this story, as Mary will have to decide whether her sexless “relationship” with his dad should affect Drew’s punishment for the crime of Not Taking Advice. Will being Jeff’s son let Drew get out of this with nothing worse than losing both his incredibly easy co-ed girlfriend and his ponytailed office-drone inamorata and sitting through the mandatory finger-pointing parade of platitudes? Or will the silver-haired she-beast demand more from him?
Pastor Z
September 21st, 2007 at 6:59 am [Reply]

“Rhymes with Orange” made me laugh out loud today.

But TDIET really bothered me – is it because last month I was given the senior discount at McD’s and this week my 3-year-old’s dance teacher asked if I was my daughter’s grandfather and now this woman who is being “outed” by her child as “old” is only two years older than I am? Herkie’s mom and I may have both born when Ike was president, but at least I’ve updated my wardrobe since then.

Fiddle dee dee! Late 40s is NOT OLD, dagnabbit!
smacky
September 21st, 2007 at 7:03 am [Reply]

Nothing snarky to say about Judge Parker today. Eduardo Barreto’s comic book background is coming through today, and he really shows off what you can do in a tiny rectangle. Hats off to you today, Barreto!
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 21st, 2007 at 7:05 am [Reply]

Not much time this morning. Time for some speed snarking.

9CL: Thanks for the recap, Exposition Boy.

Agnes: Agnes is auditioning as a gag writer for Funky Winkerbean.

A3G: Her husband’s been gone for years in real time, but in strip time, it’s only been a week and a half.

BH: It doesn’t matter; she’s still going to want to know why there’s a GPS tracker locked around your ankle.

(WT)DT: Baron recognizes Gretchen’s ass.

FC: Gramma’s phone is also made of metal and Bakelite and it’s really heavy and would hurt really bad if she were to bash in your melon-shaped skull with it.

GT: I thought Oakwood’s coach was the father of one of those whiter-than-Mark-Trail players. Now, suddenly, he’s Ray Parker Jr.? Who you gonna call? Mudlarkbusters!

MW: Look out, Vera, it’s THE CLAW!!!

MC: Ewwww. I was eating.

Phantom: And now, some special guest snark from the good people at ICanHasCheezburger.com:
WHITE TEAHCER IS WHITE
Thank you.

S-M: Spider-Pimp-Man! Spider-Pimp-Man!
Gives the Shocker the back of his hand!

TDIET: Replace the word “born” with the word “stuck.”
the great one
September 21st, 2007 at 7:06 am [Reply]

MT – This just in: Ducks Float! Also, evolution demands any duck stupid enough to lay eggs in a flood bank shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce.
smacky
September 21st, 2007 at 7:11 am [Reply]

MW: Dawn gets in one final zinger! I’ll bet it felt good to add the sarcastic “honey” to it too.

I bet she made it nearly 200 yards down the road before she had to pull over (at Aldo pass?) and weep uncontrollably.
AhClem
September 21st, 2007 at 7:12 am [Reply]

#28 Pastor Z -
I hear you. My kid brother was born in 1958. ‘Nuff said.
The Photocopiest
September 21st, 2007 at 7:14 am [Reply]

B.C.: too bad Jonny Hart’s not still a live: he could have done a great line about how the Ants experienced The Rapture.
King Folderol
September 21st, 2007 at 7:14 am [Reply]

FW – It’s pretty disgusting to read a joke about Les possibly getting the runs, but any kind of joke in Funky Winkerbean is a victory over “you’re all going to get cancer, fall on a dirty soup spoon, and die of AIDS.”

Pluggers – It’s the Rhino! The Rhino from Tuesday’s comic is due for his shots! (Am I right?)
Plasma
September 21st, 2007 at 7:15 am [Reply]

Linda’s taco lasagna actually sounds really good.
The lasagna from Linda’s taco, on the other hand, I don’t want to touch with an arbitrary-length pole.
smacky
September 21st, 2007 at 7:22 am [Reply]

TDIET: “Hey mom, did you know this vibrator has three speed settings? Oh yeeeeeeeeeeeah!”
cheech wizard
September 21st, 2007 at 7:28 am [Reply]

JP – Red is discovering that her usual litigation tactic of bonking the opposing counsel isn’t going to work with Sam “Jughead” Driver. She’s also going to be pretty disappointed to learn that her license to practice “law” is only legal in Nevada.
The Divine O’F
September 21st, 2007 at 7:38 am [Reply]

I just got up and the only comics I’ve read are here, but, Josh, I have to agree with Dingo. BC is funny today. (This perception may have something to do with the fact that leaf-cutter ants just assassinated one of my rose bushes.)
Shmork
September 21st, 2007 at 7:44 am [Reply]

I’ve never heard of a dish more disturbingly sexual sounding than “Linda’s taco lasagna.”
Gabacho
September 21st, 2007 at 7:55 am [Reply]

MW – Drew, try not to remember how bitchy Vera is being when she is wheeled into the ER after her car crashes into a wall due to failed brakes. You see, she forgot to get it serviced in all the excitement.

But if she is unconscious, then it’s okay if instead of asking her symptoms, you think “It’s clear what happened. Don’t try to explain.” in a really sarcastic thought bubble.

Also and this is very important Refrain from writing about your dilemna to Dear Wendy. You will not get good advice.

Sally Forth – Yes, Grandma!! Bring her on. She is the best character in the strip. Please have her stay at the house again.
Godzooky
September 21st, 2007 at 7:59 am [Reply]

#24 Luban: Thanks for the link to the Chicago Trib column re: censored GF. Along the way, it mentions a Washington Post column re: Opus getting censored. Interesting discussion there, too.
Tweeks_Coffee
September 21st, 2007 at 8:02 am [Reply]

BB: That’s quite a line of cannons and they only need a couple shells?
DT: Apparently if you get into a helicopter crash, teh only thing that’ll happen is your clothes will get shredded a bit. I find the first and second panels very unsettling. Mainly I think it’s the way they look they’re supposed to be one panel and Gretchen is just chopped in half now.
FC: Apparently the Keane’s have ditched their home phone in lieu of only cell phones. Which come to think of it is rather odd as I don’t recall ever seeing anyone with an actual cellphone, they just always talk about them.
GT: Why does that guy have a zero on his jacket? I guess this game was supposed to be at Oakwood since there’s confetti everywhere, though I certainly wouldn’t put it past Milford to just fire off confetti cannons after every game. That doesn’t explain why both teams seemed to be wearing their away jerseys, though.
Heathcliff: So…doesn’t that mean she should be able to throw well?
MT: So three guys shoveling mud into a pile won’t stop a river overflowing? Fascinating! I believe they have these new inventions called sandbags, but don’t hold me to that.
MW: I love how Dawn drives away while still shouting at Drew. Meantime, Drew just stands there with palm-up confusion and/or shock. Finally, Vera stops scratching her chin. I guess she finally figured out what’s going on here.
S-M: The proportionate back-hand of a spider!
Zits: That’s a tiny, tiny table. Are they sitting around an end table?
Loopina
September 21st, 2007 at 8:06 am [Reply]

Zits: Uh oh, Jeremy – your parents are only a couple of years away from transforming into the Lockhorns! It’s only a matter of time before Dad starts snarking on Mom’s cooking and standing with his feet perpendicular to each other.
Kind of makes you wonder, do Leroy and Loretta have grown kids who have moved across the country to escape? Larry in San Francisco with his boyfriend Raul, and Linda now dying of cancer, but still not picking up that phone.
Mischief Maker
September 21st, 2007 at 8:07 am [Reply]

I think FBOW would have better made its point about kids and technology these days if instead Meredith said, “I know, I can’t sleep without my wire mother.”
Artist formerly known as Ben
September 21st, 2007 at 8:21 am [Reply]

BC: “Hey, funny story.”

RMMD: Is it possible for a bottom to be too compliant?

Marvin: The “adorable” little tyke has moved on from speaking in text message code to speaking in random misspellings. For all the difference it makes.

SFx: So, Booboo grows up to be William Burroughs?

TDIET: In the original letter, the birth certificate was a vibrator. Al Scaduto is right, though, that it kind of disrupted the mah jongg game.

HtH: Later, Hagar would attend Europe’s first AA meeting.

OBH: “That’s gold. I’m sending your story to Reader’s Digest, pronto!”

BB: I never would have guessed that Joey from Dennis the Menace would go on to join the army.

MT: Homer’s falling behind even with Jack White helping him with the digging.

GT: Gil’s goofy grin and stunned silence can easily be accounted for. He took a double hit of acid before the game, and now he sees Billy Dee Williams’ face melting.

Baldo: When the old man says that he took down 50 Nazis, you see him shooting his weapon, but you don’t see the German’s getting hit and dying painfully. Which goes to show that not evey comic can be “Dick Tracy.”
Wally LimpingBean
September 21st, 2007 at 8:21 am [Reply]

Les is going to be really enjoying that pink taco “lasagne”. I guess that is what the kids are calling “it” these days.
Tele66
September 21st, 2007 at 8:29 am [Reply]

Is Funky Winkerbean’s “dying from cancer” plotline pissing anybody else off? I understand that this alleged comic hasn’t actually been funny since the ol’ “high school hall monitor with a machine gun” days of yore, but sweet honey in the rock! You’re coming out of a nice chuckle from reading Sherman’s Lagoon, and before you can warn your scanning eye, you’re seeing IV lines, hospice care, cruelly-drawn sick people, and you’re expected to give a chuckle over the latest wry comment from the wise dying sage of a wife. “..uh yeh….heh..um…ahem. Say, what’s going on over here with… um….Ziggy? He’s…funny.”

I’m sure Batik thinks he’s raising some important issue, thinks he’s helping people cope, blah blah blah… well, he needs to read “Doonesbury” to learn how to make people laugh while making them think of important issues if that’s his goal. Personally, he just makes me feel like crap, having gone through this situation with a family member this past year. And I can say it’s definitely nothing I want to see or wish anyone in my family to see in the funny papers.

So I guess my question is: “Seriously, Batik, what the fuck?!!!”

OK, I’m finished. Back to teh funny.
Artist formerly known as Ben
September 21st, 2007 at 8:32 am [Reply]

#46, Tele66,

Sorry about what you went through. Hang around here for a couple of days, and you’ll definitely get an answer to your first question.
MrP
September 21st, 2007 at 8:37 am [Reply]

Really, when you think about it, Goofy owning Pluto or the dog plugger owning a dog isn’t too bad. It’s much like a guy owning a monkey in the non-furry world. Rare, but not unheard of.
Calico
September 21st, 2007 at 8:38 am [Reply]

#214 – Yesterthread – “Subtle” – Blue Balls supreme, comin’ right up! Most excellent.

I want to see the plotline where Vera and Dawn give each other a sympathy fuck.

FW – Eeeeccchhh- Taco Lasagne? More morphine, please!

FOOB – when the kid dreams of her family, she can simply zap it out and dream of Barney or Veggie Tales or the Olsen twins or Britney or sumpin’.

Curtis – I like Barry. He would win a menacing contest against the D any day.

SlyFox – I really like BooBoo too. More menace, mule!
cheech wizard
September 21st, 2007 at 8:39 am [Reply]

FW – So when is Lisa supposed to check out? I know it’s in October, but the way things are progressing, I think it’s going to be closer to Columbus Day than Halloween, if you get my drift. Has anyone out there started a Lisa Moore dead pool yet?
kat
September 21st, 2007 at 8:42 am [Reply]

Pluggers: I’m pretty sure those two girls in my Brit novel class who put bisexual subtext into everything we read and talk about characters like they’re involved with them, would probably do an entire presentation on this. I can even imagine it, the last thing I see on a powerpoint slide before I doze off, these words ringing in my ears: “The author conveys the egregious subjugation of man by technology in the post-colonial era, here, with a tone of blatant traditionalism that some may call ‘folksy’ or ‘home-spun.’ The role of flannel…”
cheech wizard
September 21st, 2007 at 8:47 am [Reply]

MW – So now Vera’s dumping him too, although with a regrettable lack of hand-slapping action. This is what happens when you make a half-assed attempt at breaking things off with someone in an inadvisable attempt to protect their feelings. If he’d simply kept porking them both, this never would have happened.
Non-Shannon
September 21st, 2007 at 8:49 am [Reply]

That isn’t Meredith. Meredith has curly blonde hair and this little abomination seems to have Liz’s mouse-brown straight hair. Plus, this kid is like a year older. I guess all the “reminiscing” must have really aged her since the the beginning of the month.
Cripes.
McManx
September 21st, 2007 at 8:58 am [Reply]

FOOB – “Goddamit, I’ve been looking all over the house for that $#%&* remote.”

Pluggers – Dog-man owning a dog-dog may distress the intelligent design camp, but it’s A-OK with the theory of evolution. Bipeds are superior to quadrapeds and thus are destined to dominate them. If Cro-magnons were still around, they would be our pets, so what’s the beef? “Sit Uggg. Good boy.”
Electro
September 21st, 2007 at 9:01 am [Reply]

Pluggers still practise slavery.

(DT)GT: Hee hee – Days later, Milford can’t figure out how to get the tires off their flagpole.
Jym
September 21st, 2007 at 9:03 am [Reply]

=31= MT (the great one): But Shirley is so … so … brave! Perhaps getting cleanshaven doofuses to do her bidding is a Darwinian adaptation to habitat loss.
Blynneda
September 21st, 2007 at 9:06 am [Reply]

#3: Yeah, Zot was done by Scott McCloud, who’s gone on to write such books as Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics,and Making Comics.
Fightin Vague Shape
September 21st, 2007 at 9:17 am [Reply]

MW: It’s clear what happened? Really? ‘Cause I’ve been reading this plotline since the beginning, and I still need to look up which of you is Dawn and which of you is Vera.

GT: A couple months ago, I saw a PBS documentary on competitive hairdressing (seriously; it was part of a doubleheader; the other half was on synchronized swimming). In one of the competition categories, the stylists have to give their dummy Gil’s exact haircut. I think they called it the “Classic” but I suspect if we wrote to whatever organization it is that puts on these competitions en masse, we could get it changed to the “Gil”.

TDIET: Actually, a mother’s definition of “in plain sight” tends to include things that have fallen behind the shelf, slipped underneath the carpet, and are currently residing in a bottomless pit guarded by the vicious two-headed dog Cerberus. Admittedly, I’m extrapolating from my experiences with my own mother, but it’s still got more of a basis in fact than most of the situations published in the strip.

MT: Aha! So Homer can’t tell the difference between a woman and a duck! Methinks this is why he got divorced in the first place.

FW: Lisa has cancer, she has to appear in Funky Winkerbean, and now she has to eat taco lasagne. It’s a trifecta of suffering!
Allie Cat
September 21st, 2007 at 9:23 am [Reply]

#37 and #55 beat me to it, punchline-wise.

Tele66 – Yes, this storyline is pissing me off, and I totally agree with your assertion that Doonesbury can pull it off so much better. I think the Command Rape story line that he keeps coming back to is incredibly well done, and I could read the interaction between patient and doctor for weeks and not get bored.

To me, it seems really, really trite. Having someone you love die is poignant. Reading about someone dying in the funnies isn’t poignant. It’s senseless.

Several days ago someone – and I wish I could recall who, made a comment about Batuik taking the easy way out by advancing the plot 10 years right after Lisa dies. I agree with that, too. If you’re going to kill off a major character, at least have the cojones to stick around and watch the people affected go through whatever they’re going to face. I think the fast-forward is cowardly as hell, and those of us who have stuck with this ham-handedness deserve better.
Little Guy
September 21st, 2007 at 9:27 am [Reply]

FOOB: Meta Time! In the last panel, Lynn is saying, “It’s my {MARGO}ing strip, and I can change if it’s a hybrid or a thinly disguised version of my life!”

9CL: Yes, Edda, I said it before. Violence begets respect. Tomorrow: nothing says “I love you” like ripping out his spleen while you spoon.

GA: Okay. I give up. What does Fireball have on Slim (and please let it cheesecake photos of Clovia)?
Blake
September 21st, 2007 at 9:30 am [Reply]

#48, Tele66: You are not alone.

I am a pretty positive guy. I like everything. In fact, there are just 5 things in this world that I really hate:

1. Injustice
2. Cruelty
3. Human suffering
4. Funky Winkerbean (and Batiuk)
5. For Better Or For Worse (and Lynn)
Little Guy
September 21st, 2007 at 9:30 am [Reply]

46: Baldo: Wow! Baldo’s dad must have had great eyesight to pick out Nazis from drafted soldiers in the German Army.
Calico
September 21st, 2007 at 9:32 am [Reply]

#43 – Yes, Dr. Dumb could’ve doubled his pleasure and had an occasional threesome (Charterstone Math). I eagerly await the patented Mary Worth Sermon® any time now.

Meanwhile, for the Ladies, there will be gentle scolding, lots of Kleenex, dinners filled with self-pity, lots of pie, and hopefully some kind of altercation.
Old Man Muffaroo [Old Man Kip W]
September 21st, 2007 at 9:36 am [Reply]

Pluggers have evolved beyond their apparent species. Just not very far. They have opposable thumbs whose sole function is to get hit with a hammer when they’re trying to make the VCR work.

The senescence of BC wouldn’t be a tragedy if the strip had never been funny in the first place. What makes it hurt is that you can reach at random into any of the first five anthologies and come up with a strip that puts anything on today’s comics page to shame. Congratulations, Johnny Hart! You’re disproved evolution!
Epicurus
September 21st, 2007 at 9:38 am [Reply]

Isn’t that plugger a bear?
Keg of Curd
September 21st, 2007 at 9:39 am [Reply]

#37 – smacky – COTW, if I were in charge.
Keg of Curd
September 21st, 2007 at 9:40 am [Reply]

As far as the dog-owning-dog weirdness of Pluggers (and Disney), didn’t MyCage do a pretty good gag about that recently? (He’s got a psychological disorder… he thinks he’s nonanthropomorphic!).
Mr. Mike
September 21st, 2007 at 9:47 am [Reply]

I love Funky Winkerbean! That stuff just cracks me up!

-Michael O’Donahue,
Hell
Calico
September 21st, 2007 at 9:47 am [Reply]

#64 – that’s not Baldo’s Dad telling the story – it is Mr. Ramirez the barber, who lost half a leg in WW2.
Old Man Muffaroo [Old Man Kip W]
September 21st, 2007 at 9:49 am [Reply]

MF – So the Conserva-Kid even thinks to himself in g-droppin’ apostrophe dialect? The Stupid is bone-deep in this one! He is ready for his own spinoff.

Z – Sorry, Muffler Man! Sousa Marches don’t go Oom-Pah-Pah, Oom-Pah-Pah, they go Oom-Pah, Oom-Pah. You’re obviously thinking of Sousa Waltzes.
Old Man Muffaroo [Old Man Kip W]
September 21st, 2007 at 9:50 am [Reply]

…or maybe Oom-Pah-Pah-Pah. Opinions differ.
Bitter Scribe
September 21st, 2007 at 9:51 am [Reply]

John Updike once wrote a short story about a bunch of microorganisms having a cocktail party. When one of them got bored, it would eat the boring organism. Maybe inter- (or even intra-) species cannibalism is the next logical step for Pluggers.
Niall
September 21st, 2007 at 9:53 am [Reply]

Old Man Muffaroo: marches are 2/4, so it definitely is Oom-Pah. (In any case OomPahPah is a european comics character, an early creation of Goscinny and Uderzo who would next make the beloved Astérix.)
AAckTTpth
September 21st, 2007 at 9:54 am [Reply]

“Zot” was used in BC as the sound effect for hoovering up ants since at least the mid-to-late 70’s, so I remember from my youth and a stack of BC compilation books (oh, the shame).

“Yah” seems more North Dakota, northern Minnesota than Canadian, unless you have lived in southern Manitoba (oh, the shame).

Humph. A veritable compendium of comic strip sound effects and regionalisms today – oh, the shame…
ianscot
September 21st, 2007 at 9:58 am [Reply]

The original Pluggers for today included Shoe, from the eponymous strip, in a wire cage in the background. Sitting there in his ratty old tweed jacket. Being raised for the breast meat.

Seriously, we know our artist was sleepwalking here, or assembling his strip from some sort of clip art collection. Why not at least make the owner one of the Plugger Rhinos?
mnemonica
September 21st, 2007 at 9:59 am [Reply]

28: I agree completely. There is nothing wrong with being born in 1958.
Gal Friday
September 21st, 2007 at 10:07 am [Reply]

46, 61, 63, 70. Seriously, has Les said more than 2 words in the last 6 months? Besides “Don’t” and “Thank you”?

I though Batuik might go for a Christmas death, but Dia de la Raza is looking more likely.
Mariko
September 21st, 2007 at 10:07 am [Reply]

Wait a moment . . . today’s TDIET completely destroys all that we’ve ever known about the strip. I was under the impression that it took place in the 1950s, despite the occasional reference to e-mail!
“Gee, ma, this birth certificate says 1958 . . . that’s four years from now!”
Keg of Curd
September 21st, 2007 at 10:08 am [Reply]

Spiderman also continues to lower the bar for The Shocker: please, take my word for this. If having your fingers immobilized renders you harmless, you do not qualify as a villain, no matter how attractively you’ve quilted yourself. As such, we have no interest whatsoever in reading about your non-exploits.
Gal Friday
September 21st, 2007 at 10:09 am [Reply]

PS I thought Pluggers was funny today! The shame.
Krazy Kat
September 21st, 2007 at 10:09 am [Reply]

Mr. Mike
How appropriate! Maybe we can get Batiuk to illustrate Mr. Mike’s tales of Uncle Remus!

“No, Brer Bear didn’t throw him in the briar patch; he honored his wishes and skinned him alive…”
Old Man Muffaroo [Old Man Kip W]
September 21st, 2007 at 10:13 am [Reply]

formerly Ben @46 – Well spotted. The current half-assed attempt at |337-speak manages to make Marvin seem brain-damaged, even though he’s talking in rather long sentence fragments. Who knew there was something more irritating than the “gobba-goo” Pasquale used to spout in “Rose is Rose”?
SmartPeopleOnIce
September 21st, 2007 at 10:14 am [Reply]

Alas I am snarkless, snarkless I tells ya! O’ foul fickel muse! Why hast tho forsooth’ed me? Tell me who must be sacrificed and I shall fall upon them. I will make their life but a gap in the firmament through which misery pours upon those who once counted them among the living.

In other news, I would point out that Jamus’s Mary Worth Primer from yesterthread was a hoot.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 21st, 2007 at 10:21 am [Reply]

Re TDIET: Madonna was born in 1958. ‘Nuff said.

