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Apartment 3-G, 7/22/04

When I tell people that I obsessively read the comics pages, they often ask me, “What’s the deal with Apartment 3-G?” I reply, “It’s about three young women — a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette — who live together in New York.” I’m beginning to think that I might need to add “in the 1950s” to the end of that sentence, because despite occasional references to such modern concepts as “Thai food” and “dyslexia,” the strip is pretty much stuck in an Eisenhower-era sensibility. To be blunt: where’s the sex, dammit? Surely any group of hip, attractive, twentysomething single ladies in the big city would be doing a bit more bed-hopping than this crew, especially since they don’t seem to be tied down by harrowing jobs or anything. (You can get your name featured in a future installment of “I Read the Comics So You Don’t Have To,” hereafter to be shortened to the convenient and easy-to-remember abbreviation IRTCSYDHT, if you can tell me what any of the ladies actually do for a living.)

Anyway, the current storyline revolves around Margo (the pretty but scheming brunette) and Lu Ann (the pretty but somewhat dim blonde) going head to head over the only romantic interest who’s appeared in the last two years, the earth-shatteringly dull Pete. I like that for the most part they are all smiles despite the seething rivalry that has grown up between them. Margo’s happy face in the last panel is particularly funny if you imagine her saying her line in the style of Beavis’ Cornholio persona.

What I want to see more of in this strip (other than sex, obviously) are more storylines that feature Tommie (the pretty but sensible redhead), who only seems to appear as background color to other plots and never attracts a boring, clean-cut boy of her own. Sure, the struggle of blonde and brunette is an archetypical one rooted deep in our collective subconscious, but as a redhead, I demand to see the stories and struggles of my people portrayed on the comics page.

Bonus observations:

• Lu Ann, no doubt struggling to pay her ludicrously overpriced Manhattan rent, has apparently resorted to eating a box of generic “OATS” for breakfast.
• Margo is emerging from a door that appears to be a good foot shorter than she is.

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Curtis, 7/21/04

I swear I’m not obsessed with this issue, really. But, well, how many eight-year-old black children — hell, how many eight-year-old children of any race — use the word chutzpah in the course of casual conversation (or, as in this case, in the course of casual media criticism)? I’m just saying. At least there aren’t any quotation marks around it.

I really enjoy (and by “enjoy,” I mean “enjoy ironically”) the titles of movies and names of rappers used in Curtis. It’s as if they’ve been chosen by someone who doesn’t himself have any contact with pop culture, but sometimes talks to a guy who does.

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Momma, 7/20/04

The Russian playwright Chekhov made a famous observation about drama that would be acknowledged by the worst Hollywood hack: “If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.” Sadly, there’s no gun in today’s Momma. However, the attentive reader will note that the strip takes place on a beach. Marylou and Francis are dressed in bathing suits (and Momma presumably is as well, though her newspaper saves the artist from having to depict a swimsuit on her freakishly stunted frame) and some scattered dots on the ground are apparently meant to evoke sand. Yet there’s nothing beach-specific about the strip! Marylou’s vague accusations could have easily been sharpened into something about Francis’ seaside tomfoolery. Alas, all the bathing paraphernalia sits there unused, like a forlorn and neglected pistol decorating the set of an Edwardian comedy of manners.

My main problem with Momma is that it lacks a consistent point of view. Are Momma’s kids a gaggle of ungrateful spendthrifts who constantly ignore her advice despite their inability to manage their own lives? Or is Momma a hateful old busy-body who never says anything nice and who can’t stand to let go of a single bit of control over her adult children? From what I’ve seen, both statements are true, which is surely a recipe for whimsical entertainment.

Today’s linkbacks go to Dalton and Dave, both fine, upstanding young men who know how to handle themselves at the beach.