Post Content

Garfield, 1/13/10

I’m near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other, which means that when I was growing up my eyes never really learned to work together properly, which in turn means that my depth perception is quite poor. This has had effects on my life large — I long ago gave up driving for the safety of myself and those around me — and small — 3-D movies generally don’t have the same impact on me as they do on other people. Whether the technology is what they use in Creature From The Black Lagoon or what they use in Avatar, to me it just basically looks like an ordinary movie — except for brief moments when something comes flying terrifyingly right at me.

Anyway, I don’t know about anyone else, but Odie’s tongue in panel two is providing me with just a nightmarish 3-D moment, with the leading edge of it appearing to be freakishly out of proportion to its apparent distance from the slobbering beast’s mouth. There are few things I want less when reading the comics in the morning than to even briefly worry that I’m about to be licked by some cartoon dog, and I resent the flash of panic that this induced in me.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/13/10

As you probably learned in your introductory English class, narrative is total snoresville if it doesn’t include conflict of some kind; but the inhabitants of Westview are generally far too morose to actually have competing goals or desires, so the only conflict comes when the doomed characters must do battle with their own cruel universe. Thus, I’m vaguely intrigued by the rivalry being implied here between the town’s only two vaguely ethnic downscale restaurants. I hope the Toxic Taco is a mirror image of Montoni’s, with the original Tacoteer having long since retired to Arizona, leaving the restaurant and its cast of regulars (including the zany UPS delivery guy and a single mom who overparents her only son) in charge of the manager, a bitter, burned-out recovering cocaine addict.

I’m not entirely sure what Mopey Pete’s sentence in the first panel is supposed to mean, actually. Is he saying that, since he’s not working on anything, he’ll have time to really focus on his favorite hobby, taco eating? Is he short of cash because of the lull in his work, and thus the only food he can afford is the Toxic Taco’s meat-style food substance topped with cheese byproducts? Or are the Toxic Taco’s wares literally poisonous, and his career failure is driving him to commit suicide in the most grotesque fashion he can imagine?

Mary Worth, 1/13/10

I love the look of mounting panic on Wilbur’s face as all his idle daydreams of what life with Abby would have been like are shattered by Kurt’s terrifying talk. Like all characters in Mary Worth, Wilbur values stability above all else, and if that means a life where the only “moving from place to place” happens when you move from the computer to the counter where you make your sandwiches, then so be it. Thank God he and his erstwhile lover broke it off when they did, or he might have been forced to grow as a person or experience joy.