Re Pluggers, technically #67 Epicurus is right — the character’s name, according to the coloring book, is Andy Bear. But I still say he’s a “dogbear”, melkardammit!

Re Foob: If your kids have a toy remote control, then they watch too much damn TV! I’m reminded of a Beavis and Butt-head quote: “Dreaming is great, because it’s like you’re sleeping but you’re still watching TV.”
Chloe The Cat
September 21st, 2007 at 10:23 am [Reply]

Hey Willie Thompson! You ARE fucking funny!!!
although I do not want to see how funny you are fucking.
The book is great!
commodorejohn
September 21st, 2007 at 10:25 am [Reply]

9CL – Maybe it should just go by 9 Weed Lane.

A3G – “By which I mean I want to have extramarital sex with you. Just so we’re clear on that.”

Archie – The best thing about this is how Betty runs up specifically for the purpose of the joke and then runs off when it’s been executed. ALGJU3K efficiency at its finest.

Curtis – I’m trying to figure out what Barry means by that, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.

DTM – Forgetting an E does not equal menace.

DT – Interesting decision, on Locher’s part, to do panels one and two as a panorama, but include a spatial condensing in between them. At least, I didn’t remember Gretchen’s legs being that short.

FC – I’d buy this if the Circus family didn’t seem to be perpetually stuck in…oh, 1988, at the latest.

FOOB – Get this kid out of there, NOW. Not only is she developing the beesting lips and turning into MichaelLizElly, she’s becoming a couch potato, the first step towards developing the Patterbutt.

FW – It’s a death party! I’ll get the confetti!

H&L – Sorry, Chip, Marty McFly beat you to it.

Luann – Ha Ha Ha! Tiffany is a despicable human being with no redeeming qualities whatsoever! Com-ed-eee!!! See, this is why I hate Luann: it’s basically a bowdlerized mashup of every teen comedy cliche ever written. There’s no originality, no depth of character, nothing. They’re just reasonably well-drawn cardboard cutouts.

MF – Really awkwardly worded, but…well, it’s actually kind of funny.

MW – Dr. Drew: Total Loser.

PC – AHH GOD MAKE IT STOP NOT INFANTILISM TOO

SM – Putting aside the fact that I doubt the Shocker really needs to move his fingers to activate them, I’m just pleasantly surprised that Spider-Man is displaying a shred of competency here.

TDIET – If there’s one truly awesome visual Scadutoism, it’s the Janus face effect when a character is supposed to be looking around in shock.
bats :[
September 21st, 2007 at 10:30 am [Reply]

15. Scherzo: now that Charles Schulz doesn’t seem likely to rise from the dead, maybe LJ has turned to the Keanes for mentors (not that she NEEDS them, since she is LJ, after all). Hence le crappie anatomie. (It was either that or the artist for Gil Thorp.)

27. Trilobite: ah, Trilobite, this is a kinder, gentler, more euphemistic world, even in Santa Royale. Deadman’s Curve was renamed as the Aldo Kelrast Memorial Highway last year. (You didn’t get the memo? $40K in new signage.)

43. Tweeks_Coffee: now, be kind (see above)…Vera is doing the best…she…can. Things take a little longer for her. (But she still manages better than her kid sister Shannon.)

55. Not-Shannon: hell, I’m surprised Mewwy isn’t a shriveled, mummified skeleton. Has it been less than a month?! The most disturbing thing is that Wobin is now 12 years old and still wears Pampers.

61. Allie Kat: gee whiz, haven’t we, the FW readership, suffered enough?
Although I’d like to see Les go to the local humane society, adopt Chat Bleu, and get the bejebus clawed out of him when he tries to get C.B. fixed…then we can live through another drawn-out misery of Les dying of a prolonged septicemic infection.
harlock
September 21st, 2007 at 10:32 am [Reply]

Sung to the theme of the Pink Panther….

DEAD ANT
DEAD ANT
DEADANT
DEADANT
DEADANT
Reynard Noir.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:33 am [Reply]

So, that anteater eats ants. I get that.

What I don’t get is why he ate THESE ants if he thought, at the time, that they were a dancing centipede! Is he really a ant-and-also-dancing-centipedes-and-maybe-slaloming-beetles-while-we’re-at-it-eater?

This just completely violates the precise and logical brand of humor I’ve come to expect from BC.
cheech wizard
September 21st, 2007 at 10:43 am [Reply]

83/ Krazy Kat – Along with the tale of the blind chicken who lived in the alligator-infested swamp. And the aria from Madame Butterfly. And other least-loved bedtime stories.
Gabe
September 21st, 2007 at 10:57 am [Reply]

That’s Andy Bear, not a Earl Houndstooth. So it is his dog, not a son.
Crooked Soricidae
September 21st, 2007 at 10:58 am [Reply]

Aaaagh! The apocalypse is here, I laughed at BC. Somebody shoot me now.
Weasel Boy
September 21st, 2007 at 10:59 am [Reply]

FW, final panel: Welcome to Smirkfest ‘07!
Darkefang
September 21st, 2007 at 11:06 am [Reply]

From Tuesday –
JP: Yeah, this is late, but I’ve been out with an injury. Sophie hired Raju last year? Doesn’t Sam mean to say that she hired Raju last week? If my memory is correct, the whole Raju story took place in the days before Abbey flew to Paris.

From Friday –

A3G: When’s Margo going to show up? Mary Worth has whetted my appetite for some slap-action and any fight involving Margo is definitely the main attraction.

Archie: So I’m to believe that Betty would be perfectly fine with hearing Archie discuss his dastardly plans to two-time her with her best friend, but hearing a comment out of context calling her “odd” sets her off on a milkshake throwing frenzy? I think the AJGLU 3000 has taken a step backward.

BC: There’s nothing funnier than mass murder at a wedding!

DT: Seriously Gretchen, stop checking out your grandfather’s package.

FC: Dolly and Jeffy would be more interested in what Billy was saying, but at the moment, their main concern is bracing themselves for the backhand slap that one of them is about to receive.

FW: Wait, did the other FW husbands send their wives over to “caregive” for Les? There may be something interesting in this whole cancer thing after all.

MT: I kind of understood the whole “saving the duck nest from the evil land developer” plot, but now they’re saving the duck nest from a naturally-occuring event? The Mark Trail universe is going to be populated with ducks born with an instinct to build their nests in really dumb places.

Marvin: Nobody writing text messages have ever used those “abbreviations.” I put quotes around “abbreviations” because they don’t even save keystrokes. They are just cutesy misspellings.

MW: Vera really isn’t that mad at Drew, but she needs a cover to leave so that she can change into her costume without giving away her secret identity. In panel two, we see her beginning to bust out of her civilian clothes when she gets telepathic word from her seahorse scouts that the Black Manta is attacking Atlantis.

Phantom: In panel three, Tendai is demonstrating what happens to me every morning when I read The Phantom during this current plotline.

RMMD: I’d like to note that Niki and his mom both look like they’ve fallen out of a Dragonball-Z cartoon. Also, could the pedophilial undertones of this story be any more obvious? Also, is pedophilial a real word?

S-M: I seem to recall briefly skimming an argument about the definition of a bitch-slap earlier this week. Does today’s slap in panel two count as a bitch-slap?
Old Guy
September 21st, 2007 at 11:11 am [Reply]

Gal Friday, the Funky Winkerbean website has the “Lisa’s Story” book coming out the first week of October, and a book tour set up for the first two weeks of October. I would say that Lisa’s end is nigh. Also, there’s a preview of the teen Summer (I guess) post Great Leap Forward under the big asterisk on that page.
Girl Reporter
September 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am [Reply]

#25 Big Sims says: Someone on this site has predicted Vera’s demise in her faulty car. Now I must admit that I didn’t really think that would happen, I mean there are more ways to kill of a character than car crashes surely, and Aldo took that slot only last year! But I am giving much more credence to the Vera’s death by car theory, based on the “don’t try to stop me” in today’s strip. It just rings ominously to me.
Would the ‘mudge who developed that theory please stand forward and also accept my apologies for not recognizing their sooth until now?

I’m the hopeful one. What do you think? Brakes? Bald tires? Suspension problems? The steering wheel locks? More than 3,000 miles since the last oil change?
Paperback Rifler
September 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am [Reply]

Bah! So I’ve been going through the comics trying all morning to come up with even a modicum of snark, and all I have to show for it is this:

Pibgorn: . . . Paging Dr. Freud . . . Hey Doc, I know that sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar;” but what the heck is that?!

Meh. Cut to the also “meh” song parody, with apologies to Ritchie Valens, his estate, and everybody everywhere:

Skip the taco lasagna —
Skip the taco lasagna
Or you’ll be needing a lot of antacids —
A whole bunch of antacids and imo-di-um
For your diarrhea —
Your severe diarrhea and flatulence —
And flatulence,
And flatulence —

She’s no cancer survivor —
She’s no cancer survivor
Thanks to Batiuk,
Thanks to Batiuk —
Sadistic prick!

Taco lasagna,
Taco lasagna,
Taco lasagna,
Lasagna —

Linda’s taco lasagna —
Linda’s taco lasagna,
Is it an entree or a euphemism?
Is it a euphemism for something filthy?
Will Les dive right in it?
Will Les take one look at it and dive headfirst?
And dive headfirst,
With that damn smirk?

Taco lasagna,
Taco lasagna,
Taco lasagna,
Lasagna.
Paperback Rifler
September 21st, 2007 at 11:24 am [Reply]

Also apologies to “Weird Al” Yankovic. I thought that there was a preexisting, lasagna-themed “La Bamba” parody out there.
Weasel Boy
September 21st, 2007 at 11:27 am [Reply]

#100: Yeah, but the Weird Al parody is sadly lacking any Funky Winkerbean references, so yours is better.
Kate
September 21st, 2007 at 11:28 am [Reply]

FW: taco lasagna.

RMMD: Nikki will never disappoint you, Rex.

We need a *little* challenge here folks. Everything has already been said. I just wanted to add my voice to the rhubarbing chorus.
Mariko
September 21st, 2007 at 11:38 am [Reply]

Popeye: If there can be spinach coal, does that mean . . . oh, my God–spinach diamonds! All Popeye has to do is compress the coal hard enough, then WHAM! A milling spinachk diamenks fer his Olive Oyl.
Kurdt
September 21st, 2007 at 11:45 am [Reply]

Pluggers: Man/dog/bear things says: “guess who’s scheduled to get his balls chopped off?”

Caption: You’re a Plugger if you and your dog get neutered at the same place.
Professor Fate
September 21st, 2007 at 11:49 am [Reply]

FW: Oh how sweet – they are going to kill Lisa and then eat. Or maybe kill Les or that blue cat.

what a mess this strip is. You know we are all going to die – and more likely than not from something like heart disease or cancer. it’s an ugly truth but hell how you live is more imporant anyway. In this Baitiuk has added NOTHING with this wallow. Lisa has become nothing but a living corpse – she is either silent or she is asleep. Just as loathsome a piece of attempted tear jerking as I have see. The only think lacking is the faithful dog at the bedside howling.

FOOB: Speaking of Hybrid – Mikes daughter now looks like an Alien Gray Human mix out of the X-files.

Phantom: Next “how about a cup of coffee?”
This Just In
September 21st, 2007 at 11:52 am [Reply]

Recipe for Linda’s Taco Lasagna:

- Les’s talking cat (we haven’t seen him/her in awhile…)
- 2 C. tears
- A heaping helping of Batiuk’s bitterness
rich
September 21st, 2007 at 11:52 am [Reply]

10, lynngineering: I was hoping this one was a set-up for tomorrow’s strip. Panel One: Mike’s daughter (who, not surprisingly, he seems to have fantasized into a combination of his mother and his sister) pushes the button. Panel Two: The dream dissolves; Cut to Michael unconscious in his hospital bed.
Sal Paradise
September 21st, 2007 at 11:52 am [Reply]

GT : Today’s strip made me blush. Stacking tires around flagpoles, indeed.
Al
September 21st, 2007 at 11:55 am [Reply]

FW: A few thoughts:

a) taco lasagna sounds pretty good right about now… but it is pretty close to lunchtime.

b) Who is the 3rd girl in today’s strip. 1st is Holly (married to Funky), next is Linda (married to Bull). Is the 3rd Cindy (Funky’s ex)? Or maybe Mindy from Crankshaft? Or somebody else who works at Montonis? Or some random new character who will eventually be Lisa’s replacement as Les’s wife?

c) Lisa looks like crap, considering that she quit chemo to IMPROVE her QoL. Of course, I’ve only known 1 person with cancer, and he died during an experimental treatment (and looking much better than Leese, despite having half his skull missing).
Dicky
September 21st, 2007 at 11:58 am [Reply]

60, Fightin: Cerberus had three heads. Orthros is the dog with two heads.

96, Darkefang: I believe the adjective form is “pedophilic.”

BC: I’ll throw my head in and say that I laughed at today’s installment as well.

PBS: Wow, stereotypical comedy mother… and “Paris”? Please have her set him up with a woman named Helen and begin an epic story of comedy and tragedy. Much better than him flashing his naughty bits for the papparazzi.

Baldo from 10/20 (yesterday): For the life of me, he looks like an Japanese anime character from that angle in the third panel.

H&L: I use that pose to drain my legs. And it’s pretty comfortable too.

MG&G: What a horrible set up, then a smattering of dog ass for good measure.

Lio: They need Classic Piglet in there too, and make it a team match. But don’t most UFC fighters not wear boxing gloves?

RMMD: Can we just go to the thrilling conclusion where their Big Brothers and Big Sisters “meeting” is really Dateline NBC where he will be placed under arrest? The kid is just a little too enthusiastic here.
BigJoe
September 21st, 2007 at 12:02 pm [Reply]

MW: I love how Dawn is yelling from her car as she drives away through the pasture. She’s so upset she left the road. I can imagine a third panel where a group of riders on horses are swearing and leaping out of the way of her speeding car.
Allie Cat
September 21st, 2007 at 12:03 pm [Reply]

#109 – #3 appears to be either – Donna, Crazy Harry’s wife or Jessica Darling – girlfriend of Darrin. My guess is that it’s Donna.
AlmostAGhost
September 21st, 2007 at 12:14 pm [Reply]

What has stumped me about the Pluggers is how much thought did or did not go into it. Was it like

“OK I’ve got a ‘joke’ about a Plugger and his pet dog…But, wait! I don’t draw humans, will a dog owning a dog be confusing? If I make him a rhino it will be too bizarre that he has a pet dog? Screw it, I’ll just make him vaguely dog/bear-like so people can’t tell. Nobody looks at these things closely anyway.”

Or maybe the artist has been so deluded, he just doesn’t even realize he draws humans as animals anymore, and the confusion never crossed his mind. “Plugger dog… pet dog… done.”
Colinski
September 21st, 2007 at 12:18 pm [Reply]

Whether that Plugger’s a dog or a bear (in all fairness, bears are closely enough related to canines to make it weird either way), this strip translates into the human world roughly like a redneck owning a monkey.

In that vein, here’s a Pluggers I’d like to see: A Plugger dog-man yelling at some sort of “intellectual” (or as a Plugger AM radio host might say: moonbat pinko athiest) dog-lady saying, “My grandpa was not a DOG!” Caption: Pluggers know that almighty God created them in His own image.
Sister Sestina
September 21st, 2007 at 12:25 pm [Reply]

I know this’ll be a day late, but I haven’t had an opportunity to post since seeing the following comic panel:

Thursday’s Bizarro —
A crouched grey-haired lady standing on a couch, nervously peering through the blinds. A younger woman says: “RELAX, Mother. Even if the Democrats win the next election, NO ONE is coming for your stem cells.”

(Don’t throw me in the Cockpit yet, Josh. Hear me out.)

The thing is, on October 1st — even though a Republican’s still in the White House — somebody’s coming for the stem cells of a 50+ year old woman. But only after she flies across the width of the country to donate the blood that can save her brother’s life.

My boyfriend has CMML, chronic monomyelocytic leukemia. The first hint of its presence was raised from a blood test he’d taken for something completely unrelated; he had absolutely no symptoms of the disease. The probable cause? Exposure to benzene when he worked a year in a paint factory, some 30 years ago — long before anyone understood the danger. (Hell, my father was a watchmaker and I remember seeing him wash his hands with the stuff!)

As nasty as the situation is, he’s been lucky on two counts. 1), That they detected it early enough to be able to effectively treat it. And 2), that it took long enough to occur that they actually HAD an effective treatment. For the cure for what ailed him was developed less than a year before he was diagnosed. Certainly it was recent enough that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, or anyone else I could find, had not updated the information they disseminated about the disease. Searching the internet after hearing from the doctor gave me a real case of the shaking shits, let me tell you!

Before the procedure was developed, the prognosis was about 6 years to live. Chemotherapy would delay the progress of the disease, but there was no way of stoppping it. It was an automatic death sentence.

Now, his chances of death with the first year after what he’s going to go through on Oct. 1st is, statistically, 10% to 15%. The other 85-90%? Cure. Complete cure. Total no-more-cancer-have-a-happy-rest-of-your-life-(but-check-in with-us-occasionally-wiilya?) cure.

And it’s the result of stem cell research.

ADULT stem cell research.

See, the thing that pisses me off so mightily about that Bizarro (and I LOVE Bizarro!) is not that it’s making fun about Bush’s stand on stem cell research. I’ve got no moral or ethical reservations about embryonic stem cell research whatsoever. (Which by the way is NOT illegal, and some of is IS being governmentally funded, let us remember.) It’s the absolute frustration that, amidst the froth and rhetoric and wailing and wringing of hands about how we are being denied the cornucopia of cures that surely would come IF ONLY… we are insensible to the cures that are already here because of adult stem cell research. Many, many different cures, developed during the same period of time that the embryonic variety has only delivered hopes and uncontrolled tumerous growths.

That crouching eldery woman will never have stem cells ripped away her by governmental edict, of course, but today – today! – her stem cells could be wanted to rescue a person from certain death.

Let’s chase after the hopes, but not forget or diminish what we’ve already achieved. Are still achieving. Will continue to achieve. And please, don’t put all you ova in one basket!
Little Guy
September 21st, 2007 at 12:42 pm [Reply]

83: In Batiuk’s version, when Brer Rabbit lures them into the Briar Patch, they get cancer and die.
Gal Friday
September 21st, 2007 at 12:46 pm [Reply]

#97 Thanks for the FW timeline, Old Guy. So death may come this Sunday? to be in time for the book tour?
commodorejohn
September 21st, 2007 at 12:46 pm [Reply]

#115 Sister Setina – I thought the ovae were kept in two “baskets.”
Gal Friday
September 21st, 2007 at 12:47 pm [Reply]

JP I know this is a site about snark, but I do want to point out that the art for JP has been really cool by E. Barreto! I know he does comic book work, too. Interesting panels often.
Michael Farris
September 21st, 2007 at 12:58 pm [Reply]

“Mikes daughter now looks like an Alien Gray Human mix out of the X-files.”

Now? There’s been a change?
El Santo
September 21st, 2007 at 1:00 pm [Reply]

Hmmm… rationalizing the Dog Plugger and the dog, I’m going with the theory that the small dog is the equivalent to a chimpanzee, and dog plugger a human being. So it’s like a human that keeps a chimp for a pet. Of course, like #114 said, a redneck is not likely to be owning a monkey, no matter what they say in the movies.

#5 — a previous Plugger strip showed Chicken-Lady eating eggs. I think that counts.
e
September 21st, 2007 at 1:03 pm [Reply]

OMG, Josh, that Pluggers crack made me laugh out loud (really loud) at the office. I hope you’re happy. =)
Helena Handbasket
September 21st, 2007 at 1:11 pm [Reply]

GT: Those poor Milford folks, with a whole stack of tires around their flagpole and no possible way to get them off. If only they had, I don’t know, some kind of pulley system that they might be able to use to lift the tires to the top of the flagpole so that they could take them off. Nah, no one could attach a pulley to a flagpole, silly me.
gh
September 21st, 2007 at 1:12 pm [Reply]

MT —

Why does the first panel remind me of “McArthur Park?” Someone left his face out in the rain . . . .

Haven’t read all the comments, so sorry if I oversnarked.
Lynngineering
September 21st, 2007 at 1:14 pm [Reply]

#107 – shouldn’t that be, cut to Michael conscious in bed?
rich
September 21st, 2007 at 1:21 pm [Reply]

125, Lynngineering — Actually, I was hoping for “dead,” but we know Lynn wouldn’t do that.
Tim T.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:21 pm [Reply]

#56 McManx: “If Cro-magnons were still around, they would be our pets…” Weren’t Cro-magnons Homo sapiens, and therefore aren’t they/we still around, even if we’ve changed a little bit? (I haven’t studied much anthropology in the last four decades, so maybe I’m full of Neanderthal poop.) Besides, I think the anthropomorphized Plugger in the “joke” is supposed to be a bear, in which case the whole thing makes so much more sense.
Best wishes to all CCer’s.
Mountain Mama
September 21st, 2007 at 1:25 pm [Reply]

Today’s MC: Ewwwww…..but is that actually how sharks would sneeze, if they sneezed? Hmmm….do fish and aqua mammals sneeze? Do birds sneeze? Do “birds do it, bees do it”? Do fools really fall in love?

Oh, look, a butterfly!
Daktari
September 21st, 2007 at 1:27 pm [Reply]

Just a note of thanks to willethompson – I received my book today and can’t wait to get started. Thanks again.
Keg of Curd
September 21st, 2007 at 1:36 pm [Reply]

–So, guess who’s scheduled for his shots?
–I don’t know, you idiot, my neck is constricted to a radius smaller than your little finger, and my oxygen-starved brain is barely functioning. Also, my eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. K thx.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 21st, 2007 at 1:39 pm [Reply]

#127 — Yeah, I was under the impression that the Cro-Magnons are us, but the Neanderthals were different (and are no longer around), and Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals couldn’t interbreed with one another. But you all seem to be an educated bunch, so I’m sure somebody will correct me if I’m remembering wrong.
Nicolai
September 21st, 2007 at 1:42 pm [Reply]

Well now we know why Lynn Johnston is preserving Mere as a tiny girl. She can already lucidly dream, albeit with the help of technology (but I’m sure as she grew into her powers that would no longer be needed be needed). What other, potentially destructive, psychic powers would the littlest Paterson girl develop were she allowed to grow?
Bootsy
September 21st, 2007 at 1:47 pm [Reply]

Sister, Sestina, best of luck on the Oct 1 procedure for Boyfriend Sestina.

