Post Content

Crock, 6/2/09

While I do not begrudge anyone a good ass-looking, I strenuously object to sexuality of any sort being discussed in the mangled world of Crock. Today’s panel has a little something for everyone. Longtime readers of the strip will, from long familiarity with all of these hateful characters, object to any of them contemplating eroticism of any sort, as it is better than any of them deserve. Naïfs just stumbling onto the strip by fateful accident will be traumatized to think that anyone would put the words “Maggot has better buns” in that particular sequence. And those of a philosophical bent can contemplate the quality scale on which one is expected to assess buns, if not their packaging.

On an unsettling art note, it appears that the artist seems to have long forgotten that Grossie is supposed to be wearing a niqab, and, apparently relying only on drawings of her from the front as a guide, has executed this profile shot under the assumption that her nose is two different colors.

Gil Thorp, 6/2/09

How to explain this: I think, somewhere in the bowels of the rapidly crumbling print newspaper industry, someone got wind of the fact there was a daily narrative feature, with pictures, half of the characters in which are physically fit teenage girls. “We need to play up the sex appeal!” came the barked orders of someone who’s spent the last decade fighting a holding action against Craigslist. And so Gil Thorp, confused but eager for relevance, lurched into action, swinging away from the “OH MY GOD THE FACEBOOK” story it had been following in a sort of desultory fashion and leaping at “sexy girls try on each other’s swimsuits SEXXXY!” This being Gil Thorp, of course, it will be awkward and uncomfortable-making, though on the bright side it will involve very little Shep Trumbo, unless things go horribly awry.

Archie, 6/2/09

Good lord, the mini-Archies are proliferating! If Jughead’s Archiform marionette weren’t unsettling enough, we now know that Betty has a plush li’l Archie to console herself with when Archie is off marrying Veronica for her money or whatever. More concerning to me, however, is how committed Archie is to leaning smugly while talking on his cell phone, even when there doesn’t actually appear to be anything for him to lean against. His pose in panel three, with one foot on the ladder, one foot hanging in empty space, one hip vaguely rested against a thin shelf, and one elbow stuck out into mid-air, is a workplace injury and subsequent worker’s comp claim waiting to happen, the paperwork for which will make Archie’s supervisor regret his decision to quit his job as a Tom of Finland character.