Slylock Fox: After dark
Slylock Fox, 3/5/07
Wow, so Slylock Fox is keeping with its overall mystery theme, but seems to have moved from cutesy Encyclopedia Brown-type mysteries to late night Cinemax “erotic thriller”-type mysteries. This shift can probably be attributed to the hiring of the sexy Cassandra Cat, who featured in a previous disturbingly adult installment of the feature. What really ups the squik factor me, honestly, is not merely Cassandra’s bound state, or even the fact that she really was tied up by a “friend”; no, it’s Slylock and Max’s creepy, expressionless, voyeuristic stares. You sort of get the feeling that they’ve been halfway into that window for a while now.
By the way, I didn’t even notice the goldfish, thrashing around on the floor as it dies slowly, until I read the solution to the puzzle. So thanks for making me contemplate that little horror in the midst of this perversion, Mr. Omniscient Upside-Down Slylock Fox Narrator.
Herb and Jamaal, 3/5/07
I’m not sure what Herb’s expression in the final panel is supposed to indicate: that he’s reveling in squinty-eyed glee at his own lame internal joke, or that he’s taking a dump in his pants. Frankly, both scenarios would provide him with roughly equal amounts of dignity.
They’ll Do It Every Time, 3/5/07
I don’t really have a ton to say about today’s TDIET, except that “Richard Kahane” is none other than faithful reader and occasional commentor Obélix, who scores points for actually making his entry comics-related. Comics Curmudgeon readers have now supplied four or five TDIETs over the past year or so, which may say something about what percentage of this feature’s readership we make up.
Spider-Man, 3/5/07
Sadly, today’s thrilling remote control nabbing makes panel two the most exciting moment in Spider-Man in several weeks. Still, it’s nice to see that Brendan Fraser is still getting work.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I’ve always thought children should be filled with a healthy skepticism towards accusations of rape and/or forced entry. Luckily, Slylock Fox is there to turn kids into little defense attorneys as well as detectives. Remember kids, “Please don’t hurt me” means “yes!”
March 5th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Also, first!
March 5th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
I don’t know about you people, but I’m kind of itching for the days when the super-villains randomly smashed up television sets in Spider-Man. I’m also glad that I’m not the only one who caught the “Slylock Fox” thing. Not only is Cassandra Cat trying to commit insurance fraud, but she’s testing the boundaries of good taste with her S&M antics. Also, how much do you want to bet that the insurance company is run by beavers?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Man, forget Brendan Fraser. I just think it’s nice that WWF wrestling legend George “The Animal” Steele has enough security in his masculinity to slap on a dress and a blonde wig, and steal a remote away when the situation calls for it.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
It’s a happy day in Los Angeles – Mallard Fillmore has been elminated from the L.A. Times comic section.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
In a recent thread, Doug Puthoff implicated me in the sabotaging of the KFS office. I was nowhere near the office. I was a Vegas, shooting any TV I could find that showed Elvis.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
P.S. more information about me can be found on the Internet, particulary at http://www.robertgoulet.com.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
You know, judging by the out-of-character soda can, white socks, baseball cap, and treasure chest full of pearl necklaces (????), I’m beginning to wonder if this is even Cassandra’s room to begin with. Exactly how kinky is that cat?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
#4 Tats: Beat me to the punch, I was going to say Lou Ferrigno but a shaven Steele with a wig takes the cake, Fun-n-n-n-y stuff, oh Y-y-y-eah! (Is TDIET making fun of stuttering with the extended “n”s?)
March 5th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Funny animal cats in bondage–there’s probably a Yahoo! group for that.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Until I read the solution to Slylock Fox, I was under the impression that she’d tied herself up and SF takes place in the same alternate universe as Robot Monster.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Today’s SFx is just cause to resurrect this image – from an actual old-school Ernie Bushmiller “Nancy” cartoon. Not a cunningly modified impersonation – the real, published thing (it was Nancy imagining what it meant when someone couldn’t come to the phone because she was “tied up” at the time.)
March 5th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
SM: Compared to the Ann Nicole Smith saga, somebody claiming to be Spidey’s wife is small potatoes.
GT: The “Whatisname gets maimed” saga has upped the stakes of this strip. For this story to be as good, somebody’s going to have to die a horrible, bloody death.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Wait, in Slylock Fox, isn’t the more obvious answer that it’s unlikely that a bound, er, cat is going to know what a burglar steals after he ties her up? Is Slylock Fox’s motto “Once you eliminate the obvious easy answer, whatever remains, no matter how imperceptible, is what we’re going to put down as the solution”?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
#5: Really? Is it actually cancelled, or was it just moved to another section?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
The name “Loopina” has been re-used by TDIET? You know you’ve reached a level of sloppy, lazy writing when you reach into your bag of nomenclature and this is all you can find.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Oh yeah-h-h…Obélix! I’m curious about the process of submitting an idea to Big Al. I have a real-life situation that, well, I do every time! It’s kinda like the 1962 teevee comedy “I’m Dickens, He’s Finster”…O.k., here’s the deal… I’m a carpenter. When I work on client’s homes I am way fastidious in my workmanship, taking immense pride when my customers are happy with the results. But my own house? It’s downright post-apocalyptic! …The wife’s on my butt every weekend “When ya gonna fix this, when ya gonna fix that, yaddita tattita tatt?” Anyway, do you have any pointers on how I should approach this?
March 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Slylock – Cassandra Fox claims that shortly after a friend drove her home last night
Claims to whom? Slylock and Max? Why would she still be screaming “help”, then? Aren’t they presumably the ones that are going to help her. The way this cartoon is drawn, it looks like Max and Slylock tied her up and are exiting the window, not entering it.
Herb & Jamal – That joke’s not quite as funny if you’re a strict creationist, and believe the world is only 10,000 years old. If you believe the world is billions of years old, then that joke is screamingly funny!
TDIET – It’s “drivel”, not “dribble.” Frankly, Dimwiddy loses all credibility right there and then, even if he’s sitting on the couch smoking a pipe and reading “Finnegan’s Wake” in Panel 2.
Spiderman – Jameson looks like such a walking cadaver in Panel 1 that his ratings ain’t going nowhere, even if OJ shows up and says, “I did it.”
March 5th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Slylock: Who stole Cassie’s earring’s isn’t the real mystery…the real mystery is the emotional state of Cat and Fox after the ill-advised, destructive affair which is bound to follow. I’ve seen too many of these Skinemax movies, it happens every time. Then, Fox will wind up drunk in a bar, crying in his gin, while Mouse tries to console him with “She was no good for ya man”, and he’ll say” BudayeLOVErman…” and take a swing at Mouse, then Mouse will walk off, saying something about him having made his bed…This’ll end up with Fox putting his badge in his drawer and settling something his…own…way.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Gadge, thanks for the Nancy image. I never appreciated just how hot that comic was.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Loopina’s one of Scaduto’s regular names, along Arfo, Barfo and Lardbutt. No, I’m not making this up.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
#15 Sort of like how some papers put Dilbert in the business section? I suppose they could move Mallard Fillmore to whatever section of the paper is used to line canary cages, wrap raw fish, and scrap globs of nasty off your shoe.
Actually, do they have a section in the paper where they rerun the same story over and over throughout the week with only minor alterations? That would be perfect!
March 5th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
TDIET: Does Dimwiddy get his meds from the same Canadian pharmacist as Grandpa Jim?
March 5th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
TDIET: I notice that Mrs. Dimwiddy seems to have had her arm and hand permanently disfigured into some sort of halfway Hitler salute. That or she’s feeling herself up.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Prick City: What the hell is this? Was Stantis dared to do one of his strips while covering one of his eyes and without lifting his pen from the paper more than twice? Was he drunk (again) and facing a deadline? Why am I even asking?
March 5th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
TDIET: So, Loopina is a name regularly used by Al Scaduto, right? And in this strip, we see a character laughing out loud at the antics of a comic strip character named Loopina. So… is this a subliminal suggestion by Scaduto that TDIET is hilarious? Has he sunk so low that he has to put ads for his own strip in his own strip? Distressing.
Also, no one since the 1950s has complained about the negative effect of comics on the youth of America. Just saying.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I’m fascinated by how “Spider-Man” turned into “Pluggers” in the last panel. That woman’s ability to instantly detect something trashy happening on a different channel doesn’t look impressive, but I don’t see any portly English butlers sneaking up on her with a lead pipe like they did on our favorite hero with the proportional abilities of an ineffectual mope.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
“…Darla Dorset — Better known as Spider-Man’s wife…:
And soon to be known as “That stupid bitch who got herself killed by every Spidey-villian in existance.”
On the plus side, her estate will probably collect a heftly Wrongful Death judgement from JJJ…
March 5th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
I submitted 2 ideas to TDIET recently, and I have heard nothing. Of course, one of my ideas mentioned a digital camera and the other a fast-food drive-thru, so Scaduto will probably write me back saying he doesn’t do science fiction.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Halfway through the question in Slylock Fox, the narration shifts from “Cassandra Cat” to simply “the cat”. Is this a continuation of the sort of bigotry we’ve seen in earlier strips with “the beaver”? I certainly hope so. I would love to see Slylock Fox graduate from kid-friendly material to a world saturated with racially based hatred, sexual kink, and violent felonies. It’d be immensely, unironically enjoyable.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
#15 Lammergeier13- The L A Times is now going to be running “the drunk ass -talkin’ duck” only on Sunday. Same deal with “La Cucaracha”, “Candorville” and “Mr. Boffo” to free up some newsprint real estate for something called “An enhanced kid’s reading room” …that they’re putting on the …Sunday edition? Yeah, it makes no sense to me, either.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
How did Cassandra Cat know that Slylock and Max were going to be passing by her window at that moment? Is this some kind of daily peep show arrangement? Was that how she dodged prosecution after her little wallet-snatching escapade? Are Slylock and Max into some kind of weird, pseudo-exhibitionist circle jerk fetish? Is it still a circle jerk if there are only two participants, or does that make it a line jerk? Is anyone else very aroused right now?