Kate! Last night, I let the dog out onto the porch. I have to go with her because we still don’t have complete fence around us. She won’t go anywhere but still I go keep on eye on her. There was big noisy commotion in a plant, and she went to look. I thought it was a lizard, until the damn thing took off like Dick Tracy’s helicoptor and roared around the front porch.

It was huge flying roach (Palmetto bug my ass!). Those suckers are icky enough when they’re just skittering around the floor, but flight adds a whole new dimension to the ickiness.

I will admit I shrieked like a girl, which I am anyways, and leapt back into the house slamming the door and leaving the dog bewildered. We have one of those little bevelled glass windows on the door, so I peered out, then cracked the door open, shouting, “Go pee!” like a lunatic (at the dog not the helicoptering roach – last thing I need would be that flying devil taking a leak on me too, melkar almighty). I mean, those things are 2 inches long on the ground, with a wingspan of about 3 feet, though Mr. B says that’s a slight exaggeration but not much. He was not home for that ignominious girly display. I had to open the door for the dog to come back inside, and since she is a big lumbering bear-type dog, she did not understand that my hostility was directed not at her as I was hissing “Hurry up”. The horror, the horror.
Al
September 21st, 2007 at 2:03 pm [Reply]

115 — I’m glad somebody else is willing to talk about ASC research. Every time I try to talk about it, people throw things at me or call me “baby killer” (I was in the military, so I’m used to it, though).

BTW, if we have an FW Death Pool, I’m taking Saturday Oct 6 — it is the 1st saturday before the 1st sunday of the month, AND my birthday besides.

97 — If that’s the teen Summer, get ready for a new pregnancy plotline. Or, at the very least, Les is in trouble.
dollface
September 21st, 2007 at 2:05 pm [Reply]

Dingo,

I love you. I’ve been slapping Dr. Drew all morning now. Maybe I have too much free time…..
willethompson
September 21st, 2007 at 2:09 pm [Reply]

This fledgling author would like to thank #87 Chloe the Cat and #129 Daktari for their kind words. I also wish to thank the many other ‘Mudges for their purchase of Scratch Golfer, especially Trotz who bought FOUR, bless her Bayou State heart. I owe this woman many mojitos.

Once you’ve read the book, be sure to email your comments to me at the link on the Scratch Golfer website for inclusion on the Reviews page. Again, many, many thanks.
SmartPeopleOnIce
September 21st, 2007 at 2:10 pm [Reply]

Ha! Soon people will be saying willethompson you magnificent bastard, I read your book!

Ok, I still got nothin’…

Er, has the confusion of Antebellum Pluggerdom diverted attention from the logic of the caption? Dog shots are really the Most Important Mail a Plugger gets? Really? What about Social Security Checks? Readers Digest? Restraining Order? Those Ed McMahon thingies?
Kate
September 21st, 2007 at 2:11 pm [Reply]

Oh frogs almighty, Bootsy, I am so sorry you were subjected to that by a cruel universe.

One of them was on my kitchen floor once. I sprayed it (you think I’m going to STEP on something THAT size EEEUGH?) and put a dustpan over it so I wouldn’t have to watch. It started *dragging the dustpan across the kicthen floor.*

Now that I have demonstrated that I share your pain, may I laugh like a hyena at your hissing “go pee” through the door? I can’t? Too bad.
Bootsy
September 21st, 2007 at 2:14 pm [Reply]

So, Al, are you used to the things being thrown at you because you were in the military, or being called baby killer? Just wondering.

I love babies! Lightly sauteed, with a wine reduction, baked potato on the side… Mmmmm…babies.
Sister Sestina
September 21st, 2007 at 2:21 pm [Reply]

Sorry, had to hurry off to work before I could proofread or check Latin grammar or actually count baskets. (I stole back on an early-taken lunch break.)

The ovary reference does remind me of a curious fact about post-operation status. Since what they’re gonna do is kill off all his bone marrow with massive chemo and radiation, then introduce his sister’s material into his body, the genetic markers in his new blood will be for a woman. Which pretty much dashes any hopes of competing in the Olympics, I suppose. And his blood type will change, too. (One of the weirdest factoids I learned from thisall is that, although matching the type of bone marrow is crucial and excruciatingly specific, the blood type itself is completely immaterial.) A slight pity that it will change to her rare AB-, making blood transfusions for him in the future far more problematic, but I’m not going to complain. She’s a match, the right side of a 25% probibility, and coincidentally already had volunteered for the bone marrow bank list before ever her brother needed some!
Bootsy
September 21st, 2007 at 2:21 pm [Reply]

Laugh away, Kate! I did, as soon as I locked the door. Those suckers could open a door but can’t manage the lock.

Now I have to go calm down all my staff who are freaking out at the tropical depression in the Gulf. Christ, people, it’s not like it’s a hurricane that’s coming to destroy the city or anything. That would be crazy! That would never happen! The government would never let something like that happen!

Oh wait, never mind. Carry on with the freaking out, folks.

Big Sims, do they have you guys on double secret hyper alert?
Gold-Digging Nanny
September 21st, 2007 at 2:25 pm [Reply]

Nice pimp-slap, Spider-Man, but even that and the absence of kitten T-shirts doesn’t make you as cool as Dawn Weston.

At least the strip has a new hero: J. Jonah Jameson, who in a single encounter with the Shocker saved not only Maria but Spider-Man himself. Can we just make the strip about him? I know he doesn’t have the proportionate strength of a spider, but at least he isn’t mopey.
--MC
September 21st, 2007 at 2:37 pm [Reply]

FBOFW today introduces a tribute to Phil Dick, as Mike’s daughter shows off the Penfield Mood Organ’s portability and ease of use.
Hammster
September 21st, 2007 at 2:43 pm [Reply]

FW:
Lisa’s not even gone yet and they’re already lining up for the widower teacher with the cute youngin’.
Sheesh!

What was that about Linda’s Taco?
El Santo
September 21st, 2007 at 2:45 pm [Reply]

#131 — To me, the greatest cavemen were the Astralopithicus Africanus. Anyway, I think you’re right; our ancestors were the Cro-Magnon. The Neanderthals, I think, were like the Cavemen from the Geico ads.
Inspector Dim
September 21st, 2007 at 2:51 pm [Reply]

Spider-Man has the proportionate bitch-slapping power of a seriously funky spider, here. But why no sound effect? No “Spap!” or “Splork!” or “Whizzzz”? Not even a “Frok!” like last time? Awww.
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 3:03 pm [Reply]

Bootsy!
Walking down the path to my back door (in N.O.) at night I saw a huge black spot on the garage siding. It had to be huge because I could see it without my glasses. I pushed Mr T ahead to investigate and IT WAS A HUGE ROACH! I froze, Mr. T got A SHOVEL to whack it (I don’t move until I’m sure they’re really dead) but the damned thing FLEW at him and, like the cunning little bastards they are, it landed on the back door window. It knew we couldn’t get it with the shovel then. My husband threw a shoe at it and stunned it enough to squash it into a foot long smear of roach guts. HOORAY? Oh no. As soon as I went to open the back door another roach came flying at us to avenge his brother’s death so I ran back to the car and locked myself in, leaving Mr T to battle those monsters. I managed to get through all of Dark Side of the Moon before it was safe to come out.
Goddamn! I miss New Orleans!
AhClem
September 21st, 2007 at 3:18 pm [Reply]

Bootsy and Trotz -
Reading your stories about battling giant roaches makes me think of that peculiar metallic sound of aluminum basaball bats hitting balls at a city-league softball game. I imagine swatting those monsters makes a similar sound. Perhaps someone could start a city roachball league. “Clink!”
commodorejohn
September 21st, 2007 at 3:20 pm [Reply]

#147 Trotzenbonnie – There’s nothing like a little Pink Floyd to help you chill after a giant bug attack, eh?
gh
September 21st, 2007 at 3:25 pm [Reply]

Niiice!
Gold-Digging Nanny
September 21st, 2007 at 3:39 pm [Reply]

147 — Mr. T? Fighting cockroaches? I pity the roach!
BlinkAndItsOver
September 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm [Reply]

I hope Linda’s taco lasagna has a conga line on it. No, make that in it.
dimestore lipstick
September 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm [Reply]

The word “zot” definitely has a long history in B.C., if my battered 1976 paperback edition of “Great Zot, I’m Beautiful” is anything to go by.

And the Spouse echoes many posters by informing me that being born in 1958 is nothing to be embarrassed by.
Brown-eyed Girl
September 21st, 2007 at 3:45 pm [Reply]

Early in our relationship I asked my (now-ex) boyfriend to kill one of those hugh roaches for me. He did, but instead of preening about how macho him saved little ole girly me (like any normal guy would, right?), he asked me what I would have done if he hadn’t been there. I am a complete idiot, because I told him the truth: I would have killed it myself. Well, that was the last bug he ever killed for me, and we were together for over 10 years.

And now the gignormous spider count is up to five for this week alone. Yech!
Razmytaz
September 21st, 2007 at 3:45 pm [Reply]

140 Sister Sestina:
By becoming AB- a person becomes more problematic for transfusions only if they insist on a match (which is, I think the general protocol). However, AB means that they can actually receive from O, A, and, B, as well as AB without generating anti-transfusion antigens. (They still have to be Rh factor – though).

So they become more of a universal receiver. My son, on the other hand (0-) is the universal donor. No extraneous protein factors to engender immune responses. But he has to be pretty picky about where any blood they put in him would come from. (So far its not been a problem).
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 3:47 pm [Reply]

#150 – gh
Right on, Connie Fogle! The comics should not be a vehicle to address death – unless your name is Aldo Kelrast and you’re sailing that vehicle over the Charterstone Bluffs.
Bootsy
September 21st, 2007 at 3:48 pm [Reply]

AhClem, they make a really gross bright green ooze and actually loudly crackle when smooshed.

Trotz, there is a story of a New Orleanian bitching to an out of town friend about how hard it is to get things done here, how bad the streets are, the crumbling infrastructure, the 3rd world politcal corruption, the ineptitude, etc. The friend said, quite horrifed, how terrible it must be to live here, and the local replied, “No, it’s great! It’s the best city in the world!”

These roaches are so damn big that if Jack Elrod put them in Mark Trail he would not have to exaggerate their size!
The Divine O’F
September 21st, 2007 at 3:49 pm [Reply]

Trotz and Bootsy: EWWWWWWW! We have the equivalent of Palmetto bugs here, only we call them Palo Verde beetles, but they are also the size of small helicopters, can fly, and have ginormous biting jaws. I freak out whenever I see one, which this year so far has been seldom, thank Melkar.

On the other hand, our house is lately crawling with snakes. (Slithering with snakes?) Luckily, it’s not a problem for me, because I love snakes, but it’s squicking Mr. O’F right out.
the great one
September 21st, 2007 at 3:51 pm [Reply]

# 58: I bow to the greater mind.
Inner Space
September 21st, 2007 at 3:56 pm [Reply]

It’s extremely unnerving to me to see that DOG plugger talking to his DOG about getting him shots, and the dog is apparently intelligent enough to understand that shots aren’t a good thing. I wonder, do these pluggers have pets, or slaves?
Islamorada Girl
September 21st, 2007 at 4:02 pm [Reply]

Dark Side of the Moon makes a great soundtrack to smashing giant roaches or just sitting around nursing a writer’s block. Here’s to Sister Trotz! Have a mojito on me! I’m going to crank up a Friday nite cosmo, because I want to be nice and hungover for the platitude lashing Mary Worth is going to be delivering to Dr. Drew, the Rat With Women, on Sunday. This ought to be good for most of next week, but he’ll have Learned His Lesson, Mary-Style!
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 4:02 pm [Reply]

Here’s your chance to save the world, fellas!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/20/health/main3280378.shtml

Let’s get the ball rolling!

WARNING: NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH!
This is the ACTUAL SIZE of our roaches! I SWEAR!

http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/biosystematics/invertebrates/invertid/images/AmericanCockroach1.jpg
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 4:06 pm [Reply]

#161 – Islamorada Girl
Friday IS Cosmo night. We even have our own bottle of vodka behind the bar at Texas Roadhouse waiting just for us. Cheers!
gh
September 21st, 2007 at 4:21 pm [Reply]

#162 Trotzenbonnie –

Oh, yes, thank you VERY much for the link. And I’m not talking about the cockroach.
Les
September 21st, 2007 at 4:25 pm [Reply]

Ok, I don’t read spider man (SM, heh heh heh), but now, I understand from the comments here that The Shocker (heh heh heh) can be disabled by immobilizing his fingers? (unspeakable filth!)

Sally Forth: Hillary goes to her mom for romance troubles, fair enough, but the subject change to mom and grandma is kind of disturbing. You don’t want your relationship to your girlfriend to be like the one with your mom! Yikes! Either Faye and Hil finally hook up or Ted ends up dead and Hil blinded.
AtomicDog
September 21st, 2007 at 4:40 pm [Reply]

Women! all we men are good for is to kill their roaches for them.
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 4:48 pm [Reply]

#166 – AtomicDog
And taking out the trash.
And opening jars.
And…..nope. I think that’s it.
Johnny Q
September 21st, 2007 at 4:53 pm [Reply]

THE PHANTOM has had a lot of in-jokes lately. The other day they showed an intersection of Falk Boulevard and Moore Road, named for the strip’s longtime writer Lee Falk and its original artist Ray Moore. And in the Sunday series the hero is tangling with the McCoy-Barry Construction Company, named after Wilson McCoy and Sy Barry, the strip’s second and third artists.
bats :[
September 21st, 2007 at 5:05 pm [Reply]

166. AtomicDog: you bet! And not just killing roaches for your own spouse, but every other female!
Years ago, we had friends who lived about a mile from us. She was really roachophobic (yes, that is the technical term), and it was a good thing her husband wasn’t. One evening, we got a hysterical call from her because she was home alone, and there was a roach in her kitchen!
Mr. bats gallantly went over to her house and they scoured the place for the roach (not like it was going to hang around waiting to get stomped). No roach. Maybe the phone call scared it.
Once she was sure that the roach was gone and her husband was home, Mr. bats left. All is peace and joy.
Right until she went to bed…she turned down the covers and honest to Monty, the roach was there! Waiting for her! At least her husband was home to do the killing thing, but we’re pretty sure we heard her screaming anyway.
Jamus The Bartender
September 21st, 2007 at 5:34 pm [Reply]

85. Thanks. I should have re-posted that one instead of the Dick Tracy thing. Aw, what the hell, I thought Dick snarking on the “Don’t taze me , man” kid from Florida had to be done.
willethompson
September 21st, 2007 at 5:39 pm [Reply]

Thank heaven that we’ve moved from tampons to cockroaches.

In that light, we do not have the ‘palmetto bug’ here in the lumpy parts of NC, but on the dark stumble to retrieve the morning paper, I constantly have to plow thru the craftmanship of the grape-sized September spider.

I’m constantly reminded of the Far Side cartoon where two spiders have stretched their web across the bottom of a playground slide and chuckle to themselves, “If we pull this off, we eat like kings.”
AhClem
September 21st, 2007 at 5:51 pm [Reply]

Tampon-wearing cockroaches – the ultimate nightmare.

(This is just a brief interlude to stretch my legs. I have to get back to a certain book I started reading today.)
willethompson
September 21st, 2007 at 6:26 pm [Reply]

#161 I-Girl: ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is the perfect soundtrack for smashing anything!

…and AhClem – enjoy! Thanks, buddy.
The Divine O’F
September 21st, 2007 at 6:40 pm [Reply]

I was going to comment and even snark on a couple of things, but willethompson’s comment at 171 made me forget what I was going to say.

The high-mindedness of youse guys just makes me tear right up.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 21st, 2007 at 6:48 pm [Reply]

Tele66 @ 48 wrote:

Is Funky Winkerbean’s “dying from cancer” plotline pissing anybody else off?

Gosh, no! Everyone here thinks it’s the funniest, most heartwarming and uplifting thing in the comics since ever!!!1!

Just kidding *smirk*
Rezleok47
September 21st, 2007 at 7:01 pm [Reply]

Maybe Batiuk will pull a Bob Newhart: Les and Lisa are sleeping in bed, Lisa in perfect health. Lisa wakes up and says, “Les. I just had the weirdest dream…”
LightSyrup
September 21st, 2007 at 7:10 pm [Reply]

I think that bear-dog thing has a pet dog. I don’t think that is his offspring, which is kind of wierd – wouldn’t that make this panel more like Plugger S&M???
Loopina
September 21st, 2007 at 7:24 pm [Reply]

Marmaduke: is it me, or does the sign in the butcher’s window say “7 bone roast”? Ewww.
Mel
September 21st, 2007 at 7:27 pm [Reply]

177: Plugger S&M is wearing a seatbelt while “parking”
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 7:30 pm [Reply]

Want to know what I think?
Too bad. I’m telling you anyway.
I think Dawn is going to drive straight to Charterstone so she can pour her heart out to Mary about what a cad that Dr. Drew turned out to be.
Mary will listen patiently, all the while spooning out generous helpings of the Ella Byrd Memorial Tuna Casserole for Dawn to eat as she weepily tells her tale of woe.
Mary will wait for just the right moment to drop her ‘I told you so’ bomb and Dawn will dash out in a huff.
As Dawn approaches the Santa Royale Bluffs she’ll experience incapacitatingly severe abdominal pain from eating Mary’s tainted tuna and, as she winces and clutches her stomach with both hands (Oy, a pain only my enemies should know!) she’ll lose control of the car and head straight over the cliff a la Aldo!

I’ll leave her last words up to you, gentle readers.
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 7:54 pm [Reply]

#141 Bootsy
You’d better believe it. It’s a zoo here at work.
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 8:17 pm [Reply]

I have cockroach stories that will curl your toes. Growing up in New Orleans, currently living in Mobile, cockroaches, cockroaches, cockroaches. I recently discovered a nest of the critters in the oak outside the house.
My brother wrote cockroach poems when he was a kid, he used to read them at morning assembly at school which I suffer/enjoy with cringing pride. All I can remember is:
Lo! An early form approaches.
One of nature’s early Roaches.
Unashamed and unafraid,
because of yet there is no Raid.
It’s armored wings cannot be dented,
nor has Real-Kill been invented…
Whippersnapper
September 21st, 2007 at 8:34 pm [Reply]

Allie Cat @ 61: Maybe you’re thinking of my comment a few days ago? I don’t think I can do that nifty linking thing that will take you right to my comment, but it’s comment #74 on the 8/26 thread.

http://joshreads.com/?p=1217
Hysterical Woman
September 21st, 2007 at 8:34 pm [Reply]

Sister Sestina: The things you learn while snarking on comics.
Eridani
September 21st, 2007 at 8:39 pm [Reply]

I’ve come to realize that the Plugger universe is actually dystopic slave-powered dictatorship with no public health care system. The inhabitants are all anthropomorphized animals, all who are old, decrepit, and who own animalized forms of themselves to entertain them, and to provide the most important mail.
Daktari
September 21st, 2007 at 8:44 pm [Reply]

(DT)GT
Has anybody heard a revue of the Gail Martin halftime concert? Did she sing anything off the “Tarzana Nights” album? Did she personally thank Coach Kaz for all his help during her summer tour?
(Sigh) So many questions, so few answers.
Citric
September 21st, 2007 at 8:44 pm [Reply]

The real dialog of pluggers: “Oh, it looks like the missus is leaving me, look who’s scheduled for sodomy!”
MonkeyHawk
September 21st, 2007 at 8:47 pm [Reply]

ZomBC — Uhm, why was there a conga line at a luau? It’s sorta like doing the hula in Rio, isn’t it?
MonkeyHawk
September 21st, 2007 at 8:56 pm [Reply]

Did Gail Martin sing Tarzana Nights?!

Will Lee Greenwood sing God Bless the USA?

Think Toni Brasil might do Mickey tonight at her show at the Days Inn lounge in Muncie?
Daktari
September 21st, 2007 at 9:10 pm [Reply]

America wants to know!!!!
Buck Ripsnort
September 21st, 2007 at 9:12 pm [Reply]

Mewideth, I wish I had widdle Buttons w/ me when I read your strip, so I could Zot you into Calvin&Hobbes.
Girl Reporter
September 21st, 2007 at 9:28 pm [Reply]

#189 MonkeyHawk says: Will Lee Greenwood sing God Bless the USA?

According to a recent report, sometimes not. Until payment is in hand.
Some dude
September 21st, 2007 at 9:32 pm [Reply]

WOW, DAWN COMES BACK FOR A SECOND SLAP! THIS IS AMAZIN-

Oh wait, never mind, its just Spiderman pimp-slapping The Shocker. Move along…
Girl Reporter
September 21st, 2007 at 9:36 pm [Reply]

#192 continued…

http://www.countryweekly.com/lee_greenwood_dispute/scoop/2584
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 9:48 pm [Reply]

#98 Girl Reporter –
Did we get a hint as to why her car needed to go to the shop? I don’t think so (and I couldn’t be bothered to dig through the archives). I want to think that Dawn severed the brake lines.
And what’s going to be on the stereo when she launches off Aldo’s Folly? Vera seems like she’d turn to Kate Bush for her ‘break-up’ music. Suggestions or other theories solicited.
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 9:54 pm [Reply]

Specifically, This Women’s Work by Kate Bush.
andreavis
September 21st, 2007 at 9:54 pm [Reply]

#178 Loopina– Poor Marm, he’s in for a disappointment. 7 bone roasts are named as such because the bone is shaped like a seven, not because there are 7 bones in it. If only the poor sap had watched Alton Brown’s Good Eats episode, A Chuck for Chuck. Bad dog!
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 21st, 2007 at 9:59 pm [Reply]

I dunno, whenever I see Karen Moy trying to script a “young” woman character, I get Lilith Fair vibes. Y’know, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morrisette, Lisa Loeb… that sorta Birkenstocks, olive-green-cargo-shorts and ribbed-natural-cotton-tank-with-no-bra crowd. I can so see Dawn sailing off the cliff with “Stay” playing in the background.
benzo
September 21st, 2007 at 10:01 pm [Reply]

Marvin: Whoever is writing this comic, will someone please sit him down and explain to him that he’s just embarrassing himself?

Ziggy: This comic has it’s finger on the pulse of 1998.

