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Family Circus, 4/28/07

I wasn’t aware that there was some Papally proscribed prayer posture, with more knees denoting more Christian sincerity. I’m also not sure how Dolly can tell Jeffy’s only doing half an Ave Maria if he’s still in the midst of it — is he only doing every other word or something? If he is treating his faith a little lightly, maybe it’s because he just found out that the Vatican has done away with Limbo and that little children can now make it into heaven without being baptized, so why’s he jumping through a bunch of hoops like a sucker?

By the way, Dolly, not even Jesus likes a tattletale.

Apartment 3-G, 4/28/07

For “this city,” read “cocaine.” And for “somewhere,” read “towards my connection.” There are good reasons why Alan moved away from New York, and not just so he could wear a baby blue V-neck sweater over a black mock turtleneck without being snickered at.

Mark Trail, 4/28/07

Wait, are these the county commissioners who were involved somehow in last year’s epically boring road demolition/eminent domain/casino scam snoozefest? I’m sort of curious, but not so curious that I’m going to wade through my archives and relive the dullness to find out. Mainly what I want to say is that, if your county is too cheap to spring for separate offices for each of its commissioners, it probably can’t afford even a single airport, let alone two.

Pluggers, 4/28/07

I’m beginning to figure out one of Pluggers‘ more devious strategies. Since this feature drives any right-thinking person into an insane, hateful rage, it needs to keep broadening the definition of “plugger” so that just about anybody can be seen as one, thus shaming readers into believing that they too are pluggers and staving off anti-plugger pogroms. Today, for instance, we learn that virtually all men and probably a significant number of women are pluggers. God have mercy on our simple, down-home souls.

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Mary Worth, 4/27/07

WOO-HOO, VON’S HERE, YEAH! And he’s … well, he’s kind of underwhelming, actually. Typical boring WASPy Mary Worth dude. More intriguing is Vera’s immediate deployment of karate moves against him — she’s clearly been taking classes in physical and emotional self-defense. Also, now that Vera’s had dinner with Mary and received the old biddy’s tentative stamp of approval, she’s permitted call upon the creepy, silent cast of Charterstone extras for protection. Von’s right to cower; the close-mouthed creeps will shuffle at him wordlessly and then smother him with their poorly drawn hands unless Vera calls them off.

Dennis the Menace, 4/27/07

It’s also possible that George has just quietly died sitting up. In which case Dennis wouldn’t be so much “menacing” as “creepily affectless.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/27/07

So here’s an odd little story: faithful reader Bob Byrd actually forwarded this strip to me a week ago. Apparently it appeared in place of Tank McNamera on the Yahoo comics page last Wednesday, which is pretty bizarre because the two strips are handled by different syndicates and Yahoo doesn’t even carry Rex Morgan. You’ll note that this is not the usual King Features in-house coloring job: the color palette is more muted, the flesh tones more realistic, and there’s not a bit of electric blue in sight. The graphic is also bigger than what King usually syndicates.

Anyway, it’s been fun sitting on this for a week and watching the strip feebly setting up Rex as having something like a shred of integrity, since I knew he would throw his highfalutin’ moral qualms to the wind as soon as he got rubbed the wrong way by some rich Brit. The good Dr. Morgan is a pillar of the community and he’ll thank you not to forget it; he doesn’t like being treated like a common chauffeur even if he shows up at the airport with a sign bearing the name of his passenger and doesn’t identify who exactly he is. Rex doesn’t really care about his friendship with Heather or even his stock portfolio, but treat him like the hired help and he will fuck you up — in this case, by driving you around reeeeaaal slow-like, which should be thrilling to watch.

Gil Thorp, 4/27/07

Oh man, not only does Clambake have vaguely obscene batting advice to offer, but vaguely obscene pitching advice as well! Yes, Mark’s big hands will be perfect — especially the left one, with its long, pretty fingernails.

It’s interesting to note that, while it took months of hectoring from the stands to get Lisa Wyche’s mom an unpaid position as an assistant coach for the girl’s basketball team, Coach Thorp has pretty much handed over his team to this deranged old coot in only the second week of practice. Gil is presumably hanging out under the bleachers smoking a joint or something while Otha Yancy holds hands with his pitching staff.

(By the way, unbelievably only one person has purchased Clambake gear so far. WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE? HE’S CLAMBAKE, FOR GOD’S SAKE! CLAMBAKE!!!!)

DIck Tracy, 4/27/07

That look of bug-eyed ecstasy in panel three comes from the feeling of climax that America’s greatest detective only gets from killing a perp with his bare hands. (The stiff, uplifted angle of his tie is suggestive here.) You might think that falling head-first into a smokestack and presumably being scalded to death is a particularly convoluted and gruesome way to go, and you’d be right, but you have to keep in mind that Dick Tracy has been leaving a trail of villainous corpses in his wake for 130 years or however long he’s been in the newspaper, and it’s hard to not repeat yourself. This is a strip that, in its first appearance in this blog, featured a pair of folks dying as a flaming wind generator plummeted to the ground, so expect the bizarre.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/26/07

I’m gonna speak up in sexually timid young Darrin’s defense here. Not all teenage boys want to go all the way with their sexy high school girlfriends … or, well, even if they want to, not all of them actually decide to do it. Sometimes they do talk about it endlessly in mysterious pitch-black voids while gently stroking said girlfriends’ hair. Someday they’ll be ready, if they aren’t traumatized somehow by the discovery of their birth parents first.

By the way, I think Darrin’s schnoz is getting bigger with each passing day. My wife suggests that his sexual frustration is leading to some kind of nose erection, but clearly that, while weird and bizarre, offers some outside possibility for fun, and thus it can’t happen in Funky Winkerbean. My diagnosis: nose cancer, duh.

Apartment 3-G, 4/26/07

Margo Magee: bad roommate, awful human being. And yet … and yet … I love her! Oh, God, why does it have to be this way?

Judge Parker, 4/26/07

And now, a little something for the ladies … and some of the fellas … and, well, anyone who enjoys seeing a pair of Parisian punks stripped down to their skivvies, tied up in a utility closet, and jabbering at each other in pidgin French, which I’m assuming is pretty much all of you.

My question for you all is: What do the comics have against that inoffensive creature, the male nipple? Punque Un et Punque Deux join Dagwood and Mark Trail in the Unsettlingly De-Nipped Hall of Fame:

Mark Trail, 4/26/07

Oh God, look at the body language: all the “bird strikes” this and “wildlife service” that and “visit some airports” what have you is clearly these two perverts’ idea of foreplay. About thirty to forty seconds of fully clothed, quasi-satisfying marital duties are about to happen on that rock.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/26/07

Oh, also: Hagar appears to have a crippling problem with alcohol abuse.