March 5th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Cassandra should have gone for the “I just drew myself a bath” alibi. Like the gigantic-torso’d bull thief.
It would have at least given Slylock an easy case to solve. And with sexy results.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:05 am
I’m alarmed that I immediately solved the mystery of the cat.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:14 am
OK, I did it. I just sent an edited version of my TDIET idea to Mr. Scaduto (see #17 above)…Wish me luck!….Hey, Squid Countess, you said “write” in comment #29..did I make a mistake by using the new fangled intertubes to contact Al at alscaduto2@optonline.net or do I have to contact the Big Guy through Pony Express?
March 6th, 2007 at 12:15 am
#31: Thanks, Red. No, it doesn’t make much sense. But then, whatever gets rid of 6 straight days of MF(er) per week doesn’t have to make sense. It’s all good with me.
Zits: Ok, this is just damn creepy. Are Jeremy’s parents narcs? Most teenagers wouldn’t allow themselves to be harangued into a urine test by their parents asking them… What did they do to you, Jeremy? Did they hurt you? Where did you get those bruises? What happened, Jeremy? Here, show us on this doll… Oh, My God! Don’t worry, kiddo, they’ll never touch you or any other child again. It’s all going to be alright.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:18 am
I just submitted a TDIET suggestion. I don’t think it’s very funny, though. The links I enclosed say it all:
http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/97/t/000581.htm
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=1362
March 6th, 2007 at 12:19 am
In the few months that I have been reading Slylock Fox regularly, I come across at least one pattern so far. Cats = bad. Cat whores = devious and bad.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:21 am
I never thought I’d see a Slylock Fox that was inspired by Faith No More’s video for “Exit.”
March 6th, 2007 at 12:33 am
# 26 — Ben, I have to differ with you by just a few years. My otherwise-wonderful grandmother was concerned about what comic books might do to my mind, so she confiscated a couple that I bought when I was eleven and visiting her in Ohio. That was in 1963, and I was extremely peeved. I wish I could remember what she took (could it have been STEVE ROPER?), but I’m almost certain the “worst” content was bang-bang graphic violence. Unfortunately, she was quite right about the impacts of comics on my brain:-).
SHYLOCK — I feel like such an idiot getting up from my chair so I can contort my head and neck and read the solution. And I wouldn’t even bother if it weren’t for Cassandra Cat, who holds a weird fascination for me. Wear the earrings again, Cassandra!
March 6th, 2007 at 12:37 am
# 40 — Sorry, obviously that should have been Slylock. I was preoccupied with Cassandra.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Herb and Jamaaaaaal — Whenever comic strip pet peeves are discussed, I’ll always bring up the device of having any character laugh at the punchline. (Curtis and Foob Better or Worse do this frequently.) You’d think that cartoonists would know that if the gag is funny, WE will laugh. Having a character prompt us to laugh never makes the strip funnier.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Josh, thanks to you, Slylock Fox has gradually become my favorite comic strip currently in the the papers. The only possible downside to this strip is that it forces me to turn my head upside down in public labs. That and it makes me feel vaguely attracted to cartoon cats.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Heh, heh, Shylock. I didn’t even notice until you pointed it out. I’m sure you’re not the only one to have done that. You know, The Merchant of Venice, much like many of the comic strips today, was originally supposed to be a comedy. Also like many comic strips of today, it’s not.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:46 am
(Of course I meant to say computer labs up there, just to allay any confusion. I’m not in a research lab or anything.)
March 6th, 2007 at 12:51 am
#26, Ben — Don’t rush me.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:57 am
Cross-posted because I feel like it:
FOOB 3/6: Well, April, you suck too. “The look� I thought that was what guys gave you to prove that (hoo!) you are more than just Michael’s baby sister.
Don’t worry, though. The only reason Becky is giving you that “I’m better than you and I always will be†look is that … wait for it … she’s better than you and she always will be. That’s why you have to have sex early and often. Roadside today = roadies tomorrow. You just think about that as you tuck yourself into your dresser or shoebox or whatever your adult siblings have reduced you to. You think Becky has a half-evolved 3-year-old nephew doo-dooing on her computer? No sir, and you know why. Because she let Jeremy Jones touch her lady parts, and you didn’t, and now she wins and you fail. You think about that one long night in your bureau, listening to Anthony squeal like a pig in the throes of what passes for passion in Canada. You just think about that.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:01 am
#36 Lammergeier13- I’m happy to see (MF)MF go, but “Candorville” and “Mr. Boffo” and “La Cucaracha?…C’mon now, that’s fuckin’ harsh!..I am totally rooting for David Geffen to buy the LA Times from the Tribune Co.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:01 am
# 47 O_O Stop. You’re scaring me.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Nice to see Shylock Fox coming out firmly in favor of alleged rape victims being frauds until proven otherwise. That’s a nice message for the kids.
http://www.reidaboutit.com
March 6th, 2007 at 1:19 am
#17 & #35 – Red Greenback – Well, here’s the way it worked for me: First, you send Scaduto $50 in unmarked bills…. (Actually, I sent the idea to the email address in the strip, and a couple of days later, I got an email back saying he might use it and asking for my snail mail address so he could send me a signed copy if he did use it. Sure enough, a couple of weeks after that, I got a signed Xerox (TM?) of “my” strip with a note giving the day it would appear in print, which was a couple of months from then. The rest is almost mangled history, as when I first clicked the link to see my immortality rendered in pixels, the %$#@&! King Features folks had farkled their server. Fortunately, CHENNUX–his impeccable immenseness–benevolently put things right. And now you know the rest of the story.)
March 6th, 2007 at 1:19 am
3/6 –
JP — Okay, Neddy, your (Margo)ing stupid shape-shifting beret is starting to really, really annoy me.
FC — Even for Keane, this is one of the most Boxcar-Margo-Saturn-est amazingly stupid concepts of all time. I am certain that in some dimension of reality, this panel is legal justification for homicide.
DT — Okay, so I’m reading DT now. But I’m still not reading (DT)GT.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Forget the not-yet-dead goldflish. If a supposed crime victim tells me that she is “eager to report the robbery to her insurance company,” that’s a big red flag.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:22 am
O.k., I’ve watched Mark Trail watch manfully from a window as his friend fell into a pond. I saw him stride manfully down to the pond. Now he is manfully rowing his boat out to the middle of the pond.
I’m starting to think that being manful mostly involves being stupid and slow moving. Though in Mark Trail world, this is still 1000 times better than being a woman.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:23 am
Continued from post #48…Even though Mr. Geffen’s security goons turned me back from going surfing on a particularly glassy day at the ‘Bu in front of Mr. G’s compound. Oh, well. I still think David Geffen manning the helm of the paper will be a vast improvement over the Trib’s ham-handed attempts.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:42 am
#51 Obélix-Thanks! I got a good feeling about this one! I’ve not seen my particular situation portrayed in the “They’ll Do It Every Timeverse” before, so I may have a good shot at “Oh Yeah-h-h” Immortality.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:27 am
#56 – Red Greenback – Keep us posted! Oh, yeah-h-h-h!
March 6th, 2007 at 2:34 am
FOOB:
Foob seems to be turning into some kind of word puzzle game. Yesterday it was “Qué Padre”, today it’s what word ends in “…ysation”? It’s in Canada, so “electrolysation” and similar British spellings should be excluded. It could be French, I suppose.
I found the following on a “please write my term paper for me” website:
Re: ysation of Gargantua and Pantagruel
Just wondering if anyone had any ytical insight on Gargantua and Pantagruel. I am attempting to write a term paper on this topic and would like some opinions and ytical information on this satirical piece of literature.
Is this one of those “kids these days” things?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:46 am
SlyFo:
How are we supposed to know it’s a goldfish? It’s certainly not drawn well enough to recognize the species. Maybe it’s a lungfish or a walking catfish that can survive for hours out of water.
I’d start by investigating whose head fits that baseball cap, because it’s way too small for Cassandra.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:49 am
Does anyone understand today’s Blondie? Nearest I can make out it’s making a testicle joke, and that can’t be right. Maybe the problem is that I don’t bowl…
March 6th, 2007 at 2:54 am
I’m not sure what’s up with FOOB, but the excerpt from the “please write my term paper” website appears to be the hilarious work of an overactive censor-filter. It’s zapping the ‘anal’ from ‘analytical.’
I now feel a bizarre, fond nostalgia for the similar filters at my high school, which did not take kindly to any attempts to research Massachusetts.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:01 am
The LA Times is dumping more than just some comics. Apparently the book review section is on the chopping block too. And that’s just for starters.
A long gloomy article can be found here.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Why does a cat have a goldfish? Is it a pet? Late-night snack? Does she just like to stare at it through the bowl?
Is that even her house?
March 6th, 2007 at 3:23 am
#6 (Robert Goulet) — Foget about Cassandra Cat’s stolen diamond ring! Who stole the cleft from Robert Goulet’s chin? That man had a chin bifurcated like a baby’s butt! You can’t see it in his publicity photo.
My Mom used to play Goulet’s stuff all the time. I kinda liked him in “Camelot.” Is he still alive?
March 6th, 2007 at 3:27 am
61. I do believe you’ve hit on the answer, Kaishai, and “analysation” is actually in the dictionary, although I don’t know why “analysis” wouldn’t be better. That kind of censorware seems to be designed to train normal teenagers to think like Beavis and Butthead.
It’s a bit ironic when the poster is writing a term paper on Rabelais, of all topics. I’d send it in to TDIET, if only TDIET ran in the Times Literary Supplement.
However, the FOOB puzzle still remains unsolved.
I did some research on “Que padre”, and it appears to be an expression used only in Mexico. So if the implication was supposed to be that that guy had fled from the death squads in Guatemala with only the T-shirt on his back, it doesn’t really work.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:35 am
If Fred Basset doesn’t make any sense today*, that strip refers to Shrove Tuesday or “Pancake Day”, and should have run on Feb. 20. More information on quaint English customs can be found somewhere.