Marmaduke: 7-bone roast? What does that even mean? I guess it could just be an extremely poorly drawn T. But how sloppy an artist do you have to be to make a poorly drawn T that looks like a perfect 7?
Anna Nimity
September 21st, 2007 at 10:02 pm [Reply]

179. Finally! A Plugger cartoon that I’d actually LIKE to see! Does one of the mudgeon artists want to have a go at this?
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 10:06 pm [Reply]

#198 SSB
Or Feist’s 1234
Big Sims
September 21st, 2007 at 10:09 pm [Reply]

#198
Yeah, I guess I was applying what my sisters used to listen to when they broke it off with their boyfriends – back in the ’80s!
Mel
September 21st, 2007 at 10:10 pm [Reply]

198 – SS-B: And Drew is sitting in his car in stunned silence listening to Mac Davis singing “Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me” over and over…Girl, you’re a hot-blooded woman-child / And it’s warm where you’re touchin’ me / But I can tell by your tremblin’ smile / You’re seein’ way too much in me / Girl, don’t let your life get tangled up with mine / ’cause I’ll just leave you, I can’t take no clingin’ vine…
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 21st, 2007 at 10:12 pm [Reply]

#189 MonkeyHawk:

Think Toni Brasil might do Mickey tonight at her show at the Days Inn lounge in Muncie?

Is she any relation to Ron Mexico?
Girl Reporter
September 21st, 2007 at 10:13 pm [Reply]

No reason was given for Vera’s two, TWO!, mentions that she had to take her car in for service immediately after the extremely romantic horsie ride at Clifton.

Now, Trotzenbonnie has introduced the idea of Dawn going over the cliff due to a lethal mix of Mary’s platitudes and tuna casserole.

Dawn does have a head start on Vera. But Dawn would really have to chow down and sob fast in order to screech back out of the Charterstone parking lot to beat Vera to Aldo’s Folly.

C’mon Sunday!

Or disappointment.
Girl Reporter
September 21st, 2007 at 10:16 pm [Reply]

Mac Davis: Christ, what an a**hole.
commodorejohn
September 21st, 2007 at 10:16 pm [Reply]

#157 Bootsy – “These roaches are so damn big that if Jack Elrod put them in Mark Trail he would not have to exaggerate their size!”

COTW nominee. No question about it.

#162 Trotzenbonnie – They can have my testicles when they pry them from my cold, dead…crotch, I guess.

#173 willethompson – Amen to that.
Mel
September 21st, 2007 at 10:33 pm [Reply]

206 — Girl Reporter, It’s better if you picture it the way they made Mac do it on the Muppet Show — sitting on a giant fishhook singing to Miss Piggy as a Mermaid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZNWz00R3Ng

At least then he’s a whimsical a**hole.
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 10:36 pm [Reply]

#3 Donald The Anarchist I loved Zot Great Comic book. I doubt it had anything to do with BC.

TDIET So, the woman is 49, so what? That’s how old I am, and I look about 30 years and several decades younger than she does. Did he mean to say 1928?
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 10:37 pm [Reply]

The thing that bugs me about Foob today, and pardon me if someone else has pointed this out, but why is Micheal acting as though he has never seen his daughter’s bedroom, or what she takes to bed with her.

And he is supposed to be watching them while his wife works?
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 10:41 pm [Reply]

the great one #31 pehraps this duck doesn’t float? Perhaps she has been eating lead shot? Perhaps her mother never taughter. Perhaps she was brought up by her father, who taught her to dress just like him.
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 10:42 pm [Reply]

37 smacky Yes, that is exactly what i thought he was going to embarrass her with, that or a dildo. A birth certificate? Give me a break. Wonder what the original idea was.
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 10:44 pm [Reply]

43 Tweeks_Coffee I assumed the phone in FC was a cordless phone, but if she was really oldfashioned she would stil have her black rotary phone.
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 10:50 pm [Reply]

Skullturf Q. Beavispants #86 Yes, Madonna was born in ‘58 as well as MIcheal Jackson.

Interesting mix.
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 11:07 pm [Reply]

#172 AhClem And how would a cockroach wear a tampon, like a cape on it’s back.

My mother, during the war, used to take the sanitary pads appart to make dresses for her dalls. She said it was the only cotton that wasn’t rationed, or something like that.

Back to cockroaches everyone.
Rainbird
September 21st, 2007 at 11:09 pm [Reply]

#175 The Spectacular Spider-Brick Yes, we should all tell the new people that not only do we cry when we read Fucky Cancerbean, but we love Foob as well.

Good way to flush newbees out.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 21st, 2007 at 11:13 pm [Reply]

#214 — In fact, Madge and Jacko were born 11 days apart, in the same general region of the country (southern Michigan and northwestern Indiana).
Dingo
September 21st, 2007 at 11:33 pm [Reply]

Hey, folks. It’d be too long to write here anyways but, to be honest, the conversation was far too personal to retell in its entirety but I received a wonderful phone call tonight from Carol Channing and her husband thanking me for the CD of Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. We spoke for over half an hour and at one point she said that even though we’d never met that she loved me. She was incredibly sweet.

I’m going to see what I can do to post the album on the internet. Perhaps RealAudio would work but I need to reduce the file sizes to fit onto my web site. Give me a little time. My next project is to re-edit Oliver! as a mashup to the song Gimme More by Britney Spears.
Dub Not Dubya
September 21st, 2007 at 11:40 pm [Reply]

115 Sister Sestina: Sending positive vibes for your boyfriend. Let us know how it goes.

218 Dingo: another great story from you, yay. Carol Channing is cool. No wonder she loves you.
LTBF
September 21st, 2007 at 11:41 pm [Reply]

So you’re doing the cooking, you will be babysitting Summer and you will clean the house.

Aren’t you gals forgetting somethings? Hello? It’s been about three months seen I’ve seen any action and before that doing it with a bald chick didn’t do it for me. So whose turn is it to do the nasty with me first?
Moon Mullins
September 21st, 2007 at 11:49 pm [Reply]

New Funky Winkerbean folk 10 year jump

Is this the way it’s going to be drawn? Just like a special edition X-Men that comes in it own metallic Mylar sheath?

So I’ve been looking at this and I think I’ve figured it out — they are grouped by family. On the far right is Funky and wife and with grown little boy Eminem wannabe; next over is bully-cum-gym-teacher with math teacher wife and their recently introduced “Asian” adoptee, now studious teen; then Wally and his one-armed wife with their cameltoed hottie daughter; and Les as Mitch Miller with Summer as heroin chic Calvin Klein model. That leaves plump middle-aged blonde, who has to be Les’ troubled new wife, who brought along obnoxious Ipod Eyecover-Ballcap Yellowsneakers to be horrible stepsister to Summer — and wacky hijinks ensue!

With the ten-year leap, they will probably upgrade the disastrous illnesses as well. I’m betting on Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Elephantiasis, and Prickly Heat.
Trotzenbonnie
September 21st, 2007 at 11:50 pm [Reply]

Dingo –
God Almighty Moses! If Carol Channing is sweet, imagine how wonderful you must be to have her declare her love for you! Mazel tov!

#207 – commodorejohn
Mr T & I are having a pretty lively ‘Point-Counterpoint’ discussion about that very subject. I am shrieking in my best Shana Alexander voice ‘What the hell is so sacrosanct about a nutsack anyway?!” I don’t think he’ll be getting much sleep tonight.

CALLING ALL OLD FARTS! CALLING ALL OLD FARTS!
I don’t know if it was an East Coast thing or what but I was just wondering if there were any other former Jelly Beaners out there besides Howard Stern and me. Extra points if you know the words to the song and the accompanying hand jive.
Moon Mullins
September 21st, 2007 at 11:52 pm [Reply]

218 Dingo:

Tres Cool.

You are nothing but interesting stories, awesome webfun and risque links, are you?
LightSyrup
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:10 am [Reply]

Boy! The characters in MW are sure a lucid and well-spoken buch of miscreants, aren’t they?! But! That’s why we love them!
Rainbird
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:11 am [Reply]

FC My gosh, what has happened to the kids. I know everyone said they were shrinking, or has the back steps disappeared, or what? Pretty soon they will vanish completely.
Rainbird
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:15 am [Reply]

Angry Duck just can’t get past thos pesky kids and their low-riding jeans. Sheesh. I almost wish he would go back to making fun of the democrats and how bad public education is.

What, does he have a window that overlooks a high school or something?
Poteet
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:20 am [Reply]

# 218 — Wow, Dingo. Congratulations!

SC — He’s back! He’s back! Steve Canyon is back! *does fast happy tapdance* Now I can go to bed and sleep without those nightmares. The Happy Easter/Mark Trail mashup last night was pretty scary.
Dingo
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:22 am [Reply]

If at some time in the next week of Mark Trail Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and the kids from Pop’s Malt Shop don’t show up to put on a show for Shirley the Duck that will be destined for Broadway… the terrorists win.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:22 am [Reply]

FC Dolly, Jeffy’s not in a closet, he’s at the front door. You’ve committed the dreaded Forced Out, but at least you got it right by suggesting he’s bi.
FBoFW You can tell this is early LJ stuff because Grampa Jim does not look like the same person in any of the four panels. Boy, did she ever need the talents of Bob Weber Jr.! Back then AND now.
MT Homer FINALLY gets smart and mentions moving Shirley and the eggs, but no, ol’ Mr. Environmentalist Mark says “Don’t give up yet, Homer!” Yeah, we’ll keep at it until you are the laughing stock of Ducks Unlimited, buddy.

MW Maybe Dr. Drew is the one who will be Aldoing this year.
Rainbird
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:23 am [Reply]

221 Moon Mullins but if they have gone 10 years in the future, why are the clothes like today. Does that mean LIsa died 10 years ago? And now we are in the present?
Trotzenbonnie
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:36 am [Reply]

#228 – Dingo
Ack! You’re reading my mind!
We were watching TCM last night and an ad for this:
http://turnerclassic.moviesunlimited.com/product.asp?sku=D84673
came on. I told Mr. T that’s all I want for Christmas!
Sister Sestina
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:38 am [Reply]

Thanks for all the support and positive vibrations, guys. And special thanks for the info on the blood; all I knew it was rare and his sister donates a lot of blood because of it. Too bad he won’t be able to follow in those footsteps, they’ve told him he’s not to donate blood anymore. Which is a pity since he really enjoys it. As he jokes, he loved giving back to the community in a way that took advantage of his strengths: being able to sit motionless in a chair for half an hour and turn his head the other way while someone else did all the real work.

Early on in our relationship he helped me move out my father’s stuff from the dilapidated downtown office he’d been evicted from. He had stormed out of the place, got into his car and just drove for two days until the police picked him up for erratic driving. I picked him up and eventually got him to go into a hospital, where they discovered he was tachycardiac and had had a heart attack at some point, so they admitted him…All in all it was some while before I could get back to that office, to discover that his flight had been so hasty that he left a lot of food out. (Turns out he had actually been LIVING there too, unbeknownest to me.) And every cockroach in the building had invited his friends within a five-block radius to join the par-tay. Mind you, till then I’d seen maybe one or two cockroaches per year in my life. So I would move something, cockroaches would boil out, I’d scream, and my not-yet-then-boyfriend would kindly suggest I go into the hall, whilst he blasted the Raid left and right. I’d cower outside until he gave me the all-clear, then the cycle would begin anew.

I’ve gotten a lot better with cockroaches since then.
bats :[
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:19 am [Reply]

218. Dingo: too cool. All of it.
(Did they ever find her sparkly dress?)

221. Moon: who the hell ARE these people?
Ah, forget it…I don’t care.

225. Rainbird: from your lips to God’s ears. I look forward to a threshold without Keanes.

I did a quick skim o’ the strips and am too tired to comment. Good for Vera on dumping on Drew, too. I’ll bet there’s a “girls only” slumber party at Charterstone this weekend, with Dawn and Vera, Mary and Tobee and Wendy. It’ll be fun! We’ll do each other’s hair and talk about dreamy guys and make crank phone calls to the guys we don’t like!
Rainbird
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:27 am [Reply]

232 Sister Sestina Intersting that it would e cockroaches. When I lived in L.A. it would have been ants. A carpet of ants.

Good luck to your brother.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:31 am [Reply]

#233 bats:[ – What do you want to bet that Mary Worth’s hair is made of fiberglass material – mostly air and tiny particles that will kill you if you breathe in enough of it? Can you imagine how frightening she would be if the fiberglass shell ever got wet and broke down into its original components?

She’d look like Wilbur Weston, only… like Mary…oh jeez my eyes! my EYES!! Rip them out, Argh! Mary Worth with a comb-over!

Thank God for fiberglass!
Artist formerly known as Ben
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:32 am [Reply]

9/22

Shoe: Gaaah! Shoe, don’t ever use that word again!

MW: “Before we came together”? Someone’s very confident in the simultaneous orgasm department.

MC: Oh dear. Bridget’s going to come back in for her license in five minutes and find Norm with his hands full.

S4th: Wha? This isn’t funny. It’s not dramatic either. Or maybe it is funny and I just haven’t attained the proper level of enlightenment.

GT: PWNAGE!

DT: So sweet. As the Ad Council reminds us, the family that commits acts of terror together, stays together.

BB: When the Sarge told you to “wash it” he wasn’t talking about the window.

SFx: Uh-oh. This is a chainsaw away from being an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon.

Marvin: Cat, soon you’ll go in for another operation, and you won’t be much of a lover either.

Hateeachothers: Ah, it’s been so long since we had some good old drunk driving humor.

Phantom: “Next: Two can play this game!” Does that mean the Ghost is going to start drawing a little girl with cornrows all over the place. Because that will be creepy, but I don’t see how it will get him what he wants.
Artist formerly known as Ben
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 am [Reply]

#221 Moon Mullins,
Well, I am glad to see that Tommy Chong is joining the FW cast. It’s too bad he wasn’t around before to be Lisa’s medicinal marijuana supplier.
Helena Handbasket
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:25 am [Reply]

Satiddy comments in advance..

A3G: Missing panel: “Otherwise I’ll have to club him to death!” I think we may be looking at slap-fest part deux!

FW: Missing panel: “So, I hear your social calendar will be freeing up soon. Wanna go on a date?”

JP: Geez, Sam, you never let someone know when you figure out their tell! I’m guessing he doesn’t watch much Celebrity Poker.

MT: “Hey guys, I know how we should spend our break time! Let’s go shovel dirt to save a duck from getting wet!” Yeah, he’s going to be reeeeal popular at the next union meeting.

RMMD: Yeah, just ask June, she’ll tell you that Rex marrying her was the bigest mistake of both their lives.
Trilobite
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:02 am [Reply]

A few of Saturday’s comics:

A3G: If this ends with Margo tying Eric to a chair and torturing him until he loves her, I’ll…well, I won’t be all that surprised, actually. Eric kinda strikes me as the type of guy who would go for that.

Dick Tracy: One day you need your Gretchen, the next day you need your Gretchen blown into a billion tiny pieces all over some prime Washington real estate. It’s the “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em” of the Dick Tracy universe.

Funky Winkerbean: Well, it’s nice that Tom Batiuk gives us options when we read Funky Winkerbean: we can be squicked by the way we’re dwelling on Lisa’s inevitable demise, or disgusted by how quickly Lisa’s “friend” is moving in to bang Les, or just utterly baffled that anyone gives a crap about Les at all anymore after so many months spent turning him into a monosyllabic smirking nonentity with all the personality of a slab of styrofoam.

Mark Trail: This may be one of the few moments this year when something in Mark Trail could actually happen in real life: I have no trouble at all envisioning a bunch of construction workers sitting around a bar getting totally rat-assed on dollar pitchers of beer, then suddenly wobbling up to their feet and deciding in unison to grab some shovels and help their crazy buddy build a levee around some nesting duck. Timing is everything, though: half a pitcher too early and they’d be going to a strip club, half a pitcher too late and they’d be going to beat Homer with those shovels so that they can start getting paid again.

Mary Worth: Don’t tease me, Mary Worth. I know that as much as I want this to be over, there has to be at least another week’s worth of comics before this storyline will finally end.

Phantom: That’s a hell of a disguise there, Phantom. No one will look twice at the white dude wearing a hat and sunglasses INSIDE A DINER, sitting at the counter with his GIANT GODDAMN PET WOLF by his side. Maybe I can let the first part slide, but c’mon, Mawitaan, let’s establish some basic health codes at least!

Rex Morgan: You know, they could fill out the rest of the year if Niki did go ask June about the mistakes Rex has made. We’d have strips until 2009 if he followed up with a question about the ways in which Rex has disappointed her. And I’m just irritated enough with this comic strip that I’m beginning to think that it would be a good use of the space.
Lord-z
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:52 am [Reply]

That blackhaired woman in that Funky Cancercerdeath strip can’t wait ’till cancerlady snuffs it, so she can get some of that nerdy action. The smirk gives it away. “Oh, you are gonna love my taco lasagna. And by that, I mean my vagina”.
monsieurjohn
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 am [Reply]

This Mark Trail storyline has gone from bad to stupid to just plain implausible — unlike other MT storylines, of course. And what the hell is Mark wearing in panel one today, his best Sunday church hat?
Keg of Curd
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:01 am [Reply]

Hey Cathy: How about “Less than 10 seconds with a sufficiently sharp knife?
AhClem
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 am [Reply]

Well.

Yesterday I received willethompson’s book “Scratch Golfer” in the mail. I had been planning to go and see some musician friends of mine performing at a local coffee shop in the evening, so I thought I’d read a chapter or two beforehand to get the feel of the book.

Sorry I never made it to your gig, guys. I can’t recall the last time I read a book that was so engrossing and enjoyable that I finished it in one sitting. Maybe it was Timoshenko and Goodier’s “Theory of Elasticity” back in grad school, but I doubt it. Whatever and whenever it was, it happened again yesterday.

Wille describes the joy of a well-played golf game with so much detail and clarity that I can almost imagine that it’s happened to me (it hasn’t, despite over 20 years of trying). He also make working at an ad agency sound interesting, something I would never have suspected in a million years. And it was all wrapped up in a story that, despite using a well-worn plot line (man sells his soul to the devil for X), was so well-crafted that it was like seeing it for the first time. Combined with Firesign-like subtlety and a whole lot of laugh-out-loud similes, it was an amazingly fun read.

If you’ve read and enjoyed wille’s postings here on CC, take the best of those, increase them by several orders of magnitude, and you have this book. Even if you’re not a golfer, you will enjoy it.

If there were any justice in this world, willethompson would be at the top of the best-seller list, and Stephen King and Tom Clancy would be peddling the Watchtower door to door.
Big Sims
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:22 am [Reply]

That settles it! I’m buying a copy.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 am [Reply]

Trilobite @ 239 wrote:

Funky Winkerbean: Well, it’s nice that Tom Batiuk gives us options when we read Funky Winkerbean: we can be squicked by the way we’re dwelling on Lisa’s inevitable demise, or disgusted by how quickly Lisa’s “friend” is moving in to bang Les, or just utterly baffled that anyone gives a crap about Les at all anymore after so many months spent turning him into a monosyllabic smirking nonentity with all the personality of a slab of styrofoam.

Hey, hey, HEY now! I must object strenuously to your Funky Winkerbean diatribe!

Styrofoam is a trademark and should be capitalized.

The rest is OK. Carry on.
Topliff
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:46 am [Reply]

REX MORGAN: “In life there are mistakes and disappointment Niki; that’s how we learn. For example, it is a mistake that you are alone with me in the car, and a disappointment that your mom already seems to be on to my intentions. From that mistake and that disappointment, you will learn once you see my ‘little brother’ that not all big brothers can be trusted.”
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:19 am [Reply]

Time for your regular Saturday snarktacular.

9CL: Yeah, she’s exactly where you left her, covered in dew and pigeon poop. Oh, and she’s hungry. Hope you brought McGriddles or something.

A3G: You’d think someone as self-centered as Margo would be more confident that her man loves her. I mean, come on, it’s Margo! Who could not love Margo?!

Archie: Veronica’s stunned look in panel 2 is the result of the mental image of her “staying on” Jughead. In panel 3, she’s awed by the thought of an eyebrow ride.

A.D.: Wiley’s Dictionary defines B.C. as a comic strip with no substance.

Baldo: Somewhere out in no man’s land, a squirrel is holding on for his life. He’s holding on to his little gonads… and strife.

Also… if this is WWII, shouldn’t they be in a trench, not sitting out in the open around a big “AIM SHELLS HERE” bonfire?

BB: Sarge was referring to your [BEEP!], smeg-head.
(And thanks, Bucky!)

Crock: This is supposed to be a punchline? Isn’t that where most men leave their underwear? Why would Grossie expect him to take it somewhere else and leave it lying around? I think Grossie and the other chick should forget about Maggot’s infested undies and worry about the sudden flood of milk in Panel 3.

(WT)DT: So now we know the package is a bomb. Ummm… remind me again why they stole a helicopter if they didn’t have the bomb with them? Or why they gave the CIA the frequency that let them track Gretchen’s chip instead of making up some bogus number? Or why they even told the CIA about the existence of a chip in the first place? Or why they tried to help the CIA find the Baron when he was carrying out their plans? Or why the Russkies kidnapped Gretchen in the first place, when she was apparently on their side, instead of having her just lead the Baron to them? Or why the CIA called Dick in on this case before they even knew any of this was going to happen? Or why I continue to read this crap?! I tried showing Dick Tracy to M. Night Shyamalan, and he said, “Sorry, I just can’t follow this.”

FC: Ha ha! Jeffy’s a cat!

GT: Is about to get it’s “(DT)” label back, if it keeps raising questions like:
1) When did Gail Martin give up her singing gig to become a sports writer?
2) Why would Coach Thorp tell a reporter his coaching strategy, even “off the record”? Ask any real reporter, there’s no such thing as “off the record.” It was invented by TV scriptwriters. The most a reporter can do is protect the source of the information. If you don’t want something known, you don’t tell a reporter.
3) What are those numbers spraypainted on the doors supposed to represent? ‘Cause they sure as hell ain’t Milford’s record. That would be more like 0-10.

HtH: Didn’t they move into a castle last week? This same joke would have worked for an old, drafty castle. They could have stuck with it, and maybe even gained a whole bunch of new humorous possibilities in the process. But I suppose expecting this strip to change, even slightly, is as silly as expecting Jon Arbuckle to find a girlfriend or Cathy to give up her swinging bachelorette lifestyle.

JP: When she’s really telling a whopper, she doesn’t use her ponytail.

Big Dog: Ha ha! Now Marm will get emphysema!

MW: And, very soon, all of Vera’s life will be over. All over the bottom of Kelrast Canyon, that is.

OBH: I had no idea Lizzie McGwire and G.I. Joe liked playing “naked cowboy.”

Shoe: AAAUGH MAKE IT STOP MAAAKE IT STOPPP….

TDIET: “Chest breakers”? “CHEST BREAKERS”?!
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:22 am [Reply]

#243 AhClem – Amen, brother. I was the same way, had to read it cover to cover because it was THAT GOOD. I can’t recommend this book enough.

