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Archie, 9/12/07

There’s just one thing wrong with … no, wait, scratch that. There’s one thing that’s immediately obviously wrong with the latest offering from the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000: Andrews père apparently considers a wallet to be something comfortable to settle down on, instead of a painful ass-irritant that any normal person would remove before plopping down in a big comfy spiral-covered chair. Of course, the AJGLU 3000 is a soulless collection of wires and semiconductors, so it can probably only dimly understand how physical comfort works. Perhaps it has concluded that something customarily placed in a back pocket must by definition be comfortable to sit on. It also has only a loose grasp on human biology, as evidenced by panel three: that tiny bald head is perched atop an impossibly spheroid body, which, being composed of some perfectly pliable substance in the AJGLU 3000’s internal volume map, merely oozes around the wallet without any discomfort.

The AJGLU’s defense, I will admit that the images on the screen in the background — funny-looking men! pretty girls! cars! — demonstrate a perfect grasp of the concept of television.

Crock, 9/12/07

So, if, before today, you had asked me, “Josh, which of the unfunny recurring gags in Crock do you find most disturbing?” I’d have answered without hesitation, “The cook’s conversations with the chickens he boils alive, who are wholly sentient and all too aware of their impending horrible fate.” And if you had asked, “Well, is there any way this could be made more disturbing?” I’d probably have said, “Nope! It’s pretty grim!” And if you had then followed up by saying “But what if you found out that the flesh and fat and skin of these chickens were being used to flavor soup while they were still alive, which soup was then consumed by eager humans right in front of their death-haunted eyes?” I’d have said, “Huh. Yeah, you’ve managed to top it, all right.”

Curtis, 9/12/07

And today’s nominee for Use Of Quotation Marks That Is Most Unsettling For Reasons I Can’t Quite Put My Finger On: “Isn’t peppermint your ‘favorite’?” The little floating musical note only adds to the unease.

Pluggers, 9/12/07

Pluggers are vampires. Cheap, unattractive vampires.

UPDATE: So, as Sherm was the first to point out, vampires like the night, not the day. I’m, like, dumb.

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Herb and Jamaal, 9/11/07

Pretty much any Herb and Jamaal could stand in for any other Herb and Jamaal, but today’s strip strikes me as a particularly archetypical Herb and Jamaal. We can strip it down to its essentials to reveal the skeleton that supports roughly 40 to 60 percent of Herb and Jamaal strips. Observe:

Panel one, character one: “More or less reasonable but somewhat oddly constructed question?”

Panel two, character two: “Extremely vaguely worded answer containing virtually no specifics related to the original interrogative, which no human being at any time would come up with as a response to said question, but which could potentially set up a variety of humorous interpretations.”

Panel three, character one: “Semantically empty phrase that helps pad the strip out to four panels…”

Panel four, character one: “…innuendo that could barely be reasonably derived even from the vague answer in panel two, and that uses ‘dating’ as a code word for a sexual relationship so as to pass muster in family newspapers.”

Mark Trail, 9/11/07

Is it possible that Clubby McSideburns is a more complex character than your usual run-of-the-mill facial-hair-sporting bludgeon-wielding Mark Trail baddie? It’s not like he bashes ducks’ heads in as a hobby or anything; he’s just a working man whose livelihood depends on the smooth operation of this mall project, and, what’s more, he cares about Homer’s financial well-being, too — maybe even more than Homer does. Meanwhile, panel two — in which we learn that Shirley the Duck is so slow and/or dumb that a human being can sneak up on her and get a hand around her throat before she goes all quacky-quacky — suggests that perhaps we should allow Darwinism, and the county construction permit process, to run their course.

Judge Parker, 9/11/07

Sam isn’t wearing his fancy three-piece goin’-to-the-courthouse lawyerin’ duds, so it’s kind of puzzling why Rusty asks him to change before they stroll around the grounds of this presumably well-manicured winery. Presumably she’d just be humiliated being seen outdoors within thirty feet of a man wearing that … weirdly fronted … chest-hair exposing … robin’s egg blue … shirt … thing.

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Item one: Hey, I got quoted in a USA Today article about For Better Or For Worse! Um, I’m talking smack about Beetle Bailey in my quote. There’s context. You can also listen to the article’s author, Steve Friess, interviewing Lynn Johnston … if you dare.

Item two: Faithful reader Keg of Curd has created the ultimate Pluggers randomizer. Keep reloading the page to match up Pluggers panels with a set of captions that pretty much distills the feature down to its bleak essentials.

Item three: Faithful reader JamesinMaine demonstrates that, despite all logic, there are certain advantages to being Clambake:

Item four: Faithful reader Mooncattie took his Gail Martin t-shirt to fabulous Niagara Falls!

More bizarre, baffling merchandise like this is available at the Comics Curmudgeon store.