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Apartment 3-G, 10/9/07

No, Margo! Don’t trust him! Eric Mills is not what he seems! Her suspicions shouldn’t necessarily be raised by his expressing passing concern for the well-being of another female human when he should be attempting to seduce and/or marry Margo; I’m sure his curiosity about Lu Ann’s health is essentially mercenary, and can be summed up as “Will she still be capable of churning out mediocre fern prints that I can unload on the condo and hotel lobby market at a healthy profit?” No, the real clues of nefariousness are those glasses, which are totally inappropriate for serving cognac. That means Eric’s not a real millionaire, and Margo’s been wasting her time and sexual energy on him; she needs to move on post haste. Does she really want to be tied to someone whose financial future lies in Lu Ann’s artistic abilities?

Archie, 10/9/07

One might have written off a single reference to Betty’s blog as a sad and desperate bid to remain relevant to the kids today; but her Web journal’s reappearance as a plot point here indicates that, in a bid for cross-media corporate synergy, the Archie newspaper strip is pimping Betty’s actual blog (or, well, “Betty’s” “actual” blog), which I suppose I’ll serve as a tool of Archie Comics Publications Inc. and direct your attention to. The many content providers for this sprawling media empire haven’t coordinated their efforts well enough to actually have date details up that might make Veronica beverage-dumping mad, but Riverdale’s cheeriest blonde does wish her Canadian friends a happy Thanksgiving, which is more than FBOFW has managed to do (unless the secret message of this week’s plot is “Be thankful you haven’t had multiple strokes”).

Mary Worth, 10/9/07

Ah, see, this is how we know that Drew was right to choose Vera over Dawn; Charterstone’s go-gettingist clerk-typist doesn’t resort to tears and incredibly bland quotes when confronted with an ambiguous offering from a two-timing ex; rather, she thought-balloons a clever little bon mot that includes a “drew” pun and prepares to move on with her life. Perhaps she’ll find happiness with a new man — like that handsome deliveryman! His russet hair is rakishly long, but not drug dealer long.

Popeye, 10/9/07

The current loopy, meandering Popeye plot involves “spincoal”, a superpowerful form of compressed spinach that serves both as a miracle food and a miracle fuel. It hasn’t been all that exciting, but I am intrigued by the promise of energy industry skullduggery to come. I’m pretty sure that Popeye strips are actually reruns from the 1990s, so I’m assuming that the figure in the second panel is then-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney.

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Gil Thorp, 10/5/07

My God, what kind of Google search results for “Culver Vale” would be so shocking to Howard Gourwitz that we would be treated to the vision of each and every one of his upper teeth? Obviously mere text couldn’t elicit a reaction of such visceral horror; no, Howard has clearly plugged “Culver Vale” into Google image search. In my unrelenting quest for the truth, and with total disregard for my personal safety, I bravely chose to do the same, and received one and only one result:

“Look at this, Tony! Cully allowed himself to be photographed wearing a conservative suit, and squatting and presumably defecating behind the flag of Oregon! And to think we’ve shared a locker room with this sicko!”

Tony’s search results may have been skewed by the addition of the word “stud”, as the dialog in panel one implies. And no, I’m not searching on that. Bravery has its limits.

Dick Tracy, 10/5/07

OK, now that this Dick Tracy plot appears to be wrapping up, I can say officially that none of it makes any sense. The East German Soviet Sympathizers (EGSSes) kidnapped the Gretchen to exchange for the Baron … why? Once the Baron wandered off, Dick and the CIA guys started treating the EGSSes as sympathetic … why? Gretchen claimed to be giving the CIA guys the frequency to the chip in the Baron’s head, but actually gave the frequency to the chip in her head … WHY? Gretchen had a chip in her head … WHY??