#244 Big Sims – you won’t regret it, I promise you.
Mibbitmaker
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:33 am [Reply]

FOOB: Grandpa Jim: “Now you’re sounding like a woman, Mikey!”

FW: Now, just because Lisa’s too weak to slap him is no reason…

S-M: JJJ: “I call that a magic trick just starting, Spider’. You two are in cahoots, I just know it!”

A3G: When Margo gets through with ol’ flippy-hair, that one melodramatic drop on her face won’t be a tear anymore. Break out the red, colorists!

GT: I’ll be very very happy if someone here from Milford says, “Of course, you realize, THIS means WAR!” I’ll also accept “That’s all I can stand, I can’t stands no more!”

Monty: “And the muscles are Joe Piscopo, right?”
“No, that’s still Carrot Top. Bizarre, huh?”

H&L: “…And, you know, wait for some leaves to actually fall down!”
Scrog
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:39 am [Reply]

Hey all. Long time listener, first time caller. I have a serious problem that I need help with. But first, I wanted to say, in regard to today’s Pearls Before Swine, that in the last Quebec election, the Liberal Party posters all had their candidates posing with their chins on the backs of their hands. It’s the most unnatural position and they all looked like DAMN TOOLS. So yeah, beaten with a cucumber is about right. Beaten in the election was closer to it.

So here’s the problem. I can understand comics that are funny; I can understand most comics that aren’t funny. For example, I’m glad Mallard Fillmore today is just a cranky old man 10 years behind the times and not about politics so I can hate it without feeling like part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. ANYhoo, someone PLEASE explain Ballard Street to me. It’s like a half of a joke every day? Vignettes of weirdos? The easiest job in the world? It just makes no effing sense to me.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:41 am [Reply]

Special Spider-Brick Bonus: Rejected (WT)DT snark!

Wait until Gretchen finds out the Baron’s “old bomb” is the script to Ishtar. “That’s our Baron!” Waaah-waaah-whaaaaahhh!

So, next, the bomb goes off, killing Gretchen and her co-conspirators, and the Baron pulls off his mask, revealing it’s been Dick Tracy all along, and the Dick in the CIA helicopter is really The Baron! Now it all makes sense! …Wait, what? Hey, it makes as much sense as Locher’s ending will.

Meanwhile, nobody seems at all alarmed that a helicopter has just crashed in the heart of our federal city, and another is still hovering around the country’s most heavily defended no-fly-zone. No police screeching up with guns drawn, no fire/rescue crews zooming in with sirens blaring, no flyovers from the supposedly on-alert Air Force jets. Just another ordinary day in Dick Tracy’s post-post-9/11 America.

“I need my Gretchen… to die!”

Have you ever played that game as a kid where someone writes the first line of a story, then someone else writes the next line, and another person writes the third, and so on, an exercise that quickly degenerates from cooperative storytelling into a “let’s see the next guy get out of THIS mess!” game of one-upsmanship? I’m now completely convinced that’s how (WT)DT is scripted.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 am [Reply]

Scrog @ 250 wrote:

ANYhoo, someone PLEASE explain Ballard Street to me. It’s like a half of a joke every day? Vignettes of weirdos? The easiest job in the world? It just makes no effing sense to me.

Here’s how I explain Ballard Street: BS is scripted and drawn by a married couple who despise each other with every fiber of their beings, yet are contractually obligated to work together. So one of them writes an incoherent, unfunny caption, or the other one draws an incomprehensible panel with no humorous potential whatever. Then the other is forced to do his or her best to make it into a comic, and, more often than not, fails.

And here’s how I deal with it: I don’t read it.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:56 am [Reply]

#250 Scrog – Welcome to the fold!

Ballard Street. It’s one of those comics I avoid looking at when I can, because of examples like today’s panel. I had to look, study, close, then open and look two more times before I FINALLY realized what was going on, and that he was loading up a suction-tipped dart gun. I like the expression on the woman’s face, but I didn’t know what made her look that way or what was on the glass, or whether the man was shaking some weird martini canister or figuring out a Martian sex toy in the background.

Yeah, I think you pretty much nailed it: this strip is perpetually half the joke, and if s/he could execute his/her ideas better to make the whole joke clear, I wouldn’t hate it half as much.
Scrog
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:04 am [Reply]

Thanks for the Ballard Street replies–confirmations that it’s not that I’m just not getting it, I guess. Oh, one other question: The Chronicle site is great, but where do you get the Sunday comics?

#247 Spider-Brick

Veronica says, “My, what big ears you have!”

If you want Jughead to say, “Cram it, Princess!” and go get a hamburger, turn to page 112.

If you want Jughead to say, “All the better to hold on to!” and waggle his novelty eyebrows, turn to page 145.

If you want Jughead to say, “They’re not ears; they’re stirrups!” turn to page 91.
John C Fremont
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:08 am [Reply]

# 218 (Dingo) – Very cool! My closest equivalent was talking on the phone to Sam Wanamaker’s brother who was on his way to the UK for the opening of the Globe Theatre. That was kind of cool, but not Carol Channing cool.

# 221 (Moon Mullins) – Holy shit! Make them go away!

Foob – Way to go, Grampa Killjoy McDream Killer. I predict that you have a well deserved stroke in your future.

FW – She is totally hitting on him. I predict that in ten years, that guy’s gonna look like Rot Scheider in All That Jazz. Or Mitch Miller according to some. Or maybe even Bob Denver in his latter years trying to relive his Maynard G. Krebs days.

Hey, I’m doing a Criswell!

MT – Look, Elrod, I’ll pay for the ink, just start coloring these people in!

MW – And so now both chicks are racing to Wines Liquors. Who will be the first one over the cliff?

Phantom – It’s not the bad late 50’s disguise and wolf that gives him away. It’s his pasty whiteness.

SFx – AFKAB nailed this one! Funny stuff, Former Ben!

JP – She may be lying, but that fingers-through-hair thing is just adorable! Lie to me some more, Red!

FC – The Other? Jeffy’s gonna hang out with Uta Hagen?
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:12 am [Reply]

#3 Donald The Anarchist & others re: comic book “Zot” & B.C.’s “Zot!”: To settle this, went to Scott McCloud’s web site (great comic book site, by the way). Didn’t find anything referring to why he named it “Zot,” so I went right to the source and e-mailed him at the address posted on the web site, asking if B.C. inspired the comic book title.

He was nice enough to answer!:

Not consciously, no.

My original design for the character was as a robot and his name was Bot. When I decided to go for human, I changed the “B” to a “Z.”

–S

Thanks, Scott!
John C Fremont
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:17 am [Reply]

Archie – Well I guess we should be thankful that Jughead misinterpreted “highbrow” and not “come appropriate.”

Good night, and may God bless. But for the love of God, do NOT try the tonight’s veal!
Allie Cat
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:21 am [Reply]

FW – Back at #112, I indicated that I thought woman number 3 was Donna, wife of Crazy Harry – I now believe it to be Cindy Summers, ex-wife of Funky – which means that she and Holly, current wife of Winkerbean are in the same room and not shooting the stink-eye at one another. Which is improbable, but moreover, BOOORING. Let’s go ahead and have them fighting over Lisa’s dying body.

Also – while Cindy Summers is excellent at shopping, I doubt the hospice nurse is sending Les out for stilettos and Prada bags. Let’s watch as Cindy gets a bargain on gauze pads and latex gloves.
Calico
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:25 am [Reply]

FC – Don’t ask, don’t tell, eh, Dolly?

MT – I love it – after a few beers, the construction crew gets all sentimental and heads out in a rainstorm to support Shirley.

If it weren’t for the Blue Swede duck that follows my Mom everywhere at her volunteer job at the local Nature Center and talks non-stop (his name is Ducker), Shirl would be my fav canard in the world. Right now she’s holding a close second.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 am [Reply]

#254 Scrog – You can either change the date in the address line of the comic strip you want, or use this handy gift from Dean Booth, God of Comics. Just change the dates in the boxes, hit go, and click on the comic of your choice. It does not have the Sunday Foob, however. You must hazard the Foobsite for that. The God of Comics does not link to the lowest depths of the underworld, although a few of the other levels (FC, FW, (WT)DT) can be accessed. :D
Mibbitmaker
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:34 am [Reply]

HtH (#247): Yeah! Jeez, Hagar, when Pearl Forrester and her minions situated themselves in a castle, they stayed there! HA!

9CL: Yeah, because the beating she has in store for him will be less satisfying (not by much, though).

Archie: Well, to be fair, Michael Dukakis was invited.

GA: Okay, that just got weird…!

H&J: “Spirit of the law, Mama! Spirit of the law!”

JP: “Oh, sorry, Sam; I was just trying to look sexy there for a minute…”

Luann: Didn’t we just see roughly this storyline back in FOOB? Where’s the Starey Gap-Toothed Hoo Guy?

MW: You know what to do, live studio audience…

PC: …And the generational resentment routine is disgusting, too, Stantis!

RMMD: “… although, when I tell her, ‘I don’t make mistakes, I make happy accidents’, she reminds me that that only works for lovable painters with frizzy permanents and a soft soothing voice. Then I usually mutter, ‘I hope a happy little tree falls on you!’, and storm off.”
Karl
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:40 am [Reply]

MT – Mark Trail’s diggin’ hat (of justice?) seems largely designed to keep the rain out of his ears. A sensible choice for anyone as prone to ear infection as Mr. T.

Wait, enough jokes, is that Rex Harrison behind the bar secretly alive and well, awkwardly passing out mugs of brew in between furious fits of Oscar-polishing? Perhaps he can tell them where all of this rain is mainly going to fall.
willethompson
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:50 am [Reply]

JP: Thirty years ago, Sam Driver sat limply on the edge of a dormatory bed, saying, “This has never happened before!” To which the girl replied, “All guys have that problem occasionally,” as she fiddled with her barely-mussed red hair.

And that’s how Sam knows Rusty is lying like a bad rug.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:50 am [Reply]

MW: What are the odds Vera would be driving the same model and color car as Dawn?
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 am [Reply]

FW – What goes around, comes around. Lisa’s bragging about Les’s schwong size has the girls jumping on him before she croaks.
Mibbitmaker
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:52 am [Reply]

#259 (Calico): Blue Swede duck? Your mom’s being followed around by a waterfowl that sings the “chugga-hooga-hooga-hooga” version of Hooked On a Feeling? You’re right, that is cooler than Shirley!

(Don’t mind me, I grew up with ’70s AM radio)
aprilp_katje
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:01 am [Reply]

OT, but I thought that folks here might enjoy the fact that NY State Senate Majority leader Joseph Bruno apparently thinks he’s Margo.
Hank
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:01 am [Reply]

FW: Yeah, today’s strip is ESPECIALLY creepy. Let the man’s wife die before you him on him, skank.

Also, how’s this ten year jump going to work? Presumably, everything we are reading “now” about Lisa is happening in 2007. So is FW going to be a sci-fi story now exploring the new technology of the coming decade (cue Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000″)? Or, more likely, given the fact that the iPod in that drawing looks exactly the same as one we have today, Batuik is just going to “age” his characters ten years but keep the strip set in the present.

I guess rapid aging disease will be the new cancer for the FW cast.
Dennis Jimenez
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 am [Reply]

A3G – Or else!

MT – Oh those roughnecks – heart of gold – head of wood.

RMMD – If this got any more gay it would be the Village People, MDs.

Archie – I’m glad it wasn’t a casual party mistaken for a cornhole you party.

JP – Or your lips were moving.

FC – Outing Jeffy.
Scherzo
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:09 am [Reply]

FW:
Or is the third female, the one taking Les shopping, Darin’s girlfriend Jessica Darling? Or could it be Harry’s wife? Dang you Batiuk. Too many of the women look alike.

And while we are trying to figure out who’s who in the FW jumpforward picture (http://funkywinkerbean.com/coming.html), I think the plump lady is actually Harry’s wife and the bearded fellow is Crazy Harry himself (not looking quite so crazy in the future). The teen with skateboard must be theirs.
There’s a couple of characters in the middle who are still problimatic. If the short-haired lady is Becky and the kid is the daughter, this means Wally is not in the picture – dead or still in the military. (I thought for sure we would be seeing Pete and Chien…)
On the whole, the new character design is utterly wretched.

I can’t believe I care.
John C Fremont
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:11 am [Reply]

# 261 & 266 – But in all fairness, Mibbit, Pearl did move her castle once. And I think what Blue Swede sang was more like, “Ooga chocka, ooga, ooga.” Say, I wonder how Blue Cheer would have covered that…
Hank
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 am [Reply]

FC: Jeffy is sexually confused.

Marvin: Cat: “Uh, I probably shouldn’t have just told you I’m now completely defenseless, should I?”

MW: Does every women in this strip buy her cars from the police auction? They all drive the same grey crown vic.

TDieT: I guess Scarduto is saying that smokers should engage in other life threatening activities also.
Allie Cat
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:21 am [Reply]

270 – There are so very many issues with this picture. My best guess is from L-R:

Les, Summer, Donna, Kid of Donna and Harry, Harry, Becky, Rana, Linda, Bull, Jinx, Funky, Corey, and Holly.

So – what happened to Jessica and Darrin? Where is Wally and the baby that was born last Christmas? WTF!!!!!

This really pisses me off!
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 am [Reply]

One day ago (in JP time, 2 1/2 months ago our time), Rusty was a “junkyard dog” instructed to “do whatever it takes.”

Now, she’s bean-spillin’, bluff-tippin’ amateur?
odinthor
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:24 am [Reply]

MW — Drew, by the time you get back to the clinic, your name will be mud with all the ladies in cartoonland from Dolly and Margaret all the way up to Momma and Broomhilda. Time to take a little vacation from the ladies. Call Rex. You can chat together about fun medical stuff in bed, after taking care of, um, business.

TDIET — It’s all too true. Once upon a time, I was at this ~~orgy~~ campus club meeting where a stunning blonde was holding forth about the environment and purifying the Earth and what-not. Upon completing her speech, she sat down, took out her pack of ciggies, lit up, and puffed away for the next twenty minutes. She didn’t like it when I pointed out the inconsistency…leaving me with a choice that night of calling Rex, taking a walk with an old friend, or studying Taxonomy of Vascular Plants. I got an “A” in my Tax class that semester.
Electro
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:27 am [Reply]

#221 Wait a minute here. I don’t see Lisa in the 10-year-jump FW cast. Don’t tell me something happened to her. Whatever could it have been? Whatever it was, I hope it was quick and merciful.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:29 am [Reply]

TDIET: My inner nitpicker can’t help but wonder, where are Linseed’s co-workers’ masks? They’re just as close to the paint as he is. And why are they eating lunch in a freshly-painted room?
Sheilagh
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:40 am [Reply]

I HATE the current artwork in FOOB. Looks like a cross between Doonesbury’s Boopsie and Edward Gorey, with those wide anxious eyes… Man, I wish Edward Gorey could “possess” Lynn Johnston for a week — this sequence would be SO improved if the Wuggly Ump showed up and ate everyone.
Sheilagh
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 am [Reply]

As for Mary Worth… any guesses as to how they’re gonna wrap this up? I mean, a story is supposed to build up some drama, hit a climax (this week! when Drew got busted by BOTH women!), and then comes the denouement — where Karen Moy routinely drops the ball. One of the following? Or something still lamer?

1. Drew feels bad but rationalizes inconclusively.
2. Drew disappears, and we get two weeks of Mary comforting Dawn, who makes little fists and hisses.
3. Drew disappears, and we get two weeks of Dawn and Vera sniping about him.
4. Drew’s father paddles him with a hairbrush.
5. Drew approaches Mary and gets a lot of platitudinous advice, which we won’t ever know whether he takes. (ooh, did I violate an island constraint?)
6. Mary and Jeff platitudinize endlessly.
7. Mary falls off the Bumboat and drowns.

My prediction: it will be lamer than I can imagine. Stay tuned!
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:49 am [Reply]

Apropos of nothing in particular, here’s my pick to play Rex Morgan in the movie (didn’t realize how hard it would be to find a picture of this guy without a frozen grin on his face).
SecretMargo
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:49 am [Reply]

Re: Ballard Street — I’m not sure why, but I feel compelled to defend the crazy bugger, or at least confess that I rather like it, and I would be sad if it discontinued (more than I can say for many strips). I explained my weird attraction previously, here and here, when the subject of “comics that we find ourselves liking after seeing them on the page day after day even though we kind of hated them at first” came up.

I also thought today’s was particularly funny, and “got it” right away. The funny part to me is the woman looking at her hand, where her glass used to be. But this may be just my incipient dementia talking. I certainly can see why someone would be put off by its willfully alienating mix of dowdy banality and cryptic weirdness, even as those very qualities are the ones I appreciate about it.
Gabacho
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:05 am [Reply]

#279 – Sheilagh Mary Worth – None of the above.

Vera’s car, which she neglected to have serviced* will careen off the road, injuring her slightly, and she will have a reunion with Dr Douche in the ER. Dawn will resume her unfortunate adolescence and drop out of Local U.

*see strip from last Thursday

http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070913&name=Mary_Worth

DINGO – I am so jealous of you that I finally understand how Mago feels all the time. That is so very cool.
Gabacho
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:06 am [Reply]

#282 – Dang!! Margo not “Mago”. I don’t know who the hell Mago is.
Junior Tracy
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:06 am [Reply]

The episode of BC is actually somewhat funny. It’s got a Don Martin-quality sound effect, a anteater / music critic, and a joke at the end. I’m pleasantly surprised.
The Divine O’F
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:13 am [Reply]

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE:

218 Dingo: from having a year that’s been really sucky so far, I think you have entered into a period of very good vibes. Congrats on the conversation with CC. That is just too cool! I predict you will be offered a good job soon.

221 Moon Mullins: thanks for the explanation and prediction. I will kill myself now.

263 willethompson: BWAHAHA! Plus, I’m sure it is true.

276 Electro: BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Calico
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:13 am [Reply]

#266 – Yes, as she puts it, “He never shuts up.” I think he is in love with her, actually. Too funny.

I remember Cousin Brucie on AM and then 70’s FM – must ty to think of some more duck-relevant tunes from that era.

Quack – Aaaahhhh! : )
Calico
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:18 am [Reply]

#279 – Or they’ll become buddies and form an “I h8 Drew” club, where they can both sip coffee, weep, and hiss together. They will then exchange hairstyles in an act of caffeine-addled solidarity.
Artist formerly known as Ben
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:22 am [Reply]

#281, SecretMargo,
I’ll back you up on B Street. If nothing else, it’s like no other comic strip on the funny pages. And von Ameronger shows a giddy affection for his senior citizen subjects. I’d put it on the “Worth snarking but worth reading” list.
odinthor
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:30 am [Reply]

Ballard Street — Another vote for Ballard Street, which I liked at once when it first came out as (um, I think) The Neighborhood. After an unfortunate attempt at turning it into a two or three panel strip, it became Ballard Street. I can understand why some might find it off-putting; but it reminds me of something I once heard in my college lit class about Dickens, which was to the effect of “Yes, Dickens has all of these bizarre, eccentric, obsessed characters . . . and then you think about your Real Life and the people in it, and you realize that there really are many, many people in your life just like that: bizarre, eccentric, and obsessed.” For instance, the dart-gun guy in today’s BS (er, that’s Ballard Street) could just as well be interrupting the get-together with, say, Important News! about today’s Family Circus . . .
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:36 am [Reply]

#286 Calico re: ’70s duck-relevant tunes: Be careful what you ask for.
AhClem
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:36 am [Reply]

Another Ballard Street defender here. I’ve enjoyed this peculiar strip since it morphed from The Neighborhood. I enjoy the quirkyness and off-the-wall quality, even though it often makes me scratch my head and ask WTF?

(WT)DT – I’m not too concerned about the confusing plot twists. After the dust settles, they will spend the rest of the year and a good chunk of next year explaining what happened over and over.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:52 am [Reply]

Ballard Street’s an acquired taste, but it’s been growing on me and I sort of like the 9/10 BS, paralleling 9/10 9CL.
The Divine O’F
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:55 am [Reply]

(WT)DT: This one made me LOL today. Soon, everyone in the DC area will have a bit of “my Gretchen.”

MT: Could this plot get any more batshit insane? The only way I can imagine is if there was a crossover from (WT)DT and A3G:
Baron: I will plant the bomb in the swamp.
Gretchen: No, grandfather, I will do it for you. But first I must light the–
Margo: Who is this woman? And why has she brought a package for Eric? I will scratch her eyes out!
KABLOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Shirley: Quack–Aaah!
Moss_Moses
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:57 am [Reply]

Bad things happen to those who fail to heed Mary Worth’s advice. Had Drew done as instructed by the meddling biddy, he could have dumped Dawn gracefully and done the nasty with Vera by now. Instead, the blue-balled Cory the younger will be double dating Palmetta and Fistina instead…
notafoob
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm [Reply]

Sunday’s FOOB is definitely curmudgeon-worthy. Lynn’s revenge: a color strip about how repulsive John’s middle-aged gut is, and his state of denial about it. lmao :D
bats :[
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:17 pm [Reply]

269. Dennis: re MT: I tend to refer to Homer’s buddies as “Strong like ox. Smart like cart.”

270. Scherzo: you snark because you care. Or you care because you snark. Eh. Whatever.

273. Allie Kat: maybe some of the folks not seen in the line-up had the good fortune (yeah, like that’s gonna happen) of moving away from Funkytown.

276. Electro: remember that farm your folks told you that your old dog went to live at? Lisa’s living there, too, playing with your dog.

Calico: pix pix pix of your mom and Ducker, please!!!! In the proud tradition of the AFLAC duck, Little Soldier Duck, and Shirley!
Trotzenbonnie
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:32 pm [Reply]

How will this Mary Worth plotline end? Dawn and Vera are both racing to Charterstone right now and they’ll try to outrun each other to Mary’s apartment where they’ll unfortunately reach the door at the same time, get stuck as they both try to squeeze through and, after getting trapped, they’ll die a horrible death due to meddle poisoning.
Zamboni_Rodeo
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm [Reply]

Some Saturday Snark:

A few thoughts on Drabble:

1. So Ma Drabble apparently doesn’t leave home without her trusty apron? Even June Cleaver took hers off when she went to the store for groceries.
2. The obvious solution here would be for Ma Drabble to smile and go purchase said frozen treats, then promptly dump the cherry one on Pa Drabble’s head. He’s deserving of no less.

Get Fuzzy: Ordinarily my biggest problem with Conley is that he gets hold of an idea that’s funny at first, then beats it into the ground over a course of weeks, until I’m ready for Rob to just take his pets and have them euthanized. That being said, although this Bucky the Censor-Cat had set up the same way, I really like the resolution in today’s strip. It was a nice bait-and-switch.

