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Spider-Man, 7/26/06

I’ve been trying very hard to ignore the slow-motion train wreck of idiocy that is this week’s Spider-Man, but I can turn away from it no longer. See, they’re filming the climactic elevator battle scene between Marvella (played by Mary Jane) and $1.99 Walgreens Plastic Halloween Cat Mask Woman (played by washed-up has-been Narna Lamarr) in a novel fashion: they’re putting them in a real elevator, with no microphones of any kind (otherwise Narna’s bitchy off-script taunts would be picked up) and having them improvise some fisticuffs. (I hear this is exactly how Robert Altman filmed most of McCabe & Mrs. Miller.) Apparently there are multiple cameras filming from multiple angles, with the fight being edited on the fly and fed directly into the VIEW SCREEN that Beardo the director and Peter Parker are watching. This is, it goes without saying, so bonecrushingly moronic that I fear that I’ve dropped five to ten IQ points just by typing this paragraph.

Note Peter’s thought balloon in panel two: he clearly has the relative inability to suspend his disbelief of a spider.

Crock, 7/26/06

So “Trooper Megan” appears to be not the butt of a one-off joke but a new addition to the lovable and poorly drawn Crock cast. To which I can only ask: why, why, why, for the love of God, why. I’ve just started reading this comic again for the first time in 15 years, and before Megan sashayed sexily onto the scene, the cast was exactly the same as it was when I graduated from high school. Is this supposed to be like Beetle Bailey, where a new “relevant” character gets added every five years or so? If so, this implies that the creators of this strip have just now discovered that women exist who don’t wear burqas. C’mon, Illegible Signature Crock-Writing Dude Whose Name It Is Not Worth My Time To Look Up: you’ve earned the right to cruise on with the same group of ham-handedly named Frenchmen that you’ve been cruising along with for decades now. Don’t make more work for yourself for no good reason — and trust me, this isn’t a good reason.

Ziggy, 7/26/06

Note to Ziggy, Inc.: The 35 Years of Ziggy Classics must amount to better than 10,000 cartoons; thus, I’m pretty sure you can get through the length of Tom II’s vacation without reprinting one that contains a totally dated current events punchline that wasn’t even funny when it was topical. I know it’s cheaper to use a robot arm to just select a comic out of the file cabinet at random rather than have someone use editorial judgement, but you might want to change that process, for quality-control purposes.

Apartment 3-G, 7/26/06

Man, look at that sad face in panel three. Because if it weren’t for totally-not-actually-happening-and-only-implied-by-a-totally-unrealistic-series-of-events-and-sitcom-style-misunderstanding action, she wouldn’t be getting any action at all.

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Pluggers, 7/19/06

With this three-pizza impulse-buy dinner, I begin to see the origin of both Rhino-Man’s rhino-like girth and his serious financial difficulties.

Apartment 3-G, 7/19/06

While you might think that this presages sitcom-style misunderstandings and complications and wackiness, Lucy knows full well, just like the rest of us, that nobody loves Tommie.

Spider-Man, 7/19/06

Hold on, there, Spidey, you forgot to take off your … no, wait, it’s going to be much funnier if he doesn’t realize.

Slylock Fox, 7/19/06

The world’s cheeriest pignappers are stealing the world’s smallest pig from the world’s jumpiest farmer.

Gasoline Alley, 7/19/06

I found this funnier than anything else in the comics today; does that make me a bad person?

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Apartment 3-G, 7/13/06

OK, I know Apartment 3-G is forbidden by law from being sexy, but … Lucy swaps spit with Captain Brushcut in an elevator, and then ends up slightly disheveled but fully clothed on his couch? Lamest. Extramarital affair. Ever.

I do like the trepidatious way in which she’s regarding the slightly open doorway. “That color … oh, crap, please tell me I didn’t go home with that tool Seth from my poetry group, who’s always wearing those hideous electric blue suit jackets. Note to self: eat something after the fourth cosmo from now on.”

Curtis, 7/13/06

Here’s something that you may not believe or even agree with: though I don’t find Curtis funny most of the time, I have come to admire it. Unlike so many, many syndicated strips, it doesn’t phone things in; there’s almost always a wealth of details that reward examination. I particularly like the use of the double-wide second panel to show the Curtis POV church lady panorama, with Curtis’ horrified head dead center. I’m even willing to overlook the inappropriate quote marks in the final panel just because the idea of Curtis hoping to be freed from these women by death’s sweet embrace makes me laugh.

(Tangent: This past weekend we went to see a free outdoor concert by a Latin-y/swing band that a friend of ours is in. Towards the end, this adorable little ham of a child, somewhere in the six to eight range, ran down in front of the stage and started busting a hilarious and surprisingly successful series of circa-1986 breakdancing moves. He was wearing a ludicrously oversized baseball cap that kept falling off as he would spin around on his back or whatever, and ever time he picked it up, he’d be careful to put it back on a more or less the same jaunty angle at which Curtis is rocking his own chapeau here.)

Crankshaft, 7/13/06

In case you’re wondering what Crankshaft does to supplement his meager Social Security checks during the summer when he’s not driving a bus, this week has the answer: he drives an ice cream truck, though this seemingly benign profession should not be taken to indicate that he’s open to compromise on his fundamental and general hatred of the human race. Strips in this storyline so far have featured Crankshaft engaging in such par-for-the-course prickery as taunting people at a Weight Watchers meeting, being rude to children, and, as depicted here, refusing to deploy even basic customer service techniques. It all strengthens my conviction that this strip should be given the slightly longer but much more descriptive title Jesus Christ, Ed Crankshaft Is Such An Asshole.

Gil Thorp and Judge Parker, 7/13/06

Boy, Raju is sure going to be disillusioned when he signs up for his first American gymnastics class.