*no need for you to add “why should it when it doesn’t make sense any other day?”
March 6th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Slylock Fox: Honestly, I’d've thought Cassandra would have a more fashionable wardrobe… the fact that she dresses in faded bell bottoms, pink tank tops, too-big lavender sweaters, and baseball caps when she isn’t out clubbing interests me, from a character perspective.
Maybe she’s really a small-town girl who’s been corrupted by life in the big city, and the slinky sophisticate thing is just an act she puts on to keep her marks off guard.
And then Slylock Fox will bring in detective Robert Goren to pry at the cracks in her psyche until she cracks and admits to bashing Slick Smitty’s head in with a table lamp.
Maybe I’m putting too much thought into this.
TDIET: Actually, I read this as a subtle slam on Bill Waterson, who used to spend a lot of time criticizing comic books… in his syndicated comic strip.
To be fair, he was also pretty harsh on the newspaper funnies, and it was near the start of the Image era, so it didn’t make much impression on me when I was younger.
But looking back on it, it was a bit weird.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:44 am
No, Dennis. The Tooth Fairy pays you per each tooth you lose. The SIZE of the tooth is not in any way important.
You woulda been funnier saying, “Boy, this guy’s parents are gonna spend a fortune on orthodonture work and a nose job!”
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070306&name=Dennis_The_Menace
March 6th, 2007 at 4:04 am
Whoopsie! The other name for this Political Panda is obviously Testicalis Giganticus.
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/3/6&name=Non_Sequitur_pan
March 6th, 2007 at 4:09 am
Slylock Fox: I didn’t think it was the goldfish because she could’ve just knocked it over kicking and screaming. Since “last night” could’ve been 18 hours ago for all we know, I thought the answer was that she hadn’t peed all over herself. I suck at games like these.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:18 am
How can Joe spell “nostril”? He don’t even HAVE ‘em!
Is the doll Ruthie is waving at her brother one of those old fashioned Troll dolls? Or is it just terrified to interrupt the spelling lesson?
Ruthie is growing anti-histamines in her garden. Hope she doesn’t start working on a meth lab…
You can pick most of the flowers in the garden, but don’t pick the nostrils.
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComic.mpl?date=2007/3/6&name=One_Big_Happy
March 6th, 2007 at 4:23 am
You know if you take the alphabet rule of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL the computer is actually 1 letter off of IBM; then J. Jonah Jameson could translate to KKK. Bigoted, closed minded shit that he is.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:24 am
#64 Len – Goulet is indeed alive, and is currently starring in a very funny commercial for walnuts. I assure you I am not making this up.
#47 Plinko Commie – Marry me.
#60 Anonymous – Herb’s shouting what you normally say at a bowling alley when a ball gets stuck in that tube that magically brings the bowling balls back to you. I guess the joke — and I use the term loosely — is that the amazing sorcerer’s tools used to unstick a ball are being called for to unstick Dagwood’s finger. Oh yeah, it’s a laugh fucking riot at Blondie today.
SlyFox — One of my many freak-out triggers is a poor goldfish left flopping on the floor. This strip will give me nightmares tonight, mark my words.
FOOB — This week is apparently a very special week where April learns that the world doesn’t revolve around her. So far, we’ve covered two classic ABC Afterschool Special standbys: White People Got It Good So Stop Whining, and Stuck-Up White People Should Be Pitied Because They’re So Horribly, Terribly Alone. Now, one might think April’s got better lessons to learn, such as not bandying about the term “refugee” in front of legitimate exiles, or to not just assume a glance from a pretty girl is hostile. One would, of course, be wrong.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:20 am
72: Bold accusation. But I welcome an opportunity to share scans from non-sucky Spider-Man comics.
http://pics.livejournal.com/rabican/pic/000hw2gk
http://pics.livejournal.com/rabican/pic/000hyk6h
http://pics.livejournal.com/rabican/pic/000hxe58
March 6th, 2007 at 5:24 am
Why? WHY did I have to encounter this image (NSFW or while drinking soda) and why does it remind me of Slylock Fox?
Brick and Skipper were having a wonderful day on the carousel when someone stole their clothes. Where is Cassandra Cat? What does a unicorn with Dick Cheney’s eyes symbolize? Where is this [MARGO]in’ carousel?
March 6th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Two things about today’s Rex Morgan, Master Deviant: at some point in a medical doctor’s education — perhaps fourth grade? — shouldn’t it be taught not to end a sentence with a preposition? Also, look at the sad countenance on Dr. Rex in panel three when told that darlin’ Niki will have to leave.
With Niki out of the picture, Rex Morgan may have to do the one task he’s been avoiding all these years: cleaning his wife’s garage.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:00 am
Foob–Is today’s strip set inside the domed city from Logan’s Run?
MT–Yeah, go on in after him, Mark. And if you also find the bloated corpse of Gadabout Gaddis while you’re down there, let us know.
Mutts–My appreciation of today’s strip–which is adorable to begin with–was greatly enhanced by the fact that my cat Delmar (black and white, just like Mooch) was on my lap and staring me in the face as I read it. Awww…
March 6th, 2007 at 6:32 am
As usual, Slylock misses the point. This is not a crime scene; this is an interrupted take from a bondage short, circa 1978. The clues are obvious:
1) Cassandra Cat real name was Rachel Goldsmith, sort of an Edie Sedgewick that hung around with Barbara Behr and starred in several low-budget bondage films
2) Cassandra’s apartment is located in Van Nuys, home of several bondage publications, and her apartment is being used as the set.
3) Cassandra is a commited fetishist. Note the anal beads in the ‘jewelry box’ (aka toy chest) and the condom hanging limply out of the overturned night table.
4) Insurance companies severly limit the payout on jewelry losses, unless you carry an expensive rider, and Cassandra’s lack of wardrobe indicates she is not a cat of means, so the insurance scam doesn’t hold true.
5) The ropework, or ‘rigging’ is more decorative than effective. Any Boy Scout could tell you that the lack of ‘cinches’ would allow our ‘victim’ to free herself in seconds. The leg rope isn’t even overknotted.
6) I don’t even want to think why a fish was involved in the interrupted take, but evidently, the sight of a bright red fox and a mouse with jaundice coming across the fence would give even the most sexually-jaded fish fetishist film student turning a quick $100 (probably Troy McClure) the heebie-jeebies.
7) The room smelled of cinnamon and Canada. QED.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Spiderman – I used to think that those wavy things around PP’s head indicated that his spider-sense was tingling, but because of the slovenly way he lays around the house all day, I now believe them to be stink-lines.
JP – Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, etc., etc. When do we get to see Neddy trying on more clothes.
Diesel Sweeties – Maura’s skeleton is hawt.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:09 am
The Josh Reads Millenary Moment
Josh Reads post #500 got us halfway to the millennipost, and features a typically incisive dissection of Family Circus, although some scholars have argued that it borrows too heavily from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
This has been today’s “Josh Reads Millenary Moment.†21 more posts till the millennipost!
March 6th, 2007 at 7:23 am
FOOB: Eva: “It’s lonely at the top!”
Well, as we know from yesterday’s “I’m a refugee” whine, it’s not too rosy at the bottom either. You can’t even work up a good self pity party without the guy with the Spanish T-shirt topping you with a story about his grandmother imprisoned for making eye contact with a man.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:30 am
MT: (alone, paddling a canoe): “I’ve got to go after him!”
Um, Mark… you’re already in the process of “going after him.” If you were any more “going after him” you’d have your mouth on his, breathing sweet life into his water-filled lungs.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:37 am
TDIET- “Li’l Pic’dilly Pete is always the first one to grab the comics section–But HOWSAT?–…He’s ALWAYS cripplingly disappointed by what he finds there! GEEE-EE…”
March 6th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Spider-Man’s final panel may be the introduction of the strip’s next storyline, “The Rise of the Channel Surfer,” in which Spidey must do battle with a super-villainess who instinctively knows what is showing on every channel at all times. The battle will be intense because, after all, Spider-Man DOESN’T know what is on every channel at all times! Who will prevail?
SPOILER ALERT: Spider-Man will prevail, probably accidentally.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:43 am
#81 -smacky – yes, the “top” heights attained being relative to the perspective of a teen stuck-in-the-Patterson-middle.
And apologies all, but since my posting makes more sense on this page, and I apparently made the mistake of contributing to the parallel world of the ending of a thread on 978, instead of reinventing my comments, I would like to post the FOOB ones here again.
Years from now when someone looks through the 2000th page of Josh, it will make sense.
FBOFW: This has all really been a reflection of Mike’s Coma but I got tired of the fact he can’t even manage much, he is obviously losing the plot he barely had.
I wasn’t even doing the math of the last days because he’s so obviously just rifling through the possible combinations of memes till they click again and he finds another attractive way to push LIZ’s face into something! So meanwhile, his dreaming works overtime like a bad morse-code trying at the same time to figure out the lock to the safe: the combinations are just tried out – - Mom, Liz, (feeding the pussy), April, Dad, (overstimulated wet pants), Dad, Deanna (both want another house, only one wants to play trains in “your†yard)…
Finally, Michael must be getting warm in his hospital bed, he keeps returning to April recently, introducing her in all kinds of symbolic sexual potential, first with dad, now obviously he just wants her to sleep with Becky so bad…
March 6th, 2007 at 7:56 am
FC “Let the bird in only if he will peck your eyes out, Jeffy.” You know, this panel today certainly wasn’t funny and it wasn’t even cutesy. Just what the hell was it, the bottom of the dusty, empty barrel?
A3G Eric, if you’re not personally there to be impressed with Margo, then you are [margo]ed, my friend.
DtM No, no no, Dennis the squib. Try something like, “I bet they used to stick cavemen on their teeth like shish-ka-bobs before they ate them!” just to watch Joey pee his pants. And then you should point at him and laugh, Dennis. Now get in there and wear those cruel shoes I sent you, you little slacker.
