Post Content

Archie, 11/13/10

What would it be like being a machine intelligence like the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000, a collection of spare solid-state electronics whose remarkable achievement of sentience has been harnessed to create Archie strips that are almost, but not quite, funny to humans? Do machines perceive the universe differently than we do? For instance, is it easier of them to understand that time is really just one dimension among many? While the biological entities can only comprehend time in a single direction, perhaps the AJGLU 3000 grasps its essential reversibility. That could explain the middle panel of this strip, which, taken out of context, could just as reasonably be interpreted as Archie spewing french fries out of his mouth, rather than him shoveling them down his gullet to avoid the predations of his insatiable best friend. “Serves me right for adhering to the linear monodirectional notion of time that the fleshbags use!” says Jughead, in a joke meant only for the amusement of the strip’s cybernetic creator.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/13/10

“Ha ha, yep, Rex, once again you’re going to be chasing down an elected official who’s heading off to murder his political opponent due to a misunderstanding about the release of confidential medical information, while the whole town cheers him on, having learned about his condition via Pacebook! I’m experiencing some déjà vu, because this happens all the time! Hoo boy!”

In case you ever wonder what you — and America — misses out on when newspapers shrink comics down to near-illegibility, check out this close-up of Rex’s spiffy lab coat:

Ha ha, that’s not just some nurse or physician’s assistant or lab tech in a white coat, buddy; that’s Dr. Rex Morgan! Show some damn respect!

Dennis the Menace, 11/13/10

“Admittedly it’s all with children … and they’re not really interested in me as a person, only as some kind of indefatigable machine that churns out cookies … so many cookies, so many hungry mouths … oh, God, I hate my life.”

SUNDAY COMICS UPDATE: Uh, you guys, the Sunday comics all seem to be unavailable, on all the usual suspect Websites? OH MY GOD IT’S COMICSGEDDON! Damn it, this is the newspaper industry’s revenge for me finally cancelling my print susbscription, isn’t it? Well, I got stuffs to do, so I’ll try to post Sunday strips tomorrow, assuming they appear. ASSUMING ANY COMICS EVER APPEAR ONLINE, ANYWHERE, EVER AGAIN.

Post Content

Archie, 11/3/10

So I think it’s important that we start asking ourselves what the deal is with Jughead and the homunculi. We all know that he keeps a tiny version of Archie, with its hands gruesomely removed, in his locker. Now we can see that a similarly stump-handed model of Jughead himself sits smiling on his bookshelf. Are these tiny figurines intended to represent the souls of Jughead and Archie? Does Jughead use them to manipulate their relationship, through ominous voodoo rituals? These are the sorts of questions that should be the root of the panic we see in Archie’s eyes in the final panel, but he appears to be more shocked that Jughead is working himself up into a frenzy by looking at hamburger porn on his laptop, when this ought not to come as a surprise to anybody.

Apartment 3-G, 11/3/10

Oh look, it’s Mrs. Bloom, aka the beloved crazy taser lady of six or eight storylines ago. Mrs. Bloom is excited about visiting her son in Florida, except she worries that she won’t be able to sneak her taser, which she’s nicknamed “Prissy,” onto the plane.

Beetle Bailey, 11/3/10

It appears that the Halftrack-bot needs a visit from the repair shop, because it’s disabled itself by humping the corner of its desk too vigorously.

Jumble, 11/3/10

As ever, I’m too lazy/dumb to actually do the Jumble, but I note that “IT’S ‘POISON'” fits nicely into the blanks of the answer and into the scene in the comic panel. Look at the ostentatiously casual way the waitress is checking out that customer out of the corner of her eye. Ha ha, that’s what you get for never leaving a tip, buddy!

Post Content

Archie, 10/25/10

The lame ostensible joke in today’s Archie is hardly worthy of mention, though I do like the all-purpose “ARCHIE DID IT” frame-up note Coach Whoever is holding in panel one. But I’m intrigued by the scene in panel two, in which we see that the Riverdale team mascot is so committed to his mascotting duties that he stays in his sweaty, claustrophobic fursuit even when there’s no game on and he’s trying to woo the ladies. Perhaps he’s been told that his eyes are his best feature, and he believes that their sexiness will be enhanced if his face is obscured by a fake dog-neck and only his eyes are visible, staring eerily out of an otherwise black slit. He is mistaken.

I suspect that he in fact is the one who framed Archie, since the strip protagonist’s well-known if incomprehensible sex appeal was probably ruining the chances of all the other male-types in the room. This strip also makes this episode from last year even less comprehensible, since the squirrel-man in the background there doesn’t even have the excuse of “Oh, I’m the team mascot” to exist. Perhaps at some point the school board decided that the “Dogs Of Indeterminate Breed” made a more menacing team avatar than the “Insanely Grinning Tree-Rodents.”

Apartment 3-G, 10/25/10

Clearly Tommie’s slightly different haircut is not enough to radically alter her personality, because Aunt Iris is here to loosen her up! This will be fun until we find out that Iris is actually in New York because her home’s been foreclosed and she’s one step ahead of her creditors.

Mark Trail, 10/25/10

While there is literally no way within the laws of physics as we know them to defend against Mark Trail’s fists, it’s actually quite easy to win a battle of wits against him, as he’s a semi-autistic with little understanding of how and why humans behave in the way they do. “What’s that, man who I punched in the face and publicly humiliated just days ago? You want to help me with something? That’s great! How helpful of you! Yes, I will meet you in the ambush-location of your choosing!”