Gilles Theorpe: I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with the grafitti on the doors there. First of all, it looks like it was done with toothpaste. Secondly, 10-0? Is that the score of the last game Milford lost? It’s not exactly a blowout, if that’s the case–only a touchdown and a field goal. Not like losing 42-0, in other words. Or, is that the record of the team from whence the unknown vandals come? Considering there’s only been three games so far, that seems unlikely as well. Maybe it’s just the number of decent players Milford needs versus the number of decent players they actually have. This is why I prefer hockey.

Cancery CancerDeath: I have a long diatribe in me about all the ways this Attack of the Killer Cancer story line bugs the everloving crap out of me, and maybe someday I might organize my thoughts enough to be able to write it all down. For now, though, what really pisses me off is just how gratuitous the whole thing is. Lisa is a fictional character, and killing her off is just pointless. Dragging the whole thing out doesn’t make me more sympatheitc to her plight; it just makes me mad. There’s other ways to exorcise your own demons rather than taking it out on your chracters, Batiuk. I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say why don’t you just go out and develop a nice heroin habit or something, instead of inflicting your inner turmoil on us?
bats :[
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:39 pm [Reply]

I notice some of Schulz’ drawing influence on LJ’s early work, and I suddenly had an epiphany (”so THAT’S how it happened!”):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9545446@N07/1423512419/
willethompson
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm [Reply]

Trotz, I hear the Charterstone Symphonyum (sic) warming up now for “Whining Duet in F Minus” by Felix Meddleson.
Trotzenbonnie
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:19 pm [Reply]

Oh yeah, wille!
Professor Chinbeard, guest conductor, is grabbing his baton even as we speak!
bats :[
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:51 pm [Reply]

302 Trotz: well, that’s a disgusting thought!
commodorejohn
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:02 pm [Reply]

A3G – “He’d better!”

Crankshaft – Ha ha, condescending to the slightly senile is humorous behavior!

Crock – Presenting…the Crock Laugh-Generating Joke Unit 4000!

DT – “Ah, dammit, we lost the copter, guess we’ll have to settle for the old bomb…”

FOOB – A turning point in Michael’s life: he decides not to grow up.

FW – I know it’s supposed to be the trademark Winkersmirk, but that look puts finger-quotin’ marks around “shopping” and “expertise.”

Garfield – A funny Garfield. Mark it on the calendar!

GA – Seems Fireball got lost in a time warp to 1905 and Skeezix followed him, apparently.

H&L – Hi prepares to bludgeon one of the children, for the equinoctal sacrifice that night.

JP – Translation: Wilson looked at Barretto’s art and tried to figure out why he’d drawn Rusty running her fingers through her hair.

Luann – I like to imagine that’s a beer. The final panel is perfect if you can make yourself believe that.

MT – Mark Trail – bringing out the Power of the Community. This is ninety different kinds of awesome.

Marmaduke – There’s something unspeakably dirty going on in this comic, but damned if I can figure out what.

MW – You fail at life, Drew.

PC – Goodbye, cruel world, I’m leaving you today / Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye / Goodbye all you people, there’s nothing you can say / To make me change my mind – goodbye.

RMMD – Does it mean something that this is basically the same speech that Dr. Light gave Mega Man when everybody thought Mega Man had become human?

SM – Figures. Spider-Man finally gets off his ass to battle the *giggle* *snort* Shocker, and it’s over in three strips. Back to more TV watching, I guess…
Anonymous
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:13 pm [Reply]

Rainbird #226 – My guess is Tinsley’s just steamed about the school’s restraining order against him.
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm [Reply]

In #303 Commodorejohn said:

Luann – I like to imagine that’s a beer. The final panel is perfect if you can make yourself believe that.

Yes! Adding the “PSH”, is a great soundeffect for opening a can ‘o brew…
dimestore lipstick\'s husband, Drugstore Aftershave
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm [Reply]

Update to post 153–

I got a spontaneous senior discount last night at the White Castle, and suddenly I feel a lot older than I did yesterday.
Trotzenbonnie
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm [Reply]

Drugstore Aftershave -
(Old Spice? Aqua Velva?Paco Rrrrrrrrrabanne?)
Ever since I turned 50, AARP has been after my tired old ass and flooding my mailbox with invitations to become a member. Who the hell retires at fifty?

What I really want to know is this – I was born in 1957 and my kid is almost 30. The woman in TDIET was born in 1958 and her kid looks like he’s about 7. What the hell?
Moon Mullins
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:22 pm [Reply]

307: Trotz, don’t be perplexed, some of us have been on a different time schedule than you. I’m three years younger than you but my only child is just five years old. And some of the moms in his kindergarden class are older than you.

Weirdness in the days of scientific birthin’….
Mooncattie
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:23 pm [Reply]

FW – Shopping just happens to be my area of expertise

And on Aisle 1, our special today is Freshly Picked Widower!
Moon Mullins
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:25 pm [Reply]

p.s. one of our son’s preschool pals had an interesting situation, his mom was his dad’s second wife. I met the other son at a cocktail party and he was a peer. The dad had two kids, one 37 and one 4 years old ( the dad himself was 60). The older son had a pretty cool attitude about it.

Imagine what it would be to grow up as the late Tony Randall’s last child, which he fathered in his 80s!
Drugstore Aftershave
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:31 pm [Reply]

Trotzenbonnie–
Here’s a clue, courtesy of Doonesbury:
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/db/1979/db790726.gif
The Divine O’F
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm [Reply]

310, 311 and others: when I was in high school I had a good friend who was born when his father was 69. So when we were in high school his dad was in his eighties. I can remember Richard lamenting that his dad never played ball with him. Also that we could never phone after 8 PM because the father was asleep.
Mel
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:05 pm [Reply]

Moon Mullins: I am with you, MM, I’m 43 with a 3-year-old…
Adam Villani
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 pm [Reply]

What the hell is up with Prickly City this week? It’s just disgusting. Revolting. Yuck.
Galactic Emperor Chennux®™©
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm [Reply]

ATTENTION EARTHERS! CLUTCH YOUR PHOTOS OF CHILDREN WITH FEAR AND LOATHING! CHENNUX SPEAKS!

WHAT IS THIS TALK OF LATENESS OF AGE IN SPAWNING OF LARVAE? CHENNUX, WHOSE SKXCRITORT IS POTENT AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL, HAS SPAWNED MANY LARVAE SINCE THE THIRD REPRESSION OF THE SNORXIAN INTELLIGENSIA! THAT MAKES CHENNUX 58.65 ZYNEXIAN YEARS OLD! THAT’S OLD ENOUGH TO RULE THE UNIVERSE, BUT STILL YOUNG ENOUGH TO ENJOY IT! HAHA! OW, MELKARDAMMIT, MY SHOULDER IS KILLING ME!

AND MELKAR, TALK ABOUT TOO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED! AND SOME OF THEM HAVE THREE OR FOUR MOUTHS! HAHA!

OW! NEVER PLAY BLERNSBALL WITH THE KIDS AT THE FAMILY PICNIC!

END TRANSMISSION!
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm [Reply]

Chennux! You’re a blernsball fan? Me too! You shoulda said something! What do you think of letting grannix play in the bigs? And how about the Infield Blern Rule? Commissioner Mfrxistees oughta be strung up by his skxcritort for that one.
Loopina
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:18 pm [Reply]

Marmaduke: One of two possible meanings to this one. Did the dogcatcher just become a father, and gave Marmaduke a cigar to celebrate?
Or did the dog himself become a father, and his litter of unwanted offspring is on its way to euthanasia-ville at the county shelter, so the dogcatcher gave him a cigar to celebrate?
commodorejohn
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:26 pm [Reply]

#317 Loopina – As I stated earlier, I believe that the actual meaning is much, much worse than either of your possibilities, I just can’t figure out what it is.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:32 pm [Reply]

#315 Galactic Emperor Chennux – Aw, these young larvae with their hippin’ and their hoppin’ and their snippin’ and their snarkin’…! Next thing you know they’ll be carrying protest signs that read “Power to the Pupa” and acting like the universe owes them a glaxtat.
Jamus The Bartender
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:38 pm [Reply]

Funky Winkerbean: This “Ten Years Later/Big Chill” thing Batiuk is doing reminds me of something similar DC Comics did with the Legion Of Super Heroes in 1989. Dark Knight and Watchmen were the comics to have, so Keith Giffen pretty much followed in their stead, with a bit of Blade Runner thrown in for good measure. Instead of wearing bright primary colored tights, and flying around with flight rings, they all wore trench coats, clothes that looked like they needed some laundry time, and everyone looked like they needed a shave and a shower. Also, everyone was cheating on everyone else, or wanted to. Plus, remember how Proty gave his life for Lightning Lad’s by holding a steel rod in one hand and Lightning Lad’s casket in the other? Well, it turns out that Proty’s soul resides in Lightning Lad’s body. It was a kind of utopian future gone wrong scenario, and I actually liked the run, but I was the only one who did, and it looks like Funky’s gonna get the same reception.
John C Fremont
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:46 pm [Reply]

Melkardammit! The Emperor has me using the word “melkardammit” in daily conversation with the civilian population. The damned Earthlings just look at me with those blank stares. But I get that a lot anyway.

But seriously, Uta Hagen? Anybody? Well, I thought it was funny. Not funny “ha-ha!” but funny in a sly-smile-with-my-hand-to-my-chin-in-a-thoughful-manner-just-like-Vera sort of way. That is to say, mildly amusing. Mildy Amusing – my non-hyphenated compound middle name.
Jamus The Bartender
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:59 pm [Reply]

9CL: Oh, my dear Lord in heaven, Mary and Jesus on a seesaw….Francis had better put it to her and put it to her but GOOD, i’m tellin’ ya right now. He’ll be lucky to get away with the face slap and the Finger Of Justice…
FOOB: “You little PANSY. Goddammit. HONEY. Get me my gun. And my whiskey. Me and Mike the pansy are goin’ huntin’. Here’s where I show him how to be a MAN, goddammit. Here, try some whiskey. DON’T sip it, DRINK it. Now, here’s how you load a twelve-gauge…”
FW, once again: Damn. Yeah, i’m not too sure who the blonde is either, but she is HOT. Go ahead and tear off a piece of that, Les. I mean, it’s not like Lisa’s gonna ask. And it’s not like you’re gonna be fool enough to tell her….wait…forget I said anything.
DtM: From the look on Alice’s face , it seems Henry’s been talking to D Lishus Thigh on Phone Phreaks for only 2.99 a minute, Visa/Mastercard.
My Cage: Norm.
You goddamned pig.
Even I can’t believe you.
You didn’t even wait until Bridget, the woman you love was out of the damned driveway before you started stroking it to pictures of Tila Nguyen.
You complete and utter bastard.
Looks like Bridget’s gonna need a heavy dose of Tender, Lovin’ Jamus after this.
Gasoline Alley: I suppose when Skeezix was left on Walt Wallet’s doorstep, was the subject of a custody battle between Walt and Mme. Octave, his bio mom, courted Nina Clock in high school, hitched cross country to find his fortune, signed up for WW2 after Pearl, married Nina while on furlough, had Clovia and Chipper, and started the Gasoline Alley Garage, he had no idea he’d be riding herd over a borderline-insane biker named Fireball well into his ….nineties. Damn.
Aaron
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:00 pm [Reply]

Dammit people! Anthropomorphic animals should not own pets of the same species.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm [Reply]

As we get to the bitter end of this thread, my two cents on two topics here:

1. There’s a lot to complain about the ongoing Funky Cancerbean storyline, but I can’t agree with some of the opinions expressed that a tragic story has no place in a newspaper comic strip. The comic strip is just another way of telling a story and just like you can tell all kinds of stories with art and with words, you should be able to tell all kinds of stories in this medium, too. Forcing newspaper strips into humor and child-centric pigeon-holes has led to the current wasteland of mediocre/zombie/hybrid strips, facing a future of declining readership and increasing cancellations. A well-established comic strip creator, Batiuk had an opportunity to stretch the boundaries a tiny bit, but he’s squandered it with inadequate characterization, disjointed plotting, heavy-handed story development, and way too many inappropriate smirks, ensuring that the most drama you’ll find in the comics section for some time to come will be stuff like a construction worker digging a dike to protect a duck from the rain.

2. 9/21 TDIET: Rather than saying there was anything wrong with being born in 1958, I think Scaduto was trying to poke fun at how some women don’t like to admit their age. Up to the end at 80, anyone who asked my late aunt her age got the same answer: “None of your business, that doesn’t get asked” (sounds better in Spanglish). Heck, Scaduto’s pushing 80 himself, so he’d be the last to talk.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:18 pm [Reply]

#307 Trotz et seq. — Madonna was born in 1958 and her two kids were born in 2000 and 2006, making them 7 and almost 1.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm [Reply]

Jamus @ 322 wrote:

You didn’t even wait until Bridget, the woman you love was out of the damned driveway before you started stroking it to pictures of Tila Nguyen.

Don’t you mean… Gila Nguyen?
commodorejohn
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:32 pm [Reply]

#324 Godzooky – I’ll agree that the limitation of comic strips by things like “no sad stuff” and such are not cool, and are in my opinion why the funny pages in general are in such decline, but I hope you’re not trying to say that FW isn’t utterly loathsome.
Jamus The Bartender
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:46 pm [Reply]

326. D’OH. You’re right. GILA Nguyen.
Norm is a bad platypus.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm [Reply]

#327 commodorejohn: God forbid. Started reading FW as a result of CC and Foobiverse’s Journal and have gotten increasingly disgusted with the one-note deathwatch as it’s gone along.

Was trying to say, in my poor, wordy way, that Batiuk, an established cartoonist with established continuing characters, had the opportunity to do the equivalent of Trudeau’s Andy Lippincott and Lacey Davenport death storylines and, if he had succeeded, it could have opened the door to a wider range of comic strip stories. By botching it completely, he’s made the door that much harder to open.
Girl Reporter
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:09 pm [Reply]

300 willethompson says: …Felix Meddleson

I am so stealing that!

321 John C Fremont says: …But seriously, Uta Hagen? Anybody?

I got it, but I don’t Get it. Sigh. Four years of college, three internships, a conservatory program and years as a professional – down the drain.

Can you please explain so I don’t feel like such a doof?
Ukulele Ike
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:25 pm [Reply]

Godzooky @ 324 & 329: ….is that you, Harvey Pekar?
Dingo
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:31 pm [Reply]

bats #233: The LAPD found the dress two days later.

As her husband and I were finishing our conversation after I spoke with Miss Channing, I said to him, “Miss Channing doesn’t need a silver-sequined dress to light up a room.” and the man started to choke. He told me he was going to write that down and say it to her at breakfast.
Girl Reporter
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:44 pm [Reply]

Miss Channing herself belongs in the Smithsonian, she is a national treasure.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:04 pm [Reply]

#329 Godzooky –

Batiuk, an established cartoonist with established continuing characters, had the opportunity to do the equivalent of Trudeau’s Andy Lippincott and Lacey Davenport death storylines and, if he had succeeded, it could have opened the door to a wider range of comic strip stories. By botching it completely, he’s made the door that much harder to open.

I believe this is at the heart of the whole anti-Batiuk sentiment. It has been long since established it has nothing to do with his artwork, since his artwork is among the best and most realistically depicted, proportionally correct, aesthetically pleasing art in the comics today. It is not the subject matter itself, since other strips have been able to meet the challenge of handling a sensitive subject with wit and respect.

His misfire is in taking a delicate subject and slapping with a broad brushstroke of generalities, in order to tell a story with heavy impact in a short amount of time. He persists in maintaining the ’smirk’ factor in a storyline that has little to smirk about, and the heavy impact results in less impression-making force and more useless weight to drag something down into lethargy.

Look at what Baldo is doing for the Latino veteran currently. Maybe this is in reaction to Ken Burns’ latest work – Burns is an excellent historian who asked for but didn’t get much Latino reaction for WWII stories. So Baldo’s creator went ahead and filled in the chapter in his strip, and so far has done a terrific job. Once in a while there’s a smile in the strip, but mostly it is a study in human dynamics. This is fine. It’s like the reverse of Judge Parker which is usually long face-serious, with an occasional smartass remark from Sam or Abbey that reminds us, oh yeah, these guys represent real people. Well, Baldo’s occasional smile during these realistic stretches reminds us there is a human under the documentary. He doesn’t need to continue to announce, “I’m a comic strip doing a ‘Very Special Episode’ of ‘Growing Pains’!”

Why can’t Tom Batiuk do this? Is he that poor a writer? I didn’t used to think so, and I don’t fully think so now. I think he’s a piss poor LAZY writer who isn’t taking the time to weed out the attention-getting, tear-jerker, pander-to-the-awards-committees lines from the presentation of a useful, serious storyarc. HE’S the one who is insisting on keeping his idea of “humor” – the smirky play on words – on a daily track where daily humor is neither needed nor always wanted.

If someone recognizes a truth in the panels, they will smile to themselves and they won’t need an Applause sign in the form of a final-panel smirk to tell them to do so. They’ll know all by themselves. Maybe they’re only one person in a thousand who will smile, but that’s okay. The other 999,999 will go “Huh. How about that” but the chances that they will return the next day are good as long as the story moves along and doesn’t wring every last drop of bathos from every scene.

That’s the Siamese Twin of the problem. On top of his heavy-handed Death is Coming storyline, every character in FW has a deep, scarring problem that is slammed relentlessly into the strip one story after another. We need more Saving Harry’s Locker Door incidents just to give us air to breathe.

There’s a distinction between taking the time to write and judiciously select the RIGHT strips to tell a story, and writing something that will likely make someone cry or sigh and then running the whole thing without editing. Or, they will do the Worst, which has spoiled more cartoonists and turned them into repetitive drones than anything in the world: being a “Clipper Club” member. You know – “I clipped your strip about X so I could put it on my ‘fridge.” This subtle pimpage goes to a cartoonist’s head faster than pharm grade cocaine.

I’d like to see a return to the really gold old days, when strips could be Steve Canyon or Prince Valiant or Juliet Jones if they wanted to be. They didn’t have to bring the funny so they could be “Comical comics”. And Pogo didn’t always have to bring the funny even though it was funny and wasn’t always a “thinker’s strip”. It’s just that in hindsight, we see the beauty of both worlds in it.

But first, Batiuk has to climb down off his “I know better than you because I went through a similar situation, and went with a friend to a breast clinic once” business. He has to learn to use judicious editing BEFORE he sends the strip to the syndicate. And the syndicate needs to send him a friendly note once in a while that says, “Don’t your characters ever get a fucking break about ANYTHING?” They don’t have to order him to do something, just remind him that his doomsday machine is overheating.
/rant
Loopina
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:12 pm [Reply]

Bravo Fable!
I have the same argument about Lynn Johnston’s treatment of Grandpa Jim’s stroke. Having had a family member who went through a similar ordeal only a few years before, that story hit home for me (in the particular, the ones where Jim thought ballooned but nobody could understand him). I cried when I read some of the early strips, but some of the more recent ones – like one a couple weeks ago where Jim was compared to a 2yo child – ick. It went from being a heartfelt, realistic portrayal of a confusing and crippling disease to “make fun of the old people”.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:33 pm [Reply]

#331 Ukelele Ike: Ha, ha! Nope, unlike myself, Harvey’s talented, knows what he talking about, and definitely knows how to tell a cancer story in comic strip form.
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:34 pm [Reply]

#335 Loopina – Absolutely. I can’t tell whether Lynn and Tom point to each other and say, “well, s/he’s doing it, so I must be on the right track” or if they are pointing at each other and say “I’ll be damned if I’ll let YOU get the most attention and the above-title credit for the Very Special Episode.”

Again, I suspect it has a lot to do with being subjected to the Clipper Club worshippers. “I have something to say, and people will listen!” Yes, they will as long as they aren’t turned off by how you say it, Lynnie and Tommie.

I ranted like a madman over the Grampa Jim strips, oh boy did I. I still get worked up but now that I see the old strips, I realized Michael has ALWAYS been a self-centered punk and Grampa has been the hardy-har-har, he’s old so let’s laugh at him comic relief. Now, of course, Elly is Grampa’s age but somehow her saintliness does not make her quite the same kind of butt of the jokes. Yes, there’s a Big Butt joke there but I’ll let it go. I sincerely hope Lynn stops before Elly or John get to the Chinnuts stage.
Pinback65
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:34 pm [Reply]

330 Girl Reporter–The original comment referenced Uta Hagen’s appearance in the 1972 Creepy Kid epic “The Other”–a very good movie, by the way. Or, at least, as good as a movie from a Tom Tryon novel could be.

While I’m here, I feel compelled to point out that 17 years ago today, TV’s Frank made his debut on MST3K, in an episode that also introduced Kevin Murphy as Tom Servo’s new voice and featured Mike Nelson’s first on-screen appearance. I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it…
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:39 pm [Reply]

#334 True Fable: Hear, hear! And thanks for reminding me about Baldo. It’s not in the NY papers I get, so I have to check it online and I’ve missed the last few days. Time to catch up…
True Fable
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:42 pm [Reply]

I also note that Lynn’s not about to let Elly get to the Chinnuts stage. As badly as she mangled Jim’s dignity with the aphasia story, I doubt she’ll want that for Elly.

Yes, it’s nice that she’s being honored for raising awareness of aphasia but if raising awareness includes portraying the patient as being the object of pity and heartless tag-end jokes, then it must be a condition that needs any kind of attention it can get. Even the sad attention of bad jokes and puns.
Girl Reporter
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:47 pm [Reply]

Is The Other that movie that made me, to this day, afraid of pruning shears when I saw it on TV that one day I was home sick from school circa 1975?

Here, I was afraid the Uta thing was some transference reference I wasn’t getting.

Well, I feel better.

Except for the pruning shears thingie.
commodorejohn
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:52 pm [Reply]

#334 True Fable – Not my principal complaint against FW (which would be much more of the he’s-doing-it-for-the-attention angle, plus the he-wants-us-all-to-be-as-miserable-as-he-is bit,) but very well-reasoned and eloquently expressed nonetheless. Nobody has ranting as an art form down quite like you do, man.

#338 Pinback65 – Indeed. There’s nobody quite as jovially likeable as the Kevin Murphy Servo.
SecretMargo
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 pm [Reply]

329: Godzooky — I am behind you 100% on this as well. I also agree with Truman, and I’ve said my peace about Batiuk’s lack of taste before, so I’ll skip it, but your point is really important to bring up because not to is to play into the way Batiuk’s consistently spun the whole thing. He continuously shifts the terms of the debate about the appropriateness of his storyline to a question of whether cancer, death, etc. should be addressed in the comics pages, and claims that his critics just aren’t ready to expand their provincial parameters of what a comic can do. He’s blowing our minds, man! We just don’t get how avant-garde he’s being!

