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Hey kids! Before we launch into today’s comics, I need to back up a bit, because I didn’t give credit where it was due yesterday. Seems that Monday’s TDIET was submitted by faithful reader Klipper an his wife, better known no doubt as Zoe‘s parents!

They’ll Do It Every Time, 9/24/07

It’s OK, Klipper! You can just get up and change the channels with the little buttons on the TV set itself, you know. No need to cuss. Kudos on the green plaid pants, by the way — most people wouldn’t have the nerve to pull that off.

And now on to today!

Archie, 9/25/07

Ignoring the glaring problem with the dates (perhaps the AJGLU 3000 refuses to embrace the papist conspiracy that is the so-called “Gregorian calendar”?), I am quite pleased by the vision of these four teens lined up at the Learning Bar, each with an iconic symbol of their favorite summer activity, to wit:

• Jughead: Surfing.
• Archie: Naked basketball.
• Betty: Being carried aloft on a litter by a team of manservants, one of whom is extra-hunky and shielding her from the hot sun with a fringed umbrella of the type employed the by the queens of the Orient in days of yore.
• Veronica: Putting on her cleverest disguise and prowling the night as the Black Cat, Riverdale’s greatest — and sexiest — rug thief!

Mary Worth, 9/25/07

“Mary, please don’t say ‘I told you so…'” HA HA HA HA HA HA

Poor Drew! He’s managed to botch relationships with two perfectly nice women, he has to go admit to his father’s awful not-girlfriend that she was right, and if this little couch scene is any indication, he