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Blondie, 11/11/06

You know, Dagwood gets walked in on when he’s in the bathtub an awful lot. It’s one of this strip’s stock jokes, but you have to admit that it’s pretty weird. But our nosey paint-jockey’s comment made me think, “Say, it’s kind of unusual that Dagwood is shampooing in the bath, rather than in the shower,” which then made me think “OH MY GOD DAGWOOD AND BLONDIE DON’T HAVE A SHOWER WHAT WEIRDOS.” Seriously, there’s no shower head, or curtain, or even a rod where such a curtain would be, and the soap dish is blatantly at tub-level. This strip shows the showerless tub at a different angle. This goes a long way towards explaining why Dagwood is so damn late for his carpool every morning.

Hey, is that a glass door on the bathroom? This gets more disturbing by the moment.

Mark Trail, 11/12/06

I love the way Jake and Snake — surely two of the dumber miscreants in the history of Mark Trail villainy, and that’s saying a lot — don’t ever form any kind of long-term villainous plans, but rather lunge at each new opportunity for evil like a giant rabbit at a delicious carrot. Sure, bear-baiting and illegal organ sales are all good fun, but why not engage in a little kidnapping and torture if you have an opportunity? Unless they think that Kelly Welly gallbladders sell for good money on the Asian market, they seem to be losing track of the goal here.

I also enjoy the reassuring similarities in the appearance of Mark Trail villains. Facial hair is of course an obvious indicator of evil, but the orange-shirted, non-mulleted half of Jake and Snake (has it actually been established which is which?) is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to the no-necked patriarch of the petnapping hillbilly clan from two or three storylines ago:

The Phantom, 11/11/06

The NEXT: box in the Saturday Phantom is pretty much always awesome. This one sent the phrase “Last night the Phantom saved my his life,” to the tune of the title line from Indeep’s 1983 hit “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”, rattling through my head for the past 36 hours or so, so I thought I’d subject you to the same treatment.