Which is such a load of bullsaturn. As you point out, Doonesbury’s been doing all the same stuff tastefully, and enjoyably, for some time now. Trudeau even beat him to the punch by taking B.D.’s helmet off well before Batiuk removed Henry Dinkle’s hat, and the effect was resonant and somewhat heartbreaking, rather than sucker-punch depressing (remember, Dinkle revealed at that moment that he retired due to hearing loss). But we aren’t allowed to talk about execution — instead we have to argue about premise, and are thus wedged into two untenable positions: either we concede that our gut reactions are just so much hysterical bluestockingry and we should just let Uncle Tom speak as the Voice of Cancer and enlighten us to the Truths We Cannot Bear To Face Without His Help, or we have to become Catherine McKinnon-y censors, seemingly wishing to eradicate death and cancer from the real world by eliminating its presence in the fictive one.

We are neither, thank you very much. The comments on this site bear out that we, collectively, have seen plenty more than he has of what life can dish out. We know from which we speak. And we still make time and mental space to care about how this stuff gets worked out on the comics page because not only do we take cancer, death, trauma, etc., seriously and face it with clear eyes and sparkling minds, but we care about comics as a medium and storytelling as an art, and we can look at a comic and tell if it’s made out of a fine distillation of hubris and excrement and say so with authority and don’t deserve to be called children or prudes.

An audacious premise demands a steady hand and fine-tuned ear to carry it to completion. Without that, it is just that: an audacious premise. Really, that’s all he has, and he’s overestimating his own audaciousness to boot. He needs to be called what he is: not a “boundary-pushing” or “controversial” cartoonist, but simply one who wrote a check his storytelling skills can’t pay. Comics deserve more; so do we. We shouldn’t have to settle.

PS: If you ever feel your Funky ire abating, just look at this again. And remember, his defense was the same: I’m sorry if you don’t get what I’m trying to do, I fully support our troops and meant no respect. Deftly swiching the subject away from the fact that in context that particular bait-and-switch displayed a contempt not of the military, but of his audience, that bordered on open hostility. And cancer wasn’t even tangentially involved this time!
Razmytaz
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:41 pm [Reply]

343: SecretMargo – Well I looked at the reminder of the Batiuk bait and switch. Then, I just kept looking one day at a time… until I got to the dropping of Lisa’s other shoe many months later.
And I came to a conclusion: Things like “Chien goths out”, and the prom and all, were OK. Worth a smile even. But there isn’t enough to compensate for the other strips. The Into EVERY Life Some Major Shittiness Must Fall ones. So, unless there is major snarkability (e.g. Darrin’s Pinochio nose and his sexual status) i just ignore it. And the cancer thing isn’t snarkable, just rantable. Like FOOB. I don’t think it can be saved as a comic.

Just move along folks, there’s nothing to see.

(At least nothing in comparison to a Raging Margo in 3G, the psycho duck able to take over the minds of an entire work gang in MT, sweaterpuppies galore in JP, and not to mention the whole nudge-nudge NAMBLA thing in RM, where I’m convinced that the perpetrators are just egging us on. Oh and slap-city supreme (thanks Dingo) in MW.)
Buck Ripsnort
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:53 pm [Reply]

What a PERFECT essay from Secretmargo. Damn, and I was waiting all day to come here and point out that the Keanes jacked up their house on stilts to keep the kids out, and Jeffy STILL managed to crawl up. Kinda loses its sting after all that.
SecretMargo
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm [Reply]

344: You are so right. Everything in your parenthetical is worth more to think and talk and snicker about than The Bataan Death Bean. On to more worthy concerns! Like:

345: Buck

Damn, and I was waiting all day to come here and point out that the Keanes jacked up their house on stilts to keep the kids out, and Jeffy STILL managed to crawl up.

HA! I totally missed that! Also, there’s something about the perspective that makes it look like they only jacked up the part beneath the door, so Dolly has to kind of lean back as she yells to keep from tumbling into the kitchen.

In all seriousness, what was the thought process that led to drawing him that way? I thought I was the only one who imagined Jeffy scuttling sideways from place to place on all fours like a fiddler crab with an overgrown head instead of foreclaw.
AhClem
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm [Reply]

#211 John C. Fremont -
“…a sly-smile-with-my-hand-to-my-chin-in-a-thoughful-manner-just-like-Vera sort of way…”

If I were you, I’d keep a careful watch out for a cucumber-wielding rat.
AhClem
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:50 pm [Reply]

#347 me -
Melkar-youknowwhat! That should have been #321, not #211.
Godzooky
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:51 pm [Reply]

#344 Razmytaz: “…not to mention the whole nudge-nudge NAMBLA thing in RM, where I’m convinced that the perpetrators are just egging us on.”

Check out 9/23 RMMD and you’ll see there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it: We can consider our chains yanked. Hilarious, though.
Rainbird
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:54 pm [Reply]

Trotzenbonnie 307 Well, I was born in ‘58, and my kid is 13. To have a kid who is about 7, she would have had to have him at 40, or so. I was pushing it haveing Huntinbyrd at 35. Probably part of the reason she is an only child.
Rainbird
September 22nd, 2007 at 11:55 pm [Reply]

310 Moon Mullins My mother maried my father, when he was 50 years old. When I was born he was in his 60s. It was like having a grandfathr for a father. My maternal grandmother was one year younger than he was.

Life is odd.
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:00 am [Reply]

324 Godzooky But is that still true? Do women not want to say their age? Perhaps 50 years ago, they wouldn’t, but are there women my age, born in 1958, who don’t say when they were born?

Heck, I make fun of it.
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 am [Reply]

It’s the neverending thread! LOVE the art in Sunday’s Judge Parker. Yes!
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 am [Reply]

Oh boy, the Sunday Funnies are up.

So can anyone explain what is going on in today’s Curtis? Is there a place int heis world where music videos are scheduled for a certain time?

Or perhaps I’m just spoiled by TIVO.
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 am [Reply]

Hi and Lois live in a place that has a storm cellar, which would indicate the midwest. So how in the hell can they be underwater even if the ocean rose to cover all the costs? Whoe whole planet underwanter?
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 am [Reply]

I mean coasts.
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 am [Reply]

RMMD: Continues to delight: “Let’s do this… go fishing… in a building… behind closed doors and dark glass… ”

Consummate:[I've taken it upon myself to highlight some key points.]
1. to bring to a state of perfection; fulfill.
2. to complete (an arrangement, agreement, or the like) by a pledge or the signing of a contract: The company consummated its deal to buy a smaller firm.
3. to complete (the union of a marriage) by the first marital sexual intercourse.
–adjective 4. complete or perfect; supremely skilled; superb: a consummate master of the violin.
5. being of the highest or most extreme degree: a work of consummate skill; an act of consummate savagery.
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 am [Reply]

I’m 27 and perfectly happy w/it. I’ll be okay until I turn about 34 and then I’ll probably start lying about my age. This was in response to one of Rainbird’s comments.
blase
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 am [Reply]

#357: RMMD … “Fly fishing”, no less… (heh-heh, heh-heh)
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:25 am [Reply]

RMMD I was expecting to see a bit “NAMBLA” sign out front, didn’t know they had offices downtown.
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:26 am [Reply]

#358 LightSyrup I suppose you could do like Jack Benny did, who was always 39.
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:27 am [Reply]

I mean a big NAMBLA sign.

Never could spell.

I still say, the author of RMMD is doing this for us. He couldn’t be serious what with all this subtext.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:33 am [Reply]

I refuse to snark the Sunday comics until we have a new thread, Melkardammit!!!

Okay, maybe just a little snark.

A3G: Which is more likely: that Eric gave Margo a key after only a couple dates, or that no human barrier can stand before the power of Margo?

Blondie: Know what else isn’t fun, Dag? Reading your comic strip.

FC: Only two of those qualify as quotes, and even those are more platitudes or maxims. Let’s see how Little Billy would react to a real quote:
“The only way to eliminate temptation is to give in to it.” -Oscar Wilde
“He went to jail for stickin’ it in the butt!”
Okay, thank you very much, Billy. Moving along.

JP: “What if I got down on all fours naked and barked like a dog?” “Like I said, Red, not at any… uh… *cough* …what kind of dog?”

MT: Today, sloths play important roles in our culture. For example, Woody Wilson, who scripts both Judge Parker and Rex Morgan, M.D., is a giant ground sloth. It can take him as much as eight months to advance his strips by just one day!

RMMD: “What does ‘consummate’ mean, Rex?”
“It’s what we’re about to do with our relationship. …Here we are, Niki, are you ready?”
“I’ve never been more ready for anything… Let’s do this!”
Come on, they aren’t anywhere near a fishing creek. They’re at a downtown hotel. Seriously, “Woody” Wilson, if that is your real name, could you make this any more blatant?
odinthor
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:35 am [Reply]

Miss Channing’s Dress — It was “a homeless gentleman,” rather than the LAPD, who found the dress (unless perhaps the homeless gentleman is a member of the LAPD):

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0916Channing0916.html
CrabbyGenes
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:54 am [Reply]

Wow. The Sunday FOOB just HAS to be Johnston’s revenge on her husband for leaving her for another woman. I can’t interpret it any other way.
SecretMargo
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:10 am [Reply]

365: In case you need more things to have nightmares about: imagine the Polaroids she used to get the little physical details juuuust right.
Poteet
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:13 am [Reply]

# 365 — Holy moly, C-Genes. You’re right, the Sunday Foob is no ordinary Foob. Ewwww.
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:14 am [Reply]

365 CrabbyGenes Good to “see” you again. Sometimes when I’m not up late, I miss you.

Yes, I agree. Today’s “Foob” does look like “Bleep you John, for leaving me. See what I’ll do to you now. Ha, ha ha.”
Brown-eyed Girl
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:15 am [Reply]

365. CrabbyGenes. I think you are right. Yech! FOOB is revolting today. Maybe Satchel can go stay with John and Elly for a while. illkay emthay othbay!
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 am [Reply]

#361
#362 Rainbird: Yes, yes, I suppose I could do that. And “NAMBLA”? Explicame, por favor…
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:43 am [Reply]

FOOB: Ew. Why doesn’t Sam ever take off his shirt?
Godzooky
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:51 am [Reply]

#370 LightSyrup: La explicación.
CrabbyGenes
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:57 am [Reply]

#368 Rainbird. That’s such a nice thing to say. Thank you! I’ve been having to concentrate on other things lately, and I miss the night-owl CC crowd too.
CrabbyGenes
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 am [Reply]

#366 Secret Margo. Eeuww!
Mibbitmaker
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 am [Reply]

SundayFOOB: Okay, okay! Rod’s an asshole! I sympathize! So why is Lynn punishing us??
Oh, well… at least it’s nowhere near as bad as Saturday’s PC.

S-M: Well, that’s one way to shut up an arrogant prick like JJJ: appeal to his Trump-sized ego.

FW: Oh, enough with the damn superhero crap, Batty-ick!!

FC: I have to agree with the echo one. Of course, Billy and his siblings are the most likely to ask it a dumb question.
Trilobite
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 am [Reply]

A3G: Sunday’s comic poses an interesting question: does Margo hear voices? I’ve always suspected that she had at least a touch of psychosis, what with her rage issues and all the drugs I’m sure she does, but on the other hand, I like the idea of Margo being an elemental force of egotism and rage, sufficient unto herself with no interest in listening to anyone else (imaginary or otherwise). Margo may be one of the few characters who becomes less frightening and off-putting if she hears voices telling her what to do, if only because it’s hard to imagine those voices telling her to behave worse than she normally does.

Either way, Nora and Eric had better cut their little conversation short and get in off that balcony immediately, because I can totally see Margo pushing one of ‘em over the rail.
Jack Parsons
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:33 am [Reply]

“Yah” is a Scandahoovian thing. I have a Norwegian name but have not visited the ancestral homeland of Wisconsin.

I was going to cite this movie but it was named “Zotz”. Margaret Dumont! Damn!.
willethompson
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:35 am [Reply]

Boy, that Sunday FOOB sure has LJ ripping into…

…oh.

Geez, people, I’ve heard of the early bird getting the worm, but with the Japanese contingent on watch, there’s nothing left but worm crumbs. Curses upon you, International Date Line and global internet access!!

And Von. Curses upon Von, too.
Big Sims
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:46 am [Reply]

Yuk! Ew! Gross. Just what I need Sunday morning, 12 f***ing panels of shirtless, yawning, scratching, brushing, hawking, prodding waking John Patterson. And LJ cut her teeth doing anatomical drawings!?!
Big Sims
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:52 am [Reply]

True Fable and SecretMargo,
Thank you for putting FW into perspective. I’m floored by your arguments and insights, and I owe you a debt of gratitude for verbalizing the dialogue that’s been nattering about in my head, but I haven’t the skill to write it down.
Big Sims
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:53 am [Reply]

Howdy CrabbyGenes!
How’s tricks?
CrabbyGenes
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:28 am [Reply]

#381 Big Sims. Hi! I’ve been thinking about that Foob. I see Mibbitmaker’s point of view “why is she punishing US?” (#375) but on the other hand, I’m having a lot of fun imagining Rod Johnston, wherever he is, picking up the Sunday paper and seeing…!
CrabbyGenes
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 am [Reply]

#378 willethompson. (heh heh heh) Sorry!

Just for the record, I check the comics on Yahoo. I see the new day’s comics here at 1 p.m. –which is midnight in Michigan and on the East Coast (at least until the U.S. goes off daylight savings time; then I’ll see them at 2 pm.)

As for the Houston Chron comics, I see those at 2 pm, and after the time switch, it will be 3 pm.
Big Sims
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:07 am [Reply]

Dear CrabbyGenes,
I’d imagine Rod Johnston has sworn off the funnies for life, but it is nice to think of him sending, via his legal team, a nasty note to Lynn describing how making fund of people with pudges is cruel and she should remove the comic immediately!
Big Sims
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:08 am [Reply]

I’d imagine Rod Johnston has sworn off the funnies for life, but it is nice to think of him sending, via his legal team, a nasty note to Lynn describing how making fun of people with pudges is cruel and she should remove the comic immediately!
True Fable
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:12 am [Reply]

She’s done such a thorough job of emasculating the man for the past 28 years, I can’t imagine her doing anything worse to John than she’s already done.

I mean she COULD, certainly, but that would be such an obvious “in your face” to him, and certainly go against her grain of “wholesome family stories” she probably won’t.

No, it’s better to just continually pluck away at his chromosome until he’s nothing but the Pillsbury Dough Boy in a railroad cap.

Lynnie Baby,

Ooh, you are just so cold to ol’ What’s-His-Name! Hell hath no fury like a cartoonist scorned, huh sugar? I rather expected you to sharpen your sizable claws a little but DAY-um, sister, you could whip up a posse of torch-wielding, pitchfork brandishing Foobites in no time!

It’s downright fiesty of you, baby; you’ve got spunk!

And to quote the immortal Lou Grant, “I hate spunk!”

And you wonder why I don’t return your wild-eyed lust and passion? Sheeeit, my little slush-maker. The day you draw a Truman Fable into your strip as someone who catches Elly’s eye and makes John jealous as hell (and why not, when you consider the Love God of the South Except Where Prohibited could smack him down simply by standing there!) to the point where he PUTS DOWN HIS DAMN TRAIN TRACK, is the day I will take your protestations of love seriously.

And we all know that ain’t gonna happen!

Suffer, bitch!

Truman A. Fable
Nobody’s Bitch
Calico
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 am [Reply]

I always look at my Daily Ink list before FOOB, and I saw the MT Sloth strip. Thought to myself “oh, I’ll make fun of John Patterfoob through this.”

Well Shhhhiiiiiieeeeet, I see LJ already did it for me.
That is one godawful series of John panels!

If Elly would start making more salads instead of Harvey’s burgers, the guy wouldn’t have such a problem with Mister Gravity.

Pack him full of calories, and then trash ‘im. Nice going, Elly.
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:48 am [Reply]

FW :

Whoa! Looks like Batiuk is doing the wrong kind of strip. Now if only he’d take over Spiderman, Stan Lee could write Funky Winterbean.

It would improve both. Someone would actually get hurt/killed in SP, and Lisa would watch TV endlessly.
queek
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:57 am [Reply]

363: SSB, like a junk-yard dog, of course!

today’s F(c)W, brought to you by trademark infringement and win. (no really, Mr Lawyerperson, that isn’t The Huntress, Wonder Women or the She-Hulk. . . . )

RM(vg)MD: o goodness. How much more blatent can it get!

F-: our Arizona contingent might find it amusing today.

Frazz was wonderfully Wattersonian today.

I can forgive many a Sunday of Berkeley’s blather due to todays Opus.
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:11 am [Reply]

Sunday’s FOOB:

Ahem… now I’m back after a shower and getting dressed…
bats :[
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:13 am [Reply]

Geez, waking up at 4:30 and not being able to get back to sleep sucks. But there’s always the Sunday funnies (and I use the term loosely):

A3G: Nora sure cries a lot, doesn’t she? She must really know how to rehydrate — I would’ve expected a dessicated husk by now.

MW: Vera’s done with drama in her life? Oh, man, does this mean we have to wait until NEXT September for Something To Happen?

FOOB: “…and fat asses are genetic, Honey. I can go to the gym and work this off, but nothing short of a plastic surgeon’s wet dream is going to take care of the load you’re toting.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9545446@N07/1427416451/
Of course, minus TrueFable’s usual panache and charm.

Brewster Rockit: two punchlines for the price o’ one! And in lovely, cosmo-color, too!
bats :[
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 am [Reply]

FW: Batuiuiuk is treadin’ a fine camel-toe line here. And on Sunday! And in color! And in the major frame!
(Who’s Lisa again?)
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 am [Reply]

Poteet:

Here’s a gift I’d get for you if Martha Hoople wouldn’t object: Steve Canyon Hat (scroll halfway down).

Pretty cool huh?
Ukulele Ike
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:39 am [Reply]

Trilobite @ 376: I wish Margo would start hearing the kind of “Latin” voices that Satchel’s admitting to over in “Get Fuzzy.”

RMMD: Niki: “I’d like to have a big SISTER too, Rex!”
Rex: “Heh heh….very funny…heh…hermm….DON’T BE RIDICULOUS.”
Our Boarding House with Major Hoople
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:40 am [Reply]

# 388:

I meant that if Batiuk did Spiderman, there’d be more injury and death (Flattop Hilter first). Also Marvella (MJ’s movie character) would get bitten by a radioactive something or another and become a superheroine (with a scantier costume) (Yes!).

Leave out the smirks though please.
AeroSquid
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:44 am [Reply]

FW: I keep trying to get my GF to dress up like the Hulkette/She-Hulk “SMASH YOU LIKE FLEA !”, but it usually ends up as: “Hey ! Old dude ! Hello ! *point* Fishmonger in the Boat needs some attention !” Wow….girls are so selfish ! hehehehe
Old Man Muffaroo [Old Man Kip W]
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:02 am [Reply]

Funky Tumorbean – Well, we know that in ten years, the cast will be almost entirely unchanged. What are some diseases that take ten years to kill their victims?

JP 9/22 – Interesting that Red’s ‘tell’ should be running her fingers through her hair. Most people do something like grab their chin with their thumb and forefinger. I would have hoped that such a mendacious gal would have a more interesting thing to do when lying, like maybe undoing a button.

Marvin 9/22 – deleted after reading 236

Niall @75 – Some marches are 2/4, but a lot of them are 4/4 (in which the accented beat would be the “Oom”). Hm… “Stars and Stripes Forever” is in cut time, or 2/2. There are even some in 6/8, come to think of it, like “Semper Fidelis” and “El Capitan, though at tempo, I couldn’t see anybody going “Oom-Pah-Pah” so much as leaving out the “Pah”s and just going “Oom! Oom!.” Which sounds a little bit dirty, dunnit?

Kurdt @104 – Oh, good one!

Our Boarding House @265 – So, Les is more?

Dingo @218 – You can use YouSendIt or one of the services that lets you put a big file up on their space, and then post a link to it. YouSendIt keeps the link up for free, until two weeks after the last time someone accesses it. Or, you could see if one of the vinyl-sharing sites is interested in posting it: that’s how I got “Tomorrow On The Children’s Corner” online (the 1960 Fred Rogers LP).

Moon Mullins @221 – Ah, that brings back fond memories of Steve Allen’s “Prickly Heat Telethon” from the 1960s. How I have searched for that show.

Daughter Must Have Pancakes Now. Note to self: start with 322. Will apologize for inadvertent duplication later.
Godzooky
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:02 am [Reply]

Squid Countess: Does this Too Much Coffee Man get included in the count?
Calico
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am [Reply]

RM – Feels like the Morgans are using Niki to distract themselves from the fact that they really don’t have that much of a relationship anymore, if indeed they did to begin with. All they do now is scream at each other over their cell phones, when there’s not stone cold silence.

How did the strangely proportioned Sarah-doll come into this world anyway? Did the Morgans pull off a Mike-and-Dee kind of asexual mating process?

FC – shouldn’t that be “blessed”?
Actually, we all feel cursed because of you and your butt-stupid siblings being in the Ha-ha funnies, Billy.
These “quotes” are truly WTF?!
Mibbitmaker
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:08 am [Reply]

A3G:
Margo either -
a) finds those two and another comic strip Eric gets a beating — but the other woman gets punched out, too, this time;
b) sees the Tim book and becomes ol’ snoopy the spy again; or
c) actually goes Cerebus-in-”Guys” crazy. I’d love to see what “personalities” she ends up with.
Calico
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:13 am [Reply]

#400 – we could have Nora and Margo fighting for the Almighty Journal, with one or both of them falling off the balcony into a passing refuse truck (or a smokestack) along with the book, or maybe Margo can toss it into the barbeque. Haha, another exciting date with Margo!

The payoff could be quite good here – I hope Shulock doesn’t wimp out.
Pinback65
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:37 am [Reply]

JP–Another ten percent of Red’s lovely breasticaboobicals, and you’re still declining the offer? Sam, you’re an idiot.

Phantom–”Next: New Adventure!” And maybe in this one, SOMETHING WILL ACTUALLY HAPPEN.

Slylock–I realize the stegosaurus wasn’t actually a carnivore, but this excellent depiction of a dinosaur society literally devouring itself makes me want to start singing Tonio K’s Life In The Foodchain.

