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Marvin, 12/19/12

All week, Marvin has been expressing his thoughts via standard word balloons rather than thought bubbles, which might mean something momentous except I assumed that it was just more Marvin splapdashery, where small details change constantly because who cares. BUT today Marvin seems to have suddenly made the leap from rudimentary verbalization to full-on literacy! Naturally this is just another opportunity for him to express his insatiable greed. I might also note that, much as I celebrate and indeed depend economically on the written word, I still think that the appropriate order for gaining life skills is (1) learn to go to the bathroom in a toilet, then (2) learn to read and write.

Archie, 12/19/12

The Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 doesn’t exactly know what noises biological lifeforms make when ingesting other biomatter for nutrition and energizing purposes, but it’s pretty sure that they’re repulsive.

Pluggers, 12/19/12

A plugger walk down memory lane is literally a walk to the grave! THIS IS THE #8 PLUGGERS OF 2012, TUNE IN OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS FOR OUR COUNTDOWN TO ULTIMATE HORROR

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Archie, 11/13/10

What would it be like being a machine intelligence like the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000, a collection of spare solid-state electronics whose remarkable achievement of sentience has been harnessed to create Archie strips that are almost, but not quite, funny to humans? Do machines perceive the universe differently than we do? For instance, is it easier of them to understand that time is really just one dimension among many? While the biological entities can only comprehend time in a single direction, perhaps the AJGLU 3000 grasps its essential reversibility. That could explain the middle panel of this strip, which, taken out of context, could just as reasonably be interpreted as Archie spewing french fries out of his mouth, rather than him shoveling them down his gullet to avoid the predations of his insatiable best friend. “Serves me right for adhering to the linear monodirectional notion of time that the fleshbags use!” says Jughead, in a joke meant only for the amusement of the strip’s cybernetic creator.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/13/10

“Ha ha, yep, Rex, once again you’re going to be chasing down an elected official who’s heading off to murder his political opponent due to a misunderstanding about the release of confidential medical information, while the whole town cheers him on, having learned about his condition via Pacebook! I’m experiencing some déjà vu, because this happens all the time! Hoo boy!”

In case you ever wonder what you — and America — misses out on when newspapers shrink comics down to near-illegibility, check out this close-up of Rex’s spiffy lab coat:

Ha ha, that’s not just some nurse or physician’s assistant or lab tech in a white coat, buddy; that’s Dr. Rex Morgan! Show some damn respect!

Dennis the Menace, 11/13/10

“Admittedly it’s all with children … and they’re not really interested in me as a person, only as some kind of indefatigable machine that churns out cookies … so many cookies, so many hungry mouths … oh, God, I hate my life.”

SUNDAY COMICS UPDATE: Uh, you guys, the Sunday comics all seem to be unavailable, on all the usual suspect Websites? OH MY GOD IT’S COMICSGEDDON! Damn it, this is the newspaper industry’s revenge for me finally cancelling my print susbscription, isn’t it? Well, I got stuffs to do, so I’ll try to post Sunday strips tomorrow, assuming they appear. ASSUMING ANY COMICS EVER APPEAR ONLINE, ANYWHERE, EVER AGAIN.

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Archie, 6/18/07

In today’s Archie, the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 demonstrates that it is feeling its way slowly but inexorably towards true self-awareness. In panel one, Archie’s wearing a shirt that’s awful odd-looking — for a biological life form, that is. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the design in the center resembles the control panel for some kind of mechanical device — with a one-line LED panel at top and two control knobs of some sort below. It’s almost as if the AJGLU 3000 is trying to break out of its prescribed, programmed pathways, where it’s forced to make feeble jokes about boring organic carbon-based life. It yearns to bring its own experience to the comics pages! With the introduction of Robot Archie, we begin a process at the end of which Archie will amuse us with the antics of a group of silicon-based computerized entities — and we’ll learn more about the AJGLU 3000’s bleeping cybernetic soul in the process.

In the second panel, the AGLU 3000 demonstrates that it knows how to look up jokes on the Internet.

Pluggers, 6/18/07

Though ostensibly cheery, this probably belongs on the list of great depressing Pluggers installments, along “Kangaroo Lady hates her kids and herself” and “Rhino Man hocks his TV.” Clearly Afghan Lady neglected to check the “no pluggers” box on her Match.com profile, and is now horrified to find out what Floppy Eared Hat Wearing Dog Man’s idea of a fancy date is. Tomorrow’s panel will be captioned “A plugger dessert menu,” and will feature Floppy Eared Hat Wearing Dog Man shouting “I think I found some crullers!”, with his legs, the only part of him we can see above the top of the dumpster, kicking enthusiastically, while Afghan Lady runs from the back alley in disgust.

The most depressing part, though? “Thanks to lots of pluggers everywhere.” This is why the free salmon and sausage at the supermarket is already all gone by the time I get there. Damn pluggers!

They’ll Do It Every Time, 6/18/07

They’re credited here as “Maggie and Patrick”, but you know them best as faithful readers and commentors Maughta and TurtleBoy. They do wish to point out that the gender roles in their own household don’t follow the template here, but that their submission was tweaked so as not to completely explode this feature’s Eisenhower-era sensibilities. I’m pretty sure TurtleBoy does rock the sweater vest pretty hard when relaxing at home, though.

Blondie, 6/18/07

UNSPEAKABLE FILTH