JP Wait, what? Abbey came? When, how? Did I miss a day or something? Dammit! DAMMIT!!
MW Don’t worry about it, Helmet Head. If Mary will go halfway around the world on the strength of your “listen to your dreams” advice, she’s a cinch for any damn thing you toss at her.
FBOFW It’s too late, folks; we’re losing April to THEM. How do I know? Look at her hair. It’s in Pre-Bun stage. Next: Liz’s ass will enlarge and she’ll start flapping (ugh! stopitstopitstopit!) which means Elly will go to the next level, which is cranking out shitty preachy comic strips for the dumb blind masses.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Okay, what’s that on Cassandra’s dresser? From what I can make out, it looks like the label says “Pom”. Nice to know that the B&D set are watching out for their health. (Mmmm…pomegranate!!!)
March 6th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Foobiverse – It’s time for today’s installment of the beloved Before School Special, ‘Let’s make April look like a shit!!’ We have her slobbering over her shining opportuninty to rat the hated Becky out to the Thought Police for face-crime! I gots me the suspicion that Becks has a GOOD reason to give Aypo the stink-eye that DOESN’T involve the Martian dressing like a nine-year-old; I think somebody at Casa Foob gave our Rebecca a little HELP looking like a jerk last All Hallows Eve and she thinks Apes is in on the scam. But that’s just me. She may not have even been thinking of Propellor-Head in the first place and Emo-girl simply misinterpreted it. She is, after all, only sixteen; nobody THAT age has their shit together.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:11 am
If Mark Trail’s Dan-story was in Mary-Worth time, Mark would have plenty of time to save him, in a sort of Tai-Chi slo-mo fashion.
Cherry looks she’s just about ready to inject the sedatives into Hysterical-Acting-Woman. Her father is a DVM, after all, and probably has a cupboardful of stuff.
And still NO ANDY! He’s still sleeping off his drunk, I suppose. Rusty too, as he broke into Doc’s 12-year old whiskey the night before.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:15 am
MW: When a question mark is spoken (like so – “?”), what is that sound? Is it HUH, or WHA, or DOH or a TimAllenesque simian grunt? For Mary, I prefer the latter.
RMMD: When the cop says that it will easy to persuade Elvis to rat out EightBall, do you picture an Abu Ghraib Kodak moment with Abbey barking her brains out at a naked meth abuser?
And where are Rex’s eyes looking in the last panel? Is he channeling Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles, “I’ve heard that you people are…gifted?”
A3G: Margo, it’s obvious that you know squat about running a business. If the client makes a change, don’t gett huffy, get BILLING!
March 6th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Slylock: I saw the goldfish, but the time of the arrival of Slylock & Max is not really specified (there is a tiny clock, next to – what is that? Two Ben-Wa balls and a diaper? – but the clock may be on its side, as it was obviously thrown from its perch like the rest of the room), nor is it common knowlege how long a goldfish will flop around desperately gasping air instead of water – or maybe the artist knows from sadistically applying the empirical method upon hapless goldfish victims. For a world inhabited largely by anthropomorphic characters, they certainly don’t have much empathy for non-mammalian creatures.
On that same thought, the only two humans, Slick Smitty and Count Weirdly are obviously stereotyped as crooks in a symbolic gesture that the advance of Homo Sapiens has resulted in a criminal decline in the animal world. Call it Slylock’s subtle environmental statement.
One last thing on this mess of a Slylock – there is one rope that binds Cassandra’s legs, one that binds her arms, and what is the one around her waist for? To hold her pants up?
March 6th, 2007 at 8:23 am
On Spiderman, I was thinking Tom Arnold & Roseanne Barr, but those two haven’t been playing nice with each other in ten years. So, any joke I made to that effect would have sounded as stale as Johnny Hart’s attempts at being current or topical.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:31 am
#60 – Ann Nonymous –
Re: explaining Blandie: My take on the joke is that Dag’s fingers are stuck in the ball due to excessive masturbation because a wife that hot would never let a schlub like Dagwood get anywhere near her naked torso.
Of course, my theory on the unfortunate state of the Bumstead marriage is disproven when you take the way that Alexander looks too much like Dag to be the spawn of anyone else in existence.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:32 am
SF: Wait a minute, Cassandra’s a cat. Wouldn’t she have eaten the goldfish a long time ago? Or maybe her john — oops, I mean “friend” — keeps her in Fancy Feast often enough that she doesn’t have to resort to home-caught sushimi.
H&J: Why does Herb look like George Jefferson?
TDIET: The forced, shit-eating irony in the exclamation “I love it! Yeah!” is a tipoff that Scaduto may be onto the whole Comics Curmudgeon schtick and is just playing along with us. And believe me when I say how hard it is to give Scaduto credit for being self-aware.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:33 am
#90 – I think the only one in 3G who’s getting Huffy is LuAnn.
Margo, however, is being her usual permanent- state-of-PMS self. She’s worse than Mary Worth in the self-absorption department.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:36 am
So, #79 Ham Gravy – re. Maura, were you thinking of jumping her bones?
March 6th, 2007 at 8:51 am
87 Pozzo, other possibilities are pomace, pomelo, pome, pomewater, pompetus (of love), or, probably, pomade.
That could be one of the most alliterative sentences ever written.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:56 am
(yawn) Morning, guys. What a night. I’m awake at four o’clock in the morning and what am I thinking about? Old Fogeyette’s cat. Dingo’s job. Mr. O’Malley’s stitches. The state of the electrical grid in the upper Midwest. Squid. I’d start taking Ambien™, but I’d be the guy in his pajamas pulled over by the highway patrol for sleep driving.
“Huh? Wha–? Where am I?â€
“You’re in Iowa, sir.â€
“IOWA?! How did—“
“You were rambling, sir. Something about a (squints at notebook) Poteet and ‘need to borrow a cup of snark.’ Sir, I’m going to have to take you in for your own protection.â€
OK, I was also thinking about that piece of cheesecake in the refrigerator, but still.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:57 am
#95 Calico – So, if self-absorbed people really DID absorb themselves, like giant black holes of ego, would they eventually collapse upon themselves and reach absorbtion singlarity?
March 6th, 2007 at 8:59 am
MT + SFox: I bet Slylock could solve the mystery of Diver Dan! (SFW)
March 6th, 2007 at 9:02 am
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/buildcp.mpl?v=3.0&page=1&quality=high&cpp=8&c=112&c=71&c=20&c=116&c=118&c=144&c=123&c=130&c=140
MT: If my wife were drowning, I’d sort of take a more active approach than sit, sob, “Please let her be all right!” Oh, and I wouldn’t watch, either.
Some posters have commented that Mark is saying “I’ve got to go after him” as absurd, because he’s already out in the boat going after him. However, I believe that’s what you’d say before plunging fully clothed into the water. So we are about to get some aqua-action. But, if Mark were as clever as that Slylock Fox, he’d probably notice the stream of bubbles coming from Dan’s scuba gear headed toward the other side of the lake.
My outside bet is that Mark will dive in, get stuck, need assistance, and Dan’s plot will quickly unravel when he gets a sudden bout of conscience and saves his old friend.
Spiderman: “Jameson’s too close for comfort!” He’s interviewing a total stranger, who is bound to lead him way off the truth. Merely asking what her husband does for a living doesn’t sound like a hard-hitting question to me. Ted Baxter would be proud.
TDIET: Building a house is pretty routine, but they call in specialists for plumbing, electrical, roofing, HVAC and all the rest. I don’t see why Barfo is sweating more after being informed that he’d be under the care of four doctors instead of just one. Does this even deserve an “Oh yeaahhhh?” No, it doesn’t.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:03 am
#93 – Maybe Alexander’s birth is WHY Blondie no longer gives Dagwood the Ride to Heaven. “Forget that, if it means popping out another fugly little creep like you.” At least Cookie looks like her mother.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Ahhhhh to be a saintly Patterson.
The Becster snubs Apewill and is cold and aloof and in her world and not caring about anyone but herself. What a heartless bitch, eh.
On the other hand, Michael has no idea that Gwampah has had major health issues, his sister was raped and had to endure a nasty trial, when his apartment catches on fire he is more concerned about saving HIS work than being their for his wife and children, when confronted with a nasty task at work he thinks only of himself and not of the consequences for his family (what, you think that Portrait magazine isn’t going to can some more dead weight just because Mike left), and on and on and on.
I think from now one we have a new name for Mike, Saint Narcissus.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Nothing to do with anything, but I always found Johah Jameson the UGLIEST comic character in all of comicdom. Any other stomach turners you can think of?
March 6th, 2007 at 9:09 am
That being said, one of the funniest Blondies I ever saw had all four at the dinner table, and of course Dag’s putting away food like no tomorrow. He says, “Dinner tastes great, honey!” (or somethng like that)
Second panel: Blondie breaks the fourth wall and looks out at the reader and says, “Actually, that’s not much of a compliment.”
Third panel: “He’d say the same thing if I fed him a bowl of carpet nap.”
I laughed like a FOOL off and on, mostly on, for about five minutes after that, and I wasn’t tanked at the time either. It just struck me as funny.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:11 am
3/6
Garfield: What?
H&L: So, Chip Flagston is supposed to be a teenage boy? Not with that songlist, amigo. Yes, I’m sure some young folk still dig on tunes from the sixties, but those menopaual favorites destroy all credibility.
Crock: Not being too familiar with the world of Crock, I at first thought that Grossie (sigh) was jonesing for chocolate-covered insect larvae. Then I looked up the character of “Maggot.” I liked my first idea better.
MW: “I can’t stop thinking about Ella’s last words to me before she left. ‘See you next Tuesday.’ Whatever could she have meant?”
RMMD: They actually managed to swing an appearance by Samuel L. Jackson, which is awesome.