Zippy–Stop! I’m wetting my muu-muu.
Anonymous
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:39 am [Reply]

#325 Skullturf Q. Beavispants: Madonna’s eldest child was born in October 1996 (about 2 weeks before my child was born, IIRC). That would make her 10 years old–almost 11.
The Spectacular Spider-Brick
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:50 am [Reply]

While standing on the platform waiting for the 10:15 thread to Houndslow to arrive, Spider-Brick amuses himself by gleaning some observations about old people from today’s comics.

BB, Marvin: Old people play golf a lot, even though they aren’t very good at it and don’t seem to enjoy it much.

C’Shaft: Old people would rather be grumpy even when they have no cause to be.

Curtis: Old people hate the new generation’s music.

FBOFW: Old people have saggy, disgusting bodies. Ewwwww.

Pickles: Old people still “rotate the tires” now and then. EWWWWW.

Piranha Club: Old people are lousy cooks.

TDIET: Old people are hypocrites.

Zits: Old people have no control over their bodies.

Conclusion: Old people suck. Q.E.D.
gleeb
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 am [Reply]

Phantom – Aaand the thrilling tale of grave robbers comes to an end. Except they weren’t grave robbers. They were just moving the remains of their ancestors away from a building site. Come on, this is The Phantom! A competent policeman or halfway-decent newspaper reporter could have handled this! I guess I should be happy it wasn’t a story about mysterious graffiti.

Zippy – So, what Griffith is saying is that you’d have to have a congenital birth defect to enjoy Nancy? OK, I can buy that.
Girl Reporter
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 am [Reply]

Ooohhhhh, Vera. Better do a brake check before cresting that bridge! I hope your serpentine belt isn’t over the manufacturer’s recommended miles and your tires are inflated to the proper PSI. I hope you haven’t gone more than 3000 miles since your last oil change.

I also have to say that I am very impressed with both Dawn and Vera this week. They are certainly wearing their big girl panties. They each had a much more mature reaction than I would have had in the same situation.

It’s just a shame that one of them has to die now.
Godzooky
September 23rd, 2007 at 9:54 am [Reply]

DT: Let’s do the Time Warp again. (Thought of trying a song parody, but after reading the first few lyrics, realized there was no need. It’s as if the lyricist had been reading Dick Locher all his life.)
Calico
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:12 am [Reply]

#363, 404 Brick –
You keyboard ruiner, you!
Great snark today.
Razmytaz
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 am [Reply]

404 – Auld Brick – British Thread regrets any inconvenience from the delay of the 10:15 to Houndslough. And, no, we won’t actually tell you anything that might help.
John C Fremont
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am [Reply]

# 330 – Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night, Girl Reporter, but I had to take time out to watch Rammstein’s “Anakonda Im Netz,” and then the UNL Volleyball game against Texas A&M. I keep telling myself that even though Canada gave us Lynn Johnston, it also gave us Sarah Pavan, who’s freakin’ awesome. Great game. Anyway, I’m glad Pinback cleared that up for you.

A3G – I know this is nothing new, but I HATE Nora Mills. I hate her and her goobery eye-boogers. But I do appreciate that Margo is doing a Rusty Duncan. With her shirt, that is, not the fingers-in-hair thing. Hmm. A copy of “Journal” by Tim Mills. At least it’s not a copy of anything by Journey, or I’d have to start questioning Eric’s sense of taste… it’s Eric who’s the “hat man,” right?

Foob – I know this has been said plenty today, but – Eww! Or better yet, PTooi!

FW – Well, at least Batiuk knows how to draw boobs and thighs, so there’s that.

JP – I don’t like the Sunday coloring. It looks like the original got left out in the rain. Kind of like that cake in MacArthur’s Park. I like the cleavage, though. It’s Boobalicious. It’s breasticaboobular, chesticamamular, pendular-globular fun! Does Mike Nelson read Judge Parker? I’ll bet Kevin Murphy does. Maybe even Ben Murphy. And when’s that coffee going to kick in?
Razmytaz
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:45 am [Reply]

Wow. Now that’s good comicing artistry in Judge Parker. I can just feel that coastal wind whipping through the hillside, and Red’s hair, and blouse and …
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:46 am [Reply]

378 willethompson Well, the Japanese, and the late night West Coast, actually. The good thing is that on the West Coast, you don’t have to wait until midnight to see the Sunday comics. Sometimes they are as early as 9pm local time. (10pm for the Houston Chronical daily stuff)
Ukulele Ike
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:46 am [Reply]

Calico @ 401: “…or maybe Margo can toss it into the barbeque.”

I think you may have called it. As soon as I saw Margo and the journal in the same panel, I was picturin’ Hedda Gabler….Thea…..Lovborg’s manuscript….
John C Fremont
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:54 am [Reply]

Oops! I see that the word “breasticaboobical” has already been used. Sorry!
Rainbird
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 am [Reply]

399 Calico Thank you for pointing out the “blest” in FC I stared at it, trying to figure out what the heck the word was, that is, when I wasn’t trying to figure out why he was talking about PigPen, as he hasn’t appeared in the strip in a long time, either in the reprints or not.

And I agree. The sayings are weird. Some I’ve never heard of.
Godzooky
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:04 am [Reply]

RMMD: Interpreting today’s Rex Morgan, a la Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent:

Panel 1: Niki declares his bi-sexuality, Rex scoffs.
Panel 2: As a dismissive sop to his desired object, Rex offers his beard.
Panel 3: To get back on Rex’s good side, Niki reveals he’s devoted a lot of thought to “fishing.” Rex inadvertently reveals he was Niki’s age when he first “fly-fished.”
Panel 4: Niki perceptively asks if Rex’s dad was the “fly-fisher.” Rex smiles warmly at the memory and avows his dad loved to consummate outdoors.
Panel 5: Still hoping to drive up the price, Niki plays coy.
Panel 6: Flooded with flashbacks, Rex proclaims his first was still the best.
Panel 7: Moment of truth, approaching the hotel entrance: Rex is ready to fish and Niki, recognizing Rex’s fly and June’s garage are the best deals he’s going to get, decides to meet their needs with gusto.

Now, is it my mind or Woody Wilson’s that’s this deep in the gutter?
Hank
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:06 am [Reply]

Batuik didn’t draw today’s FW, by the way. The huge panel of the faux superheroes was clearly pencilled by his friend, and legendary comic book artist, John Byrne. This is not the first time that Byrne as ghosted FW, by the way: http://jbgallery.ourbunch.net/cgi-bin/funky.cgi
John C Fremont
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:12 am [Reply]

# 417 – So what you’re saying is that Batiuk can’t draw boobs and thighs after all? Well, there goes his only reason to exist…
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am [Reply]

#325 me and #403 anonymous — I stand corrected on Madonna’s kids. My earlier Web research was hasty. Madonna has three children altogether:

Lourdes, born October 1996, whose father is Carlos Leon
Rocco, born August 2000, whose father is Guy Ritchie
David, born September 2005 in Malawi, adopted by Madonna and Guy Ritchie in 2006.

But she was born in 1958. Year of the dog.
Les
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 am [Reply]

Foob: John looked a lot like pudgy Micheal to me today. Um, yeah, that would be sad for poor April.
Poteet
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 am [Reply]

# 393 — Gee, thanks, OBHWMH! (Do you have a preferred nickname?) You’re right, it’s pretty cool!

Foob — I think Lynn has a special opportunity here. She could twist the knife much deeper AND claim the cutting-edge-public-education high ground by giving John a severe, chronic case of erectile dysfunction. I can see it now — the morose faces, the compassionate dialogue, the really awful puns, the visits to the doctor, the experimenting with various pills…actually I don’t want to see it, I really don’t, but now I do, and I did it to myself. Ewwww again.
Bunnë
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am [Reply]

So I was reading Zits today. That thing Walt was talking about? That happens to me all the time. I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, for fear I’d be pressured into a trip to the doctor.

Anyway, my point is I’m identifying with the clueless cartoon father of a teenaged boy, which reminds me, when I do the math, that I could easily have a teenaged child of my own.

Anyway, the moment goes something like this: “Ha ha, that’s so true! Oh, god, I’m old.”
Mel
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 pm [Reply]

MW:
Maybe a car wreck…maybe a donor and a recipient…maybe our good Dr. is going to be to be able to create his own Bride of Drewenstein — Verawn?

It’s anybody’s guess where that ponytail is going to end up sewn.
Uncle Lumpy
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 pm [Reply]

#421 Poteet –

Ooh! I love a good redemption story. The erectile-dysfunction story arc ends when Elly discovers John getting a little too intimate with the appliance the doctor recommended to give him “a little help” — and makes him choose.

Considered against a real-life relationship with a flesh-and-blood woman, John studies the precise, shiny surfaces and sturdy linkages of his new Special Friend, and realizes he made his choice long ago.

Lynnie gets her groove back! Please, let it be!
sangwij
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 pm [Reply]

Re: Marmaduke. I think you have overlooked the obvious. Clearly the dogcatcher is an anthropomorphic bitch.
The Divine O’F
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:08 pm [Reply]

SecretMargo 343: really excellent disquisition on Batiuk and his contempt for the reader. It’s similar IMHO to Brooke McEldowney’s contempt, except for two things. I don’t believe Batiuk is aware of his contempt, while McEldowney practically has it inscribed on his chest. And McEldowney’s is not potentially injurious to innocent children. Either way, they both suck.

Crabby Genes and others: I just have to laugh at today’s FOOB. Until CG pointed it out, I didn’t realize what Lynn was doing, but now that I see, I just have to say “You go, girl!” I once took fantasy revenge on a man who had dumped me by basing a character in a novel on him and killing him off. Only problem is, years later the man in question read the novel and then told me, “Wow, you must have really loved me!”
the foob king
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 pm [Reply]

Saturday’s Shoe: I think “polishing that roadster” is a great new euphemism.
Moon Mullins
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm [Reply]

Sunday Mark Trail:

Giant sloths reported in the “western area of the rain forest,” eh? Is that in the “central part of the hemisphere” and “inland from the ocean” as well? I’m having a hard time narrowing down exactly where he means. Oh well, scientist that I am, I will continue to check for reliable information.
Poteet
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:14 pm [Reply]

# 424 — Yes!! Uncle Lumpy, I SO concur. Do it, Lynn!
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:19 pm [Reply]

Because of the passing of Marcel Marceau, we will now observe a moment of talking.

Thank you. I’m here all week…
Moon Mullins
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:19 pm [Reply]

417 Hank: Thanks for the info on Byrne. You are clearly right about today’s strip. Only Byrne would have included She-Hulk, a character he changed from silly knockoff into self-aware hottie, in this strip. Most other artists would likely have put in Supergirl or Storm or someone like that.

I think Byrne’s She-Hulk was the first superhero to make me look at comic books in a “different way.”
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:24 pm [Reply]

Other rejected jokes re the passing of Marcel Marceau:

(1) At least he went quietly.

(2) He will be buried in a glass coffin with his hands pressing against the lid.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:26 pm [Reply]

His last words were: “Mama, I think I want to become a mime.”
Krazy Kat
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm [Reply]

FOOB- Well, looks like Lynn has finally figured out how to get back at her Ex. The pen is mightier than the divorce decree. “Yeah, he left me for another woman after all those years, but jeez, he was a trainwreck anyway, good riddance.”
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm [Reply]

How appropriate that that last comment was 433 (obscure reference?)
bats :[
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm [Reply]

428. Moon Mullins: the only reason that naturalists have yet to find extant giant sloths is because they keep looking for them on the ground! After the last Ice Age, Megatherium took to the trees like the two- and three-toed species. Their vast tonnage is up there
…waiting
…waiting
willethompson
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm [Reply]

#421 Poteet and #424 UL: “…Precise shiny surfaces and sturdy linkages…” would definitely appeal to Rod if they embodied a General Electric AC4400CW with its 4400 hp prime mover and lugging power of its AC transmission. Better than a Fleshlight.
hypochrismutreefuzz
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:51 pm [Reply]

433 is very obscure. If it means what I think it does.
Artist formerly known as Ben
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm [Reply]

9/23

Dilbert: I see a tragic office shootout in the near future.

FBOFW: Lynn Johnston is calling John Patterson, the fictional stand-in for her husband, fat. What could possibly be behind this. Could there conceivably be some kind of reality subtext here?

GF: It’s always a good day whenever Satchel can put a little holy terror into Bucky.

H&L: Damn you, Al Gore. Damn you to hell!

MW: Eighth panel: Vera goes into reverse, rolls down her window and yells, “Oh yeah. Curses upon you, Drew! Yadda yadda yadda.”
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:17 pm [Reply]

4′33″
Onqelos
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:20 pm [Reply]

433: John Cage! No problem SQB; we’ve got your back. Except post 433 should probably have been 433 blank characters.
John C Fremont
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm [Reply]

4′33″ – I completely missed that one. Is this is the weekend of obscure references, or what?
Quiet Mime
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:43 pm [Reply]

433 — I saw that greasepaint futures tumbled on La Bourse du Commerce De Paris, but analysts predict it is just a Bip.
Brown-eyed Girl
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:47 pm [Reply]

433. BWAHAHAHA!. No wonder Congress keeps cutting funding for the arts. Ok, I’m a philistine, but saying that a musical work comprising 4 1/2 minutes of silence “was first performed on the piano” but was “composed for any instrument” is just funny.
Little Guy
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm [Reply]

FOOB bores me, since the hybrid. I can’t even gather the resources to snark.

RwO, Lio: Bwahahahaha! Best of Sunday!

Classic Peanuts: Sparky’s average recycled stuff is still better than 75% of the current stuff.

Candorville: Susan worried about her two guys. Okay. At least have her put the book down. It *is* Sunday, after all.

Tank: It’s more like “The Simpsons” or “Cold Case”, since these are the usual programs that would get bumped by overrun on the East Coast.

S-M: Wimpiest strip villian ever.

SFx: My God! Then all those Picassoes and Dalis I have from Koppy Kat MUST be forgaries too!
Dean Booth
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm [Reply]

Hi, all. Here are a couple of mashups:

FC: He who lives by the cute, dies by the cute.

JP: Red’s tell (mildly NSFW).

MW: The Typist That Wouldn’t Die.
Electro
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 pm [Reply]

@ 417: Thanks! I went through John Byrne’s strips and found them much, much more enjoyable than Batuik’s.
The Divine O’F
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm [Reply]

446 Dean Booth: BWAHAHAHA! Especially JP.
John C Fremont
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm [Reply]

# 446 – Perfect. Especially the Mary Worth. Too bad Mike and the ‘bots aren’t there in that last panel…
bats :[
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:04 pm [Reply]

446. Dean Booth: dang, each one is funnier than the last!
Well done!

Also shuffling off this mortal coil is actress Alice Ghostley.
(Yesh, she’s now a shade of her former self.)
Poteet
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:06 pm [Reply]

# 416 — HAR!! Thanks for the interpretation, Godzooky. I was trying to figure out why a simple fishing trip was being hyped as if it were CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS. Now I understand.
Krazy Kat
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm [Reply]

Dean Booth is funnier than any comic being published today. I’d buy an anthology. I love Billy’s classic “No mas, no mas!” gesture as Pooh strikes the classic Cassius Clay victory pose.
Poteet
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:10 pm [Reply]

# 446 — BWAHA! The MW is my favorite.
benzo
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:07 pm [Reply]

Why am I unable to view the Sunday strips on the Houston Chronicles site?
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 pm [Reply]

#454 benzo — Dean Booth to the rescue:

http://www.yo-god.com/comics/sundaycomics.htm?20070923
Big Sims
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm [Reply]

Dean Booth, you’re my hero.
True Fable
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:43 pm [Reply]

Seriously, every time I read the comics I can’t help but wonder how Dean Booth will make each of them actually funny because they can’t do it on their own any more. He’s the best thing to happen to the comics since Josh, and Josh is the best thing to happen to them since color.
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:04 pm [Reply]

Benzo: type in the date, in the url, after you select the comic, and hit enter. If the sunday strip is available, it will show up then.
LightSyrup
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:10 pm [Reply]

Um, what else does Dean Booth do besides manufacture “Yo, God!” detectors and give us a place to see the sunday comics? Curious I am.
Uncle Lumpy
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:11 pm [Reply]

#457 True F –

He’s the best thing to happen to the comics since Josh, and Josh is the best thing to happen to them since color

Hmm. Not sure I’m with you about the whole color thing. But we agree about Dean and Josh!
Douchebert
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:17 pm [Reply]

“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams celebrates Yom Kippur by coming out in favor of Ahmad Ahmadinejad and for questioning the Holocaust. But he does it “sarcastically,” so it’s funny! Plus he hates Israel, so it’s “edgy,” too! What a guy! (Wow, this sarcasm thing is really fun. Makes me really want to keep reading “Dilbert” so the guy can stay rich!)
Douchebert
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:17 pm [Reply]

link:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/a-feeling-im-be.html
Islamorada Girl
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:58 pm [Reply]

Uh, the way things are going in MW, it looks as if two timin’, hand jivin’ Dr. Drew the Clue Cory will be flying over the White Cliffs of Aldo in his doctormobile Beemer! Aieeeeeeeeee!

Too bad, so sad as Dawn and Vera bond over mojitos after the closed casket service and Mare delivers a platitude fueled eulogy about weak, ego driven two timin’ men whose 12 years in med school left them without discernible social skills.
SecretMargo
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm [Reply]

461: Save it for the cockpit, DoucheBert. I happen to agree with Adams, but this isn’t the place. Believe what you want, but don’t assume everyone will agree with you, and this isn’t the forum anyway.

More Important Things:

In other news…..Judge Parker was really beautiful today, though I agree with the person who complained about the colouring. I think they were going for “subtle” but overshot into “washed out.” But still, the artist has been working overtime trying to make something, anything out of the wasteland of boring this strip has been wandering aimlessly through since we left Paris. The cut to the close-up at the end was especially nice, though I know it disappointed those of you who wanted to see what happened when Rusty offered 20 or even 30 percent (100 percent is only legal in Canada).
Jym
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:18 pm [Reply]

=428= MT (Moon Mullins): I think “the rain forest” might be somewhere in that country “Asia” where the Winkerbully family picked up their adopted Jinx.
Dicky
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm [Reply]

FC: Am I the only one who misread “echo” as “hoho” in the third “quote”?
SecretMargo
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm [Reply]

463: I-Girl: I don’t know, that last panel seems more like Drew thinking, “Well, this is the last rueful memory I’ll have of my workaholic stenographer ‘girlfriend’ before she careens off the cliff because her car brakes are just about to run out of fluid the levels of which she’s on her way to check! Such irony! I always thought it was Love that rode the pale horse, but I guess I misheard. Sigh. I wonder what cute new nurse in radioology is up to? She looks like she hates horses. Hottt.” to me. Though there’s so much more justice in your version.
SecretMargo
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm [Reply]

willethompson — So, about today’s Marvin, have you retained legal counsel for copyright infringement yet, or was this a subtle stab at viral marketing?
Uncle Lumpy
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:27 pm [Reply]

#468 SM –

MW — Oh, boy. Now Drew goes a-whinin’ to Mary: “You were right, Mary! I should have listened to you!”

In the name of all that is holy, shut up, Drew — you’ll only encourage her.

Sob.
True Fable
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:34 pm [Reply]

#460 Uncle Lumpy – Steve Canyon didn’t need color anyway. Brilliant artwork stands on its own. :-)
wondering
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:40 pm [Reply]

No updates? Did something bad happen?
Josh
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:45 pm [Reply]

#471 — Nothing bad, just a little something called the “weekend”, when I try to have a little something called “a life”. Updates coming soon, I swear.

Josh
Uncle Lumpy
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm [Reply]

I blame Wii.
SecretMargo
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:50 pm [Reply]

473: UL: Sssssssshhh! If Josh wants to call it “life,” just let him! You know how he gets!
Skullturf Q. Beavispants
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:50 pm [Reply]

#461, 462, 464: Even if I happen to agree with some (but not all) of Scott Adams’ views on these issues, I actually found the overuse of sarcasm in Adams’ blog posting to be a bit irritating. I think that in general, when amateur political commentators rely too much on sarcasm, they end up sounding more bitter and being more divisive than they otherwise might have been. Come to think of it, that’s a big part of what’s wrong with Mallard Fillmore about 85 percent of the time.
Dean Booth
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:51 pm [Reply]

Thank you all for your kind words. I try.

These days I laugh more at the comics just anticipating the great snark I’ll find about them here. I never used to enjoy them half as much.
True Fable
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:54 pm [Reply]

re: #468 – wille, I’d sue the diapers off Tom Armstrong! wait…those might be loaded.

Hm.
Inspector Dim
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:58 pm [Reply]

There will be no blaming of the glorious Wii! Wii is my god!

…Or at least it will be, when I finally freaking get one. Oh, Nintendo Wii. How I desire you and your addictive motion control.
Uncle Lumpy
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:03 pm [Reply]

#478 I.D. –

Yes, Wii has a powerful grip on ussss, doesn’t Wii?
Brown-eyed Girl
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:07 pm [Reply]

I suspected that Josh might go off and have a life on the weekends. I’ve heard about this “life” thing, but I lost all interest in it once I got a computer.
wondering
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm [Reply]

oh, good. i was worried. :)
Lynn J.
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:38 pm [Reply]

My Dearest Fable,

Is that really all it would take?

Sweetie, I could retcon this strip until you and I had been married for the last 20 years. I’ve been slowly building up to it, with the Therese storylines. My fans expect retconning now. Just say the word, pumpkin, and consider yourself penciled in for a smackdown with John and for two decades of marital bliss, complete with butter tarts, nightie-flapping, food-slurping sounds, gradient backgrounds and my flabby arms around you every night.

Adoringly yours,

Lynnie J.

P.S. — Did you see? I wore my sexiest nightie for you.
Poteet
September 23rd, 2007 at 7:52 pm [Reply]

This is embarrassing, so it’s good no one will see it, but I don’t think I’ll be visiting the Dilbert blog again because of the way Adams uses profanity. It’s embarrassing because I came of age just when most young people started flinging dirty words about with greater abandon, myself among them. (Though tamely, compared with today. I remember being warned by an older relative that I might have trouble getting respectable dates if I ever used the dirty word referring to excrement, har.) But now when I see a lot of profanity in a short prose passage, I tend to wonder why the author couldn’t think of a more literate and interesting way of expressing himself. I still like DILBERT enough to keep reading it, but I shall leave that blog alone. *stops waving cane, returns it to shelf*
benzo
September 24th, 2007 at 12:00 am [Reply]

#455: Thanks.

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