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Judge Parker, 10/20/06

FOR GOD’S SAKE, SAM, HAVE SEX WITH YOUR WIFE! Jeez, how clear to she and her left breast have to make it to you? Because if you don’t service this hot, mature, mulleted woman, that job is going to get “outsourced to India” when the kids get home from the party, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Blondie, 10/20/06

I think what everyone is thinking in panel two is not, “Ew, this kid hasn’t washed his hands?” but “What is this kid doing here?” Elmo sometimes drops hints about his home life, but I think it’s all a front: my guess is that he’s secretly living a Dickensian existence as a street urchin, and that the food that falls onto the floor out of Dagwood’s structurally improbable sandwiches is all that stands between him and starvation. If he is a hobo-boy, it would explain his unfamiliarity with basic hygiene skills. This is the first time I can remember him actually conning his way to the family table though, though the presence of the bathroom step-stool in the Bumstead household, where everyone is over the age of 16, indicates that he probably at least washes his one set of clothes in the sink there from time to time.

Against all logic, Dagwood seems to treat Elmo like the son he never had, something that must make Alexander die a little inside every time he sees it.

Mary Worth, 10/20/06

Speaking of children someone never had … the fact that Dr. Jeff reproduced, and managed to go two for two on doctors, is news to me, and I’ve read Mary Worth pretty much every day for the last four years. Since that represents about an month and a half in Worth-time, I suppose it makes sense that I’ve never met these two before. It does seem a bit creepy to me that the two siblings AND the dad all work at the same hospital, which I assume is called Our Lady of Perpetual Cory (Messrs Haim and Feldman could both check in for rehab stints).

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the relationship between Mary and her non-sexual beau’s children ought by right to be painfully awkward. The facial expressions in the second panel give me hope. While Adrian just looks garden-variety confused, Drew’s face appears to me to be caught at the moment when the polite smile he’s put on for his father’s girlfriend is starting to crack. “God damn it, I told dad that I don’t care if he wants to spend the next six months in a whorehouse in Phnom Penh, but I don’t want to have to lie to his old biddy about it!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/06

Lucy is a master of psychological warfare, and Ted is her unwitting bagman. I can’t wait to see Tommie try to tart herself up.

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Blondie, 10/19/06

I think this may be a first for this blog, but I have to say that I really like the job the coloring drones did in today’s Blondie. The color of the leaves, with the red gliding into yellow, is quite lovely, and a nice change from other instances where the coloring seems to be done by people who don’t know that fall exists. Unfortunately, the colorer was so keen on the yellow that it got slathered all over the car, too, leaving it a hideous mustard. With colors, it’s all about context.

Question: Does Dagwood (or Herb, or what’s-her-name) ever drive in the carpool, or is it always glasses guy? Isn’t the point of a carpool that you rotate the driving duties? Jeez, he’s late all the time and he never offers to drive. Plus he often dozes off in the back seat, snoring and drooling, and probably smells like sandwiches. What a hump.

Popeye, 10/19/06

For longer than I care to remember, Popeye has been following a bizarre “generation gap” storyline whereby Sweet Pea (the Sailor Man’s adopted charge, who is capable of normal adult speech despite being incapable of walking upright) left home after a spat, finding his way back after many tedious adventures. Today, however, things perked up when Olive Oyl violently turned her years of suppressed sexual frustration on the hapless child. A brutally honest look at how having a baby can affect your relationships with other adults, or just deranged insanity? You be the judge.

Mark Trail, 10/19/06

The Perils of Molly just got more gut-wrenchingly perilous! As Mark and Officer Exposition continue their grindingly slow witty banter, the awesomely named Jake and Snake prepare a grim fate for our favorite bear. What puzzles me is that the rhyming duo seems to only now be waking up to the possibilities inherent in the lucrative overseas bear-organ market, yet they still took the trouble of putting a collar on her and keeping her in a pen rather than just killing her for their sick kicks the moment they found her. Maybe even for low-lifes like Jake and Snake, you have to be in the mood to murder a lovable bear in cold blood — like, you have to watch a bunch of bear-baiting videos first or something.

For the faint of heart, I’d just like emphasize that MOLLY IS GOING TO BE FINE. Mary Worth may have killed off Aldo, but the world of Mark Trail is too relentlessly Manichaean to allow evil (in the form of a mustachioed mullethead and his orangey friend) to triumph over good (in the form of a fuzzy, adorable bear who is so incapable of hostility that she can’t even understand it when it’s directed at her). The only question is, who is going to save her? Mark, dishing out patented Right Hooks of Justice? Hoyt and his dogs, redeeming himself for his chicken-kicking crimes? The giant talking duck, pecking out Jake and Snake’s eyes with his razor-sharp bill? I vote for the duck, personally.

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Family Circus, 10/18/06

I’m going to ignore the main joke here, which involves the sort of smothering middle-class suburban overparenting that’s going to leave Jeffy a bed-wetting basket case well into his thirties, and just say: what the hell is wrong with Mamma Keane’s waist? I mean, look at it. I could put one of my hands around that. As if it isn’t enough that Big Daddy Keane made her pop out four kids with enormous heads, it looks like he also bullied her into getting some ribs removed to maintain that girlish figure. Yipes.

Pluggers, 10/18/06

A plugger knows he has to keep his Oedipus complex pushed deep down inside if he doesn’t want to get a divorce.

People ask me why I read Pluggers every day. If you pay attention over the long term, patterns and character traits and plotlines emerge over time. I would urge you to revisit this cartoon, involving the same family, to really get a sense of the psychodrama going on here.