Post Content

Mary Worth, 1/14/05

Can I lick your tonsils? Just askin’.

When I was trying to describe to my fiancée Gil Thorp’s fast-paced, breakneck pace (which is ten times more fast-paced and breakneck than the pace of an actual high-school basketball game), she remarked, “It’s like the anti-Mary Worth.” This is, I think, a pretty accurate assessment. In Gil Thorp, gender-equality-supporting pair Steve and Hadley went from awkward introductions to revolutionary power couple in three panels. Anna and Dr. Brian’s lip-locking reunion, meanwhile, has been in the works for nearly ten weeks.

This is as good a time as any to relay an exchange from the Golden Girls sent to me by faithful reader Luna:

Blanche: I love my comics. Every day, Marmaduke and Apartment 3-G.
Dorothy: I haven’t read Apartment 3-G since…1962.
Blanche: Oh, well, let me catch you up! It is later that same day…

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 12/29/04

Though I may on occasion fill this space with rants about my cranky opinions and/or the incredibly minor setbacks in my personal life that fill me with rage, I never lose sight of my “core mission” (as they used to say in the business world before I got laid off from it), which is, of course, to read the comics so you don’t have to. So, because I know all of you, especially those readers left bereft by the Baltimore Sun, want to know what’s happening to captive Margo, I’ll tell you: Eldon copped a plea, his slave-managing minions fled the sweatshop, the oppressed garment workers liberated themselves, and Margo, turning her back on her newfound friends as soon as she was no longer forced to spend her time or her rat-infested sleeping quarters with them, took a cab to Manhattan and headed for the tub. Problem solved. There’s no trauma that can’t be washed away by bubble bath!

A comment posted on an earlier strip in this storyline speculated that maybe the whole point of this plot was to force Margo to learn the true meaning of Christmas. I’m beginning to suspect that the real purpose was to create an excuse for another patented Apartment 3-G sexy bath scene.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 12/18/04

Who says Apartment 3-G is slow-moving and boring? Well, most people do, actually, but today’s strip is out to prove them wrong! Note the Sam Raimi-style camera swoop around Eldon and his nemesis over the course of these three panels as Mr. Eldon is subjected to FBI Pete’s brutal, post-Alberto Gonzales interrogation. At least I think that’s what’s happening. Maybe the last panel just got flipped over during the compositing process. But I like to give ’em the benefit of the doubt. Though doing so means that we have to accept that this interrogation room has identical doors on opposite walls.

In yesterday’s strip, Eldon attempted to get Pete’s goat by implying that Margo was a high-priced whore. As if Pete would believe that! Oh, wait.