FC: The birds are finally rising up and attacking, Hitchcock stylee. Even better.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:13 am
While Mary was in Viet Nam, Ella learned the fate of Mary’s former rivals and has decided to flee to Florida to escape Aldo’s doom. But before she goes she promises some parting words for Mary…
What do you think Ella’s parting words shall be?
(My guess:
“Aldo’s ghost says, ‘I like your thong.’”)
March 6th, 2007 at 9:17 am
“Comics Curmudgeon readers have now supplied four or five TDIETs over the past year or so, which may say something about what percentage of this feature’s readership we make up.”
I LOL’d. Then I WIS’d (weeped in silence).
March 6th, 2007 at 9:19 am
CC1K is getting closer. Do you have your CC1K patch? Not the software patch… the CC1K Patchâ„¢!
The CC1K Patch is your defense should the CC1K bug take down this website and you should be left without snark for days, even weeks. Just stick the patch to your butt and measured doses of Snarkitra© (Snarkonium tetracynanide HCl) are delivered to your brain, making it feel as though it had read an entire week of Mary Worth through the eyes of Dingo. Ask your doctor about Snarkitra. And while you’re there, ask about that mole on your neck, the one the wife has been nagging you about.
Snarkitra may not be for everybody. Tests have shown mild side effects such as rash, coughing, baldness, dry skin, grogginess, sensitivity to light, achy joints, dropsy, gout, diarrhea, boils, chapping of the lips and anus, stomach ache, psychotic episodes, increased menstrual flow (both women and men), gigantism, polypenisism (women only), X-ray vision, time slippage, inability to say he word ‘Studebaker’ without vomiting, lemony freshness, and wanting to scream ‘Member FDIC” in a crowded theatre. Nursing mothers are advised to avoid Snarkitra. Void where prohibited by law. MEMBER FDIC, DAMMIT! Oh, margoboxcarsaturn.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:20 am
Ella’s parting words?
Alpo Keptfresh was my son. I know what you people did to him. I sent you to Viet Nam so you could be exposed to the dreaded medilus killiu virus. There is no cure. You will be dead in two weeks.
Good-bye.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:23 am
(DT)GT: That first panel drawer [artist is too much of a stretch] is raising the bar. No way the other two could guess he would have a girl and a boy player! I believe the second drawer was suspicious and just stuck to silhouettes, but the third panel guy fell right into the trap. First drawer, you joker, you!
March 6th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Slylock Fox: So Slylock has decided that Cassandra staged it from the flopping goldfish – the fact that she would have somehow managed to tie her own hands behind her back and THEN tied her arms down means nothing of course.
JP: I’d like to thank the french punk rock thugs for slipping their narrative into English for us.
Pluggers: Oh, those poor pluggers! Forget having to deal with old age, crushing poverty, and general obesity, now the true horror is revealed! How can they possibly handle the disaster of having torn up tissues in the laundry? Besides the lint catcher in the dryer, I mean, because surely Pluggers can’t afford such new-fangled gadgets.
DT: What a Dick.
FW: Have you ever wondered what kind of idiot gets divorced due to his alcoholism and then thinks his second marriage to a woman with a child will be a cakewalk? Well, now you know – Funky Winkerbean is exactly that kind of idiot.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:38 am
MT: Anyone else starting to suspect that Mark let Dan go down for a while so he could give him CPR? That’s the only plausible excuse I can come up with, anyway.
SFx: Call me crazy, but I figured the big clue was the fact that THERE”S STILL JEWELRY ON THE BED! Seriously, worst staged robbery ever.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:39 am
I wouldn’t make too much of Mark Trail’s inane chatter to himself as he manfully runs/paddles out to save Dan. I mean, 6 or 7 days of a guy running with no dialogue would be kinda dull. I suppose they could show something more realistic, which would probably be him running while muttering, “ohshitohshitohshit” under his breath, which is what I’ve been known to do in similarly panicked situations. But he’s in a fambly paper so he’s got to keep it clean, right?
March 6th, 2007 at 9:39 am
#90. It’s twue. It’s twue!
March 6th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Frankly, Josh, there’s equally little dignity in your implicit admission that you know which one’s Herb and which one’s Jamaal.
March 6th, 2007 at 9:51 am
A3G – In the final panel of today’s strip we can see the learned survival instincts of the Margo-dating male; having enraged the female with shocking news that serves only to annoy the Margo he takes to feigning death in hopes that the predatory Margo will find him unappetizing. Notice how the Margo, curious, uncertain and a bit agitated, pokes and prods the now motionless male hoping to provoke a sign of life; all the while, the male wobbles in place like a dime-store manequin. Though, from my vantage point, I cannot determine if the male has soiled himself or not; if his survival guide is worth the paper it’s printed on, we can be certain that he has.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:04 am
Why does J. Jonah Jameson even have a TV show? Is it really called “The Jameson Show”? Is he, like, one of those weird conservative political pundits, except his big issue is that he hates superheroes for no discernible reason?
This Spider-Man strip has filled me with suspense and anticipation!
Okay, I’m over it now.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:09 am
#99, either that, or hopefully disappear altogether.
I’m still working on the problem with Slylock’s help, as we share a skxcritortilla and sip Ella’s tea.
Margo will probably turn into a black hole, whereas Mary will sort of vaporize (refer to constant look on face) into some odd ether.
(I tried to Wiki “absorption singlarity” but Wiki has been Sleepi the last few days-at least the English flavor.)
March 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am
105 True Fable–
“carpet nap”…heh heh heh… that would make me laugh, too.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:46 am
MT: No one commented at the time, but I noticed that Dan’s diving equipment was not scuba gear but a rebreather. There will be no trail of bubbles.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I know it’s a common serial strip device to draw the plot out so some lazy cartoonist can skate yet another day on the thin ice of weak plots, but this week both Mary Worthless and A3G are doing very bad jobs of it. Last week, A3G featured reruns on Mon & Tues of the same scene (but slightly different words) as Sunday. This week we get the hack formula of “I’ve got something important to tell you! Very, very important! Listen to me when I tell you this…. !”
March 6th, 2007 at 11:06 am
I’m sorry, Slyfox, but poor Cassandra obviously knocked the goldfish bowl over in her latest efforts to free herself. She’s still crouched near the cabinet on which the goldfish bowl had been placed. She jarred the cabinet in her struggles to get YOUR attention. It says nothing about when she was tied up and robbed. You are accusing the victim. A female victim. Yeh, she brought it on herself… you BASTARD!
March 6th, 2007 at 11:10 am
What if the very important parting words that Ella is about to give Mary is the very Darth-Vader-like “Mary! Listen to me (breathe)… I AM YOUR MOTHER (breathe). COME TO THE DARK SIDE (breathe).”
Ella already has the Vader-helmet hair thing going on.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:11 am
MT – Andy will wake up, run into the lake and save Dan. Mark, upon seeing the SCUBA gear, will realize he’s been had. He will then administer the Right Hook O’ Justice ™ and haul Dan off to the hoosegow.
All of this will take about 6 hours in Mark Trail time, which means we should see the storyline wrapping up around June 2009.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:14 am
# 109 Joshreads CC1K My sides hurt from laughing so hard!
March 6th, 2007 at 11:18 am
You know what really struck me funny about Slylock was the first word balloon that I’ve ever seen there. Another thing, why don’t Sly & Max come in the door? If it were a crook or just Cassandra’s friend, they probably didn’t go so far as to lock the door behind them. But my main concern is that Sly & Max supposedly arrived just moments after the incident. They just happened to be snooping into windows and came upon some hot chick tied up to the bed.
Sly: Look at the goldfish Max, I think it’s insurance fraud.
Max: Cassandra’s tied down and can’t talk to the cops without incriminating herself. Dude, we just struck gold! Let me in there, I hate getting sloppy seconds!
March 6th, 2007 at 11:19 am
#122 Hogen Mogen
“And LOOK at me when I talk to you! I’m only going to say this once. If I EVER catch you even looking at Blondie again, I’ll have your guts for garters. Capisce?â€
March 6th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Waaaaay late, but Dingo, that guy on the unicorn is about to snap his leg off.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Old Fogeyette, How is the cat today? I have been sending energy your way.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:24 am
For a second, I thought that was a poorly drawn Peter Parker who got his remote control stolen. He still looks the way I expect Parker to end up when he’s old and fat from not jumping around any more.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:24 am
By the way, goldfish are one of the most durable types of fish out of water. Some breeds can stay alive for hours, as long as their gills are still moist (i.e., they’re in a puddle). So this is even more shameful.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:28 am
FBOFW-Ah, Eva suddenly appears after her mysterious absence yesterday. Maybe someone at the Foob-factory reads this site? I kind of liked the Mexican dude and Pac-Girl from yesterday. Where they at, Lynn?
BB-Corporal Yo is colored so yellow it’s offensive. I know that Mort Walker probably hasn’t had any contact with Asian people since WWII, but come on! Also, I don’t buy that Yo would fall for the Dilbertesque line of b.s. Beetle is laying down…that’s more Lt. Fuzz’s department.
FW-Why are Funky and Les carrying bazookas? Guys, guys, if you want to off yourselves, there are firearms available that are not only lighter to carry around but aren’t quite as much overkill.
GT-I think SIT OUT AND SHUT UP! needs to go on a t-shirt. You tell ‘em, coach-lady! This lady is needed over in FBOFW, and stat! I like how the light-haired girl in panel one looks totally different in panel three. Apparently, while cloaked in shadow in panel two, that girl underwent a metamorphosis of some sort, just like the dark-haired girl began to grow antennas. We always suspected these Thorp characters were space aliens! Now, at last, we have proof! But who knew that Area 51 had a women’s basketball team?
OBH-What’s with Ruthie distracting her brother with that puppet in panel one? No wonder he couldn’t think of the denifition of that word. In panel two he’s either concentrating mightily to blot out the merry pupplet to his left and bring forth the needed information from the recesses of his tiny underdeveloped mind, or he’s letting out a nice, slow fart. And to the artist: was it really necessary to have the dad and the son look like slack-jawed clods in panel three, and then repeat the exact same artwork in panel four?
