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Marvin and Six Chix, 4/18/06

Boy, here’s a cheery pair. Marvin is funny because, awwww, he’s too young to understand the concept of death! Isn’t that precious? He isn’t constantly stalked by the terrifying specter of his own mortality! How cute!

What on earth have his parents parked him in front of to distract him while they eat/read/have sex/pretend for one precious moment that their life hasn’t been ruined by a baby? Too many inspirational Lifetime movies can warp his tiny developing mind.

Also, if I were forced to wear that hideous grey union suit as a baby, I would have figured out what it meant to die … of embarrassment!

Six Chix, meanwhile, is funny because … well, I guess it’s funny because this old lady is going to die! That’s a knee-slapper, all right. Unlike Marvin, she has a grim, joyless look that says that she’s known all about death for some time, and frankly thinks it’s time to get on with the whole thing. So come on, hellish, grinning demon from the netherword, let’s get this show on the road! We can pick up Tommie’s favorite patient on the way!

Curtis, 4/18/06

If Curtis is going to insist on doing a zany, contrived storyline where Curtis accidentally signs up his dad to give blood, the thing he fears the most, then I have to say I think it’s very clever to do it this way: with the hijinks implied (“I saw it on the news!” “…and the firemen were able to get me down out of the tree!”) rather than actually trying to put everything in panels. Nevertheless, the word “happy” in panel one is smack dab between two of the most inappropriate quotation marks in comics history — and this being Curtis, that’s saying a lot. In fact, I’ve decided that when you abuse the noble quotation mark this badly, you must suffer the wrath of … Quotin’ Margo!

By the way, kids, don’t try to air-quote like this at home; Margo is especially suited for this activity because, as Uncle Lumpy pointed out when I posted the comic this came from, she’s got six fingers on each hand. Yikes!

Get Fuzzy, 4/18/06

OK, seriously Darby, I can’t go down this road with you. Just let me know when you get back from the brink, I’ll be waitin’ for ya.

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Before I take on today’s comics, I must briefly touch on two things I shamefully neglected yesterday. First off, it looks as if the new Sunday Phantom storyline is going to be moving in on Mark Trail’s environmentalism turf, since the latter is focusing its energy on a two-fisted libertarian crusade against eminent domain:

I’m looking forward to teasers like “Next: Peak oil!” and “Next: Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne are tools of the logging industry!” But what really strikes me is the fact that not 24 hours after this comic appeared, Wikipedia presented Retreat of glaciers since 1850 as its feature article. Behold the power and influence of the Ghost-Who-Supports-The-Swift-Implementation-Of-The-Kyoto-Protocol!

In other news, Rex Morgan allowed his big brown eyes and pretty little mouth to get dangerously close to Dr. Troy’s crotch.

Moving on to today’s funnies:

Gil Thorp, 4/17/06

You know how Disney has this digitally animated film called The Wild, about some zoo animals that escape and have to deal with the real wilderness, and between this, that, and the other thing it took them, like, nine years to make, and then a year before they released it Dreamworks put out Madagascar, which had essentially the same plot, and then Disney was all like, “Hey! We had that idea first!” but it didn’t matter because Madagascar came out first and by all accounts was better anyway? Well, Gil Thorp can try all it wants to say, “We’ve been setting up the Brent-‘Rap Dog’-has-his-attempts-to-lose-weight-get-undermined-by-his-scary-white-trash-mother” storyline set up since last March!” but the truth is that this psychodrama is already underway over in Mary Worth, so y’all were a little late to pull the trigger.

Meanwhile, if Allen Ginsberg is condemned to haunt Judge Parker, then from the look of things Divine is trapped in Gil Thorp for all eternity. I know this is applies to every episode of this strip ever, but that hair is whack.

Apartment 3-G, 4/17/06

So, before she can leave on her vacation, Tommie has to euthanize this old lady for Hillary Clinton?

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Mary Worth, 4/15/06

“Whale”? Did Mary just sit through a grueling week-long dinner dominated by savage passive-aggressive battles over eating and weight loss and just think “whale”? OH NO SHE DIDN’T! That skinny old biddy has crossed the line: even if it was just in thought balloon form, the sarcasm quotes around “whale” make sure that we know all about her smug superiority.

I’m looking at this strip again and just noticing that Lou is continuing to attempt to force-feed his hapless wife: he’s got a death grip on the back of her neck and he looks like he’s doing the “airplane” game with that spoonful of off-white mush, much as you would with a recalcitrant infant. Even creepier to me is Kelly’s attitude, which seems to boil down to, “Ha ha, that husband of mine, he’s an angry control freak who refuses to allow me to have any will of my own! Whaddya gonna do?”

B.C., 4/15-16/06

God and Mammon met head-on as B.C.’s Easter weekend took a Holy Saturday break for some good-old fashioned tax humor. I’ll ignore the joke of Saturday’s strip to point out that the keen-sighted blonde caveman dude in panel one (Peter? Thor? Does anyone actually know or care?) is suddenly transmorgified in panel two into dark-haired, glasses-wearing Clumsy, who is one of the easiest characters in the strip to recognize. I’m sure there’s a totally legitimate reason behind the miraculous transformation and I encourage you to post your ideas about it in the comments.

Easter Sunday we get the real goods, though. I think I caused some confusion Friday when I praised Johnny Hart for not hating on Darwin or the Jews; I meant that he didn’t do so in that particular comic strip, not that he never did. However, since I spent the weekend chowing down on a lot of unrisen matzo bread, I have to admit that I found the opening two-panel joke a bit unsettling.

The rest of the strip makes use of a technique found in some New Testaments, in which everything that’s a direct quote from Jesus is printed in red. This is, I suppose, intended to help us figure out when we have switched between the two speakers in this dialogue, though I’m intrigued that a convention used to highlight what most Christians believe to be the literal word of God is here used in a second-rate Dr. Seuss pastiche in the Sunday comics. When I showed this to Mrs. C., she asked, “Is this supposed to be funny?” I answered with a venerable Simpsons line: it’s not ha-ha funny.

Apartment 3-G, 4/16/06

On a happier note, Apartment 3-G continues to tease us with he prospect of a Tommie-centered storyline. Either wacky adventures await her (and us) as she journeys into Lucy and Ted’s den of boring lovesickness, or it’s just a device to write her out of the strip for the next few months while Margo and Lu Ann do more interesting things. As much as I want to see our favorite redhead in the spotlight, I hate to see the Margo not get her due: I love the first panel in bottom row, where she’s air-quoting so vigorously that she looks like she’s about the sprain something. The use of quotes in the word balloon to match her little bunny-ear finger gesture really drives the point home. Much as I love Margo, though, I am of course one half of a perfect couple, so I’m going to choose to take offense to her decree in the final panel.