But most of all, what the hell does “trying to revive to Cold War and blame it on Mideastern terrorists” even mean? I’m sure the EGSSes don’t actually want the Cold War back; they just want a different ending for it. Were their ex-Soviet puppet masters going to look at the smoldering wreckage of the Rotunda on the TVs in their underground bunker and chortle “Ha ha, the Americans soon will be invading another Middle Eastern country, but we and we alone secretly know that the Cold War is back on! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!”

Spider-Man, 10/5/07

Yes, you … you forgot about airport security. And because you’ve put your spider-suit in your suitcase, and it could easily be written off as a Halloween costume (which I believe is what happened when you flew to LA), the only hitch this puts in your plans is that it might cause you to miss your plane … which … has … nothing to do with superheroics whatsoever argh argh ARGH! Honestly, this strip constantly manages to defy my ability to parody its lameness.

Pluggers, 10/5/07

A plugger’s face is a mass of lacerations and barely-scabbed-over wounds. But at least he’s getting his money’s worth out of that 60 cent disposable razor!

Archie, 10/5/07

I’m sure your beverage choices are very interesting, Betty, but let me offer you some advice, one blogger to another: I think your readers will be more interested if you skip to the part where you explain why you aren’t wearing pants.

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Archie, 10/2/07

Huh, the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 seems to have put the wrong dialogue into today’s cartoon. Here, let me fix that:

Panel one, Miss Gundy: You feel that our school has singularly failed to inculcate any sort of moral sense into our student body? That we are training an army of sociopaths?

Panel one, Mr. Weatherbee: Indeed! What is it that has hollowed out their spirits from the inside, leaving them only fit to be alternately victims and tormentors in life’s theater of cruelty?

Panel two: [A sickening crunch as Archie’s kneecap fractures, leaving him with a limp that will linger the rest of his life.]

Panel three, Mr. Weatherbee: Perhaps we shouldn’t have painted every wall in the school a blindingly bright white. We sought to inculcate spiritual purity, but instead we created the illusion of a yawning void that reflects the emptiness of the students’ souls!

Gasoline Alley, 10/2/07

When last we left this feature, Slim’s insane meteor plot had landed him in an actual mental hospital. Soon afterwards, his clinician choose to follow an unorthodox treatment regime — sending him and Clovia to the beach — and Skeezix, who is the father of one (possibly both? who knows?) of them, had to take over at the garage and deal with their surly employee, who went out on a call and then vanished. In this strip’s newly found rhythm of veering from dull to insane as the plot develops, Skeezix has tracked the missing mechanic to this creepy old house, which is probably inhabited by a family of inbred murderers wearing human skin suits, or a passageway to the plane of damned souls, or something similarly bizarre. The harrowing adventures in this hell-house will of course cut back and forth to and from the dialect-heavy hillbilly antics of Rufus and Joel, who Skeezix left in charge of the garage.

Spider-Man, 10/2/07

Oh, Spider-Man! Is there any hero in the pantheon of American comics tougher and more noble than you? Spidey and his wife have decided to flee Los Angeles for the safer climes of Manhattan; they’ve been driven out of the city of angels by the twin scourges of the Shocker (a “super” villain whose “super” powers mainly consist of a crippling inferiority complex and vibrating gloves he built in his basement metal shop) and an army of amateur paparazzi. But now he faces his greatest challenge yet: heavy traffic on the 405! Obviously it’s worth Peter Parker betraying his secret identity if that’s what it takes to get to the airport on time; after all, air travel between LA and New York is incredibly sporadic, and if Peter and Mary Jane don’t make their flight, clinging to the landing gear like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon if need be, they could be trapped in Los Angeles indefinitely.

Gil Thorp, 10/2/07

Uh-oh, Howard looks like he’s about to prove that wearing Buddy Holly glasses and being named “Howard” doesn’t automatically make you smart. It’s well known that the Internet primarily exists as a vehicle for anonymous personal abuse. Googling the name of a crappy high school quarterback who plays in a town unnaturally obsessed with high school sports will mainly serve to demonstrate how many ways there are to misspell “YOU FUCKING SUCK.”