TDIET-I don’t blame that nurse in the hallway for looking horrified. That’s not just ‘flop sweat’, that’s projectile sweat!
Marmaduke-Looka here! The big dumb tool dog apparently thinks he’s Snoopy! Sorry, Marmaduke, you’re just not in the ivory-hued beagle’s league. Go back to taking the taxi to the dog food store and smashing your owner beneath your gargantuan great dane body.
Pluggers-This strip could end right here. The bottom line has been reached. The last word on Pluggerhood. “Pluggers are bunch of lazy bastards!”
Crankshaft-This strip would be vastly more entertaining if Crankshaft stopped suddenly, causing the pursuing mother to smash into the back of the bus, Looney-Tunes style. But instead we just get the ’shaft bein’ a grouchy old coot, as usual.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Man, I can’t believe Al hasn’t published my suggestion yet! It was so much better than any of the usual fare, especially since it was actually something that people do all the time, rather than something that will never happen or something that will never, ever, ever, what the hell is wrong with you?, ever happen ever to humans on planet earth.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Oops. I linked to the wrong panel. The second one should have been this one, which also is not something that anyone does every time, or ever has done, or ever will do.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:42 am
With the end of the Pibgorn story arc, I would like to thank Get Fuzzy for my dose of Shakespeare.
thank you Dingo, for demonstrating what happens when you play leapfrog with unicorns.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:48 am
3/5 MT:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070305&name=Mark_Trail
I know it’s hard to show movement in a 2-dimensional drawing, but in panel 3 from yesterday, Mark’s legs are too close together to run. He looks like a character from the Pokemon cartoons. When they run, they pump their arms madly, but the legs stay still.
3/6
The funnies weren’t too funny today. Except Mother Goose & Grimm was kind of clever:
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20070306&name=Mgoose
March 6th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Pluggers are not lazy bastards.
The suffer from irritable bowl syndrome, diarrhea, loose stools, . . man you name the intestinal disease and they suffer from it.
As a result, the spend a lot of time on the crapper and use a LOT of “bathroom tissue”. It would be a huge waste of time to put the roll on because by the time they are done with their sit-down, they have used a whole roll.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Ha ha. Hammy in Baby Blues wants a “hot lunch.†I guess he’s jealous of PJ’s dirty sanchez.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:59 am
The real mystery to me is: Why does EVERYONE in TDIET speak as though English is their fourth language…just after Lithuanian, Android, and the Lost Language of the Inca Kool-Aid Man?
March 6th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I think TDIET has to be first translated from Esperanto.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Slylock Fox – I can’t believe that I’m the first to say this…
“Dear Diary…Jackpot!”
March 6th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
#141- Esperantoh, yeah-h-h-h!
Say, what do they give you with your check at a Chinese restaurant in Funky Winkerville? Misfortune cookies!
March 6th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
# 62 — Thanks, Mr. O’Malley. In the brave new media world, I hope there will be room for good reporters getting paid for good reporting. One reporter from the L.A. Times wrote a better article about tallgrass prairies than I’ve seen in most Midwest papers where the prairies actually are. Also, in case you missed my earlier postings, thanks again for the “they” information.
# 67 — Christopher, I don’t think it’s possible to put too much thought into Cassandra Cat. She’s at least as interesting as Margo.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
# 98 — gh, how very kind. I’d loan you a cup of snark anytime I had some, though your own supply seems quite ample (congrats on making The List this week!) I do share your concern for Fogeyette and Google, Dingo’s job, and Mr. O’Malley’s stitches.
MW — Ella’s parting words: “You should adopt my hairstyle, because my inner voice tells me it would look great on you!”
March 6th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
#98 gh, #130 NEW-ME (That’s Squid Countess, right?), #145 Poteet, and all other well-wishers–Thanks for your good thoughts about Google. This morning he was one million times better–almost as suddenly as he fell ill a week ago. I’d been giving him three separate meds twice a day and force-feeding him every hour. Yesterday I learned how to give sub-Q fluids. I guess a combination of all these things worked. I knew for sure he was feeling better when he saw our cat Sammy, with whom he is in love, and immediately stuck his nose in her ass. (This is unrequited love, as they are both “fixed”. And by “fixed” I mean that Sammy had her uterus removed and Google had his balls cut off.) He’s not out of the woods yet, but I feel hopeful. As I type this he sits curled in my lap.
And by the way, gh, sorry to contribute to your insomnia, but maybe your good wishes were part of the magic that helped Google.
Google and I send our good wishes for Dingo to get a great job and for Mr. O’Malley’s stitches to… (I don’t know, I’ve missed that. Come out? Dissolve?)
I haven’t had much time to read the comics or think about snarking, and I have two columns due in ten days that I haven’t even started, plus a gazillion other things I fell behind on, so you may not hear much from me for a while. But:
#109–You have caused me to cover my laptop with spewed coffee and low-fat cream. Especially the warnings part.
All: the current Pigborn is just delicious. With or without syrup. Highly recommended, especially to anyone who has ever been involved with the theater in any capacity.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Mark will dive into the lake, searching for Dan in the cloudy muck at the bottom. Feeling around, he finally grasps an arm and hauls him to the surface, where he throws him into the boat and begins mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
After a few minutes he goes, “Dang, I never realized Dan had such gawd-awful breath!”
Cherry adds “Yeah. And come to think of it, I don’t remember him wearing an orange snowmobile suit either!”
March 6th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
#146 Old Fogeyette
Yaay, Google! OF, you get some well-deserved rest.
March 6th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
#144 – Poteet, I also agree regarding Cassandra Cat. I think we need a regular ongoing series of Cassandra Cat’s various attempts at subterfuge. “Watch as Cassandra Cat works the system, scamming her way to millions via duplicity, dishonesty, and self-applied bondage!” It’d be a certified hit and might, God willing, replace Curtis in my local paper.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Mark Trail – Is Mark using a canoe to rescue Dan?! Is this plot thicker than we first imagined? The canoe could tip over during the “rescue”, Mark and Dan will both go down and resurface many moons later, somewhere in one of Dingo’s links.
Mary Worth – From the looks of Ella’s hand in panel one, I think her parting words are going to be, “Mary, I really think you should have this lump checked out.”
Pluggers – Yup. That’s me. Every time I try to replace the T.P. I never get the little springy things into the holes just right and the next time I set the roll spinning it flies off.
Blondie – Other than the fact that Olive Oyl works at the bowling alley, it just isn’t funny. Maybe it’s a lame attempt at ersatz irony since a ball stuck at the bowling alley usually means it’s trapped in the return.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Re: today’s Bizarro & Blondie –
Obviously Dagwood needs to avoid finger foods.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Pluggers: At my house, the TP dispenser is supposed to be fancy, but it’s really just a decorative rod, with the added benefit of being able to slide the roll on or off with the greatest of ease. I don’t know if that makes my wife (who picked them out) a plugger or not, but I highly recommend that design.
Here’s a better “Pluggers”: Pluggers wear Depends because they’re too lazy to get off the couch, like, ever.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Close to Home is unusually funny today.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
151 – Monkeyhawk you are of much purer mind than me. Once my mind processed the image of Dagwood’s fingers getting stuck in holes I immediately thought “That sounds like Bumstead bedroom chatter!”
March 6th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
# 146 — YAY, Google is better! Thanks for the update, Old Fogeyette. Google is very lucky to have you.
# 147 — BWAHAHA! Thanks, Cheech.
# 149 — Keath007, what a great idea! And in my local paper, God willing, it would replace B.C. Or Marmaduke. Come on, Cassandra Cat!
March 6th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I should add as a postnote that I was slightly ashamed to post such a salacious comment but then I realized Cheech Wizard described mouth to mouth on a decaying corpse in comment # 147 so I got over it. But I did feel a momentary twinge of guilt :)
March 6th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
#146 – Old Fogeyette – As I was sitting with a purring cat on my lap this morning, I was thinking of you and Google. I am so happy to hear that he is feeling better and I hope he continues to do well. And you get some rest too!
March 6th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
DT Check out Liz’s expression in panel two. Doesn’t it say to you: “You mean you woke me up from an X rated fantasy dream about me being interrogated by you in the way we always liked best, so you can whine about being awakened by a margoboxcarsaturn Doorknob that hit your precious Tess Trueheart GotThereFirst Tracy on her widdle shoulder? Do you think I even CARE? This can wait until morning, Dickhead. Sheesh.”
It does to me.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
155 – Some might consider the excessive bondage to be “adult themed” and relegate it to the editorial page with Doonesbury, but I argue Golden Age Wonder Woman was one long advertisement for bondage while also considered suitable reading for youngsters. Let’s stand up for our rights and insist on Cassandra Cat appearing right where it should – in between Beetle Bailey and Cathy. It’s important for our nation’s youth to understand and appreciate the larger role bondage can play in their upcoming criminal enterprises. If this happens I predict that in fifteen years “Cops” will be much more entertaining. AND it will be shown on HBO.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Okay, took me a minute to figure out Google was an animal. My sense of existentialism was like whoah.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
How did Slylock Fox learn Cassandra Cats earrings were cool? Nuzzling Evidence!
March 6th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
To rif on a suggestion by Trotzenbonnie:
The Boathouse of the Bears (SFWIAOFWWWDMVPOHMOOOWBDIAAPF*)
Three miles. Only three miles down the road from the cabin lay the boathouse of which Mark and Dan had dreamed. Their wives were none the wiser to their machinations. The story had begun in the Army, when Mark and Dan were sent off on maneuvers in the forests of Germany and discovered that their love of nature didn’t stop at watching ubiquiducks in flight. Three beers each and one ABBA 8-track later, they were lying in each other’s arms covered in the sweet, cold sweat of postcoital bliss that neither had ever known before. Every six months after returning to the States, they would meet for a “fishing” trip at a local Sybaris — a hotel chain that catered to those who yearned for a night of passion free from the trailer park, the fear of their mobile home being taken in the night by the twister from Hell, or the children replacing their lubricant with a can of aerosol cheese. Between gutteral moose-like howls of passion, their steely-eyed looks at each other begged for resolution to their predicament.
“I wish I quit you,” Dan would say.
“Quit. I’m barely even started,” Mark would respond as he threw his naked paramour back onto the bed, limbs dangling over the edge like a swastika in the breeze, violating him in ways usually saved for right-wing Christian evangelicals with paid male prostitutes.
As time wore on like Paris Hilton’s welcome, the men came to use a term to describe their situation. The term was homage to their years in the Army, their love among the trees away from the base, and the years that had slipped away from them: Lost Forest. Now, Mark’s wife Cherry was on to them. The last fishing trip she had placed a note in Mark’s tackle box telling him to catch some brownies for her but the only sign of that she had were streaks in his underpants and that happened at home!
Okay… I could go on but I’ve gotta leave for awhile. Y’all know where this is going anyway. Mu ha ha ha
1) Dan and Mark run away
2) Cherry and Sally in sapphic bliss
3) Rusty kidnapped by Moon Maidens
4) Jeb Bush found naked in bed with a 12-year-old dead boy
* – safe for work in an office filled with women who don’t mind viewing pictures of hunky men or of other women’s backsides displayed in an artfully posed fashion
March 6th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Those teenagers and their baggy jeans. They still fit years later, you just wear them up to the nipples on your man boobs, and with Depends and Cosmo Kramer bras instead of boxers. Now would all of these morons just change their diapers, brush up their zoot suits or their skin-tight stretch Levis, and shut the hell up.
I used to wonder how kids kept their pants up at all. For about a minute. Fads, by definition, are ephemeral, like Marshall Mathers and Kriss Kross and Beatle boots and red windbreakers, but they all have second lives. James Dean was white boy delinquent angst, wearing construction boots, and they sure as shit weren’t Timbaland. They just didn’t know about hoodies back in the day. And those boots used to be My Adidas with no shoelaces.
Which begs the question of whether or not what really bugs the fogies is the influence of Black American culture. What’s next? Jazz? Maybe we could all change our names to symbols–Oh, wait, those are just screen names.
One way or another, aren’t making fun of long-passe fads and getting paid for it, while apparently amusing some portion of humanity, simultaneous slaps in the face to both Charles Darwin and intelligent design?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
163 – Usually baggy pants are matched with shirts sporting longer tails. In the world of Close To Home, however, they are paired with midriff baring shirts. And, like most things in life, worn by the wrong people.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Old Fogeyette, Not Squid Countess but thanks for the compliment.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
FC–Woodpecker information courtesy the Jack Elrod School of Zoology. C’mom, when has a woodpecker EVER perched on a doorknob?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
#162 – Dingo
Thank you for putting the flesh and muscle onto my skeletal thought. BTW – The Mystery Date bum was my favorite. Hose him down just a little and I always thought he would be the most fun.
#159 – Keith
Excessive bondage? If you can still yell, it ain’t excessive. If Kitty used a latex sheet and a vacuum hose, well, that would be excessive.
Archie McPhee was mentioned on NPR’s Morning Edition! Dismissed as chance but I say don’t underestimate the Curmudgeon Affect (or is it effect? Somebody call the Grammar Police! I need Captain Strunk right away).
March 6th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Dingo:
What, no crank? and,
who’s the moron that even asked for, much less welcomed, Paris Hilton? I mean is there a single person to blame? Is this the fault of 24/7 one hour fake news?, and
Am I the only male in the world that finds Paris extremely homely, or do people in general find total vapidity attractive? It’s like her face is there but it’s not there. Like her frontal lobes. By which I mean the grey wrinkled ones, not the surgically enhanced pair. Have to admit she has the advantage when the pods come–no brain to suck out.
Anyway, maybe bad Mark Trail porn will get a genre column in the NYT book review. You’ve set a high standard. But what about the cross-dressing?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
155- thanks, Poteet – though I must admit that I can’t claim original credit for it. It’s a joke that’s probably based on someone’s personal experience here in Michigan, where snowmobilers are known for trying to skim across melting lakes faster than the ice can crack beneath them. Think of it as natural selection at work.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
#163 – April
The baggy pants style was called ‘jailin’ when my son was in high school more than twenty years ago. No belts were allowed in jail so the inmates’ pants hung low. That’s why it pissed me off the first time Dan tried it. It wasn’t a color thing, it was an I-don’t-want-my-kid-looking-like-an-ex-con thing. And how was I ever going to be a grandmother if the girls couldn’t see my son’s cute butt?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Today’s FC–
Peckers and knobs together in the same panel! For shame! I thought this was supposed to be the FAMILY Circus!
March 6th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Slylock: And why are the two detectives trying to rescue a cat? Isn’t that a job for firemen?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Today’s FC (again)–
Jeffy: “Mommy, there’s a giant ‘pecker at the door. Shall I let it in?”
Thel: “Oooh, a giant pecker? Must be my “special delivery” !”
Okay, okay, I’ll dig my mind out of the gutter…for now…
March 6th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Freak Family Circus: The layers of today’s strip are deeper than ever before. In one panel alone Keane has given us a Pecker, a bird shot and one beautiful knob. Who says Bil can’t lay it on thick.
Has anyone been following Popeye’s attempt to bring the story to modern times. The one eyed sailor also speaks in Esperanto “The goon congress sez we is undesirable aliens” and fat hamburger eater isn’t welcome either.
La Cucaracha is consistently on. How do you all feel about the strip? Today there is an interesting first panel take on the JJJ’s Daily Bugle but I can’t figure out who’s picture is on the billboard to the left.
Luann: It would be great if that wall had been a wieght bering structure, the whole house could collapse and we could finally be rid of these two idiots and focus again on the C.I.L.F (character i’d like to ((you know)), Luann
I didn’t think Pluggers used any toilet paper at all, just washed their hands in the cold water stream out back when they was done wipin’.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Damn, took so long to type got beat out by Perky Bird twice. Are you reading over my shoulder as I type?
March 6th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
april glaspie–
They still fit years later, you just wear them up to the nipples on your man boobs, and with Depends and Cosmo Kramer bras instead of boxers.
We prefer the term “Manssiere”, although “Bro” is also acceptable.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
The Curmudgeon affect is glazed eye and slack jaw, drooling (with or without meds) optional.
The Curmudgeon Effect is mostly a tendency to sarcasm, aspiration to wit, and the hobgoblin of consistently returning to extremely ridiculous comic strips.
As far as bondage is concerned, I think it’s kind of like pregnancy. There aren’t degrees. And, one hopes, always intended by parties involved.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Damn nepotism! (just had to get that off my mind)
March 6th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
#167 Trotzenbonnie: Sister! When I was a kid and my three older sisters needed a fourth for playing Mystery Date, I always wanted the bum, too! Those other four look like a yawn of an evening but – yeah – a quick spray of the garden hose on that bum and you know you’re going to have a story by the end of that night you’ll be telling years later in the retirement home. Something involving a motorcycle, Nancy Sinatra, a bottle of Wet©, three pickles, and the cast of Family Ties.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
april glaspie – No, Paris is not so pretty, but a girl that rich and that easy has a certain charm.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
175–kippetje2000
No, I’m not perched upon your shoulder. Our minds must just be running in the same gutter today, but I beat you to it simply because you must have a job that actually requires you to work and do other productive things, while my job allows me ample time to peruse the comics and respond accordingly…ah, your Government tax dollars at work, right here! *hee hee*
March 6th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Perky Bird, do you need an assistant snarker? Please? Please? I keep answering ads on http://www.usajobs.gov to no avail.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Dear Dingo,
You’re more than qualified to be the Under Secretary for Snarkiness–maybe even too qualified!
As it happens, I start a new job at a new agency in 2 weeks and probably will have less time there to peruse this page, because it may actually force me to work. *sniff* So you could apply for my old job here! Believe me, there’d be more than enough time here for you to come up with your witty bon mots and “Brokeback Lost Forest” episodes! And the world would be a better place for it!
March 6th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Kramerica: I was making every attempt to avoid trademark infringement by going generic. After the first couple of seasons, Jerry Stiller was the funniest thing about that show. It wasn’t ever really a show about nothing, it was about onanism and people having conversations with themselves, at cross purposes, in the same room.
And, good grief. In a single day Pearls Before Swine introduces a new character and is actually halfway funny. I know some of you must read this strip, and, really, does anybody else think that the creator is making fun of George Lucas with the crocodiles? And why do only the adult male crocodiles speak Jar-Jar? If I were to impute unintentional racism to either depiction, it’d have to be jail or crack. Pretty GD hilarious.
And what sort of delusion causes comic strip guys to call themselves The Creator? I’ve seen the actual creator, and he looks exactly like Sir Ralph Richardson, and I’m pretty sure he never wrote or drew a comic.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Actually Pearls Before Swine IS pretty funny today. Recommended!
March 6th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
#179 – Dingo
Invite Honey West, get Roger Corman to direct and you’ve got a deal. And we’ll all sing “Another Ray of Sunshine”.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Hmm… at some point in time, Trotzie must’ve lived in Chicago. When? Oh, and instead of Pope Roger directing, I’d rather he produce and allow me to direct. Hell, Ron Howard should perform a footnote 220 on that man every day of his life.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
In months of reading this blog I have managed to refrain from commenting, but I just cannot sit this one out. Is it just me, or does today’s Slylock Fox look like the beginnings of a kitty snuff film? I am highly, highly disturbed.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
And Ted Forth grows a pair.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
DT: So yesterday he shows the same amount of concern for Tess as he would a rapist. Then today, he runs outside to make his phone call. He may’ve become a bit soft lately, but he’s definitely no prince.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
189 – the real genius behind Ted’s comment is his mind is instantaneously calculating Sally’s future inheritance and how an unexpected hotel stay could impact that. Sure, it’s only a moderate expense today – but think of the compounding interest! It’s such brilliant strategy that even Sally, well known for her devious machinations, has to take a moment to formulate a defensive plan.
Plus it’s one of the funnier Sally Forths I’ve read in a really long time, which is saying something.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
#167 Trotz – A vacuum hose is a bit over the top, but I think Cassandra’s ‘bondage’ could use some work. Frankly, she should have gone a little more fetish, (MostlySFW) you know, cinched ropes, show some skin, a little apparatus. Just enough to make Slylock’s letter to Pethouse (sic) Forum interesting enough to publish.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
192 – willethompson: pethouse = genius
March 6th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I for one welcome our Sally’s Mom overlord. If only she could visit the rest of the comic’s page and take them all down a peg.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
#192 willethompson
Awww! That looks just like the harness we put on Binkie before we take her for her evening walkies. I think we’ve been putting it on backwards though . . .
March 6th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
#192 Wille: Excellent work. Why don’t you take the jar of Anal Lube off of the photo on my posting (pity that poor couch) and put it on Cassandra Cat’s dresser?
March 6th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
“I have some parting words for you, Mary, words you must listen to…
…YOU’VE JUST BEEN PUNKED!!”
March 6th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
#196 Dingo – I think that’s the stuff in the green can (at Sam’s, you can get it in 12-packs). However, I don’t think she swings that way – if you’ll look closely, the flopping fish has been replaced…
March 6th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Nothing like Herb and Jamaal to make me appreciate the artwork of Gil Thorpe.
And regarding Spiderman, I love that glimpse into that particular couple’s sham of a marriage. The man has a really tough day at the office, grabs a beer and watches the game, only to have his wife, who is apparently his identical twin brother in drag, snatch the remote for some gossip show. The dejected horror on his face indicates he’s about to go to the bar, hire a prostitute then asphyxiate himself in the car.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
# 159 — Keath007, this is very embarrassing, but I, Poteet Canyon of STEVE CANYON, experienced some bondage over the years as part of several kidnapping storylines. And spanking. During the Fifties. If that was good enough for American youth then, Cassandra Cat is good enough for American youth now.
# 169 — Thanks again, Cheech — ahh, memories (sniff). I spent some formative years in Michigan, and memories of certain winter news items are coming back to me. Here in Iowa, snowmobilers are more often forced to run into barbed-wire fences, trees or cars in order to select themselves out of the gene pool.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
#200 – Weren’t Steve and Copper Calhoon tied up face to face back in the early ’70s?
Good times, good times.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
#200 Poteet -
How brave of you to come forward and speak for all the restrained women who have graced the comics over the years (scroll past all that Lois Lane stuff to the bottom right for Our Gal Poteet).
But as I recall, that spanking came at the end of your long run in Steve Canyon – reader reaction suggested to Caniff that he might be getting uncomfortably close to a line. As I recall, you got respectable real fast, then disappeared.
Long, long, I mourned! Then I found you here!
Bliss!
March 6th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
re:181 Actually, Perky, I’m sitting here, hand stitching alterations to a costume I’ve made based on the Lucky Cow cow that appears only on Saturdays in that strip. I’m quite udderly pleased with the outcome and make my second public appearance thursday night.http://www.gocomics.com/luckycow/2007/03/03/
March 6th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Poteet, funny you should mention that. I tried Googling for strips featuring your character, and the *only* pictures that I could find were in bondage. go figure.
PBS: was anyone else reminded of the Geico “Caveman” ads?
March 6th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
204 – Queek: I wasn’t reminded of the Geico ads, mainly because I found PBS funny.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
#200 Poteet -
I knew there was something special about you. I’m a former Michigander as well. I wouldn’t want to live there now (especially the Detroit area where I grew up), but it’s a great place to be from. I’m now living in a different “M” state, just to your north.
Was it the Free Press that carried Steve Canyon? I didn’t read it very often, but I remember seeing it in the paper.
And, yes, you can interpret “special” any way you’d like.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Does everyone in TDIET wear a vest?
March 6th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
The fact that Dimwiddy is apparently laughing at the antics of fellow TDIET characters in his local newspaper made me giggle and titter this morning. Oh, Scaduto.
Hmm…that makes me wonder if maybe Scaduto should be one of our made-up oaths like [MARGO] and [BOXCAR]…but I think Scaduto should be completely non-representational. We don’t want to besmirch the name of that charming old coot, now do we?
March 6th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Damn Slylock Fox. I think he’s watching me. I just cleaned out my turtle tank, and when I put the turts back in,m they had a feeding frenzy. I had to watch them slowly tear my goldfish apart. They’d bite a fin, then go away, and the goldfish would seem okay. Then they’d come back. I was torn between letting it die of suffocation (removing it form water) or being eaten alive. In the end, I removed it and now it is in a separate tank. Floating. And dead. But I am too sad to dispose of it as I should, so I will hold out with the hopes that maybe he’s just recovering.
Hey! You stupid F’IN FOX! Why not add THAT horror to your next installment. HUH? Bastard.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Ok, that does it for me. The creator of Slylock Fox is now officially eff’ed up.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Oh man. Up until now, I thought the dude with the catastrophically elongated head in Herb and Jamaal was wearing some kind of gigantic woolen cap that you could see his eyes out of, like an adult version of that kid from Fat Albert. I just realized that that’s some kind of goatee deal and not the elastic band of a hat.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Steve Canyon was pretty much Terry and the Pirates, and supposedly Milton Caniff did it to get out from under a syndication deal. I am pretty sure the strip ran in the Detroit News, not the Free Press. Two actual newspapers in the same city with opposing political points of view, neither owned by Rupert Murdoch or a TV conglomerate. Amazing.
There was a TV Steve around 1960. Here‘s a pretty good article about the Steve Canyon. And by the way, what ever happened to suave photog Steve Roper and his semi-literate pal Mike Novak (for whom the strip should have been named). I imagine Poteet is frolicking in fictive heaven with Penny King, Buffy, Jody, Dondi and other relatives once removed. Annie lives and her daddy is currently straightening out Afghani– um–Ratznestistan.
As far as Detroit newspapers, I support Judge Crockett, and I’m listening to Kick Out the Jams as I type. Which paper am I?
March 6th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
200- Poteet: I’m just the opposite: I spent my earliest years in Iowa, and the past 30 in Michigan, with an Indiana interlude in between.
And AhClem, while I admit that Detroit is a hole, Michigan’s still a pretty great place to be, esp. in the summer. Provided, of course, that you have a job. Which I won’t, if I don’t quit screwing around on this site and get back to work.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
…and what’s good for the Michigoose is good for the Michigander.
More on Wonder Woman bondage here.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
# 202 — Uncle Lumpy, the bliss is mutual. I thought I’d lost Mister Green Jeans forever until I came here. And I had no idea that my favorite childhood rural icon could write so well.
# 204 — Queek, re the frequent bondage, what can I say. Milt Caniff liked excitement, and cancer and amputations didn’t have much appeal for him:-). Though he did have one beautiful married blind woman fall in love with Cousin Stevie B. just to prove that his voice was as irresistible as his face.
# 206 — AhClem, my compliments to your specialness also:-). I too lived for awhile in the Detroit area. I miss some things, like the Art Museum, but not the traffic. As for your current residence, I enjoy the Iowa jokes that drift down from there. I just don’t admit it in public.
# 213 — Cheech, I’m glad you’re a happy Wolverine. I know some others.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Jeez, that Spider Man comic is out of date. Get with the times, man.
March 6th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I know this thread’s winding down, but I had to go on record as a happy Michigander. I’m in Hamtramck, which is about as close to Detroit as you can get without having to pay Detroit taxes. There’s a great little artist/cartoonist community going on here, and all sorts of interesting grassroots projects, and great people behind them. Been waiting for my optimism for the place to wane for 30-odd years and it hasn’t happened yet…
March 6th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Spider-Man
So how exactly did the drag queen in panel 2 know what was one the Jameson Show, while watching the basketball game?
Plus J. Jonah looks like a Bizzaro world version of R. Lee Ermey must be some thing in the water in the Land of People with First Inital, Middle Name, Last Name…
R. Lee Ermey, J. Jonah Jameson, G. Gordon Liddy, & C. Everret Koop must make for a fearsome gold foursome!
March 6th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Spider-Man
So how exactly did the drag queen in panel 2 know what was one the Jameson Show, while watching the basketball game?
Plus J. Jonah looks like a Bizzaro world version of R. Lee Ermey must be some thing in the water in the Land of People with First Inital, Middle Name, Last Name…
R. Lee Ermey, J. Jonah Jameson, G. Gordon Liddy, & C. Everret Koop must make for a fearsome golf foursome!
March 6th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Past late, but I can’t pass up the above posted TDIET.
If Junior is reading some nerd-bait supergoon that the culture thinks is all comic books, then I can understand Dimwiddy here (except his Wertham-ness, of course). But I agree with Scadutorama on D’widdy’s hypocrisy if the kid’s reading the kinda comic books I do (indy!!!).
Likewise, if D’widd’s strip fave is in line with GF, Mutts, Calvin, or PBS, then he’s aces. But (wait fer it!…!!), if he loves unironic’ly reading stuff we mock – like modern FOOB, A3G, or particularly S-M (a newspaper nerdy superhacchptooey), then it’s Dimhippercritty — oyah.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
212: Metro Times? :-D
grew up on the Freep, never saw Steve Canyon in it. Only Modesty Blaise. :-)~~~
Go GREEN!
March 6th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
FOOB:
I don’t speak Spanish, and I’m pretty sure his shirt says, “What the father!” What is this, a cheap Napoleon Dynamite knockoff?
March 7th, 2007 at 9:32 am
215- Poteet : Actually I’m a Spartan, living in exile in A2.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
This is my confession: until today, I didn’t know which one was Herb and which was Jamaal. And I didn’t care. And I still don’t.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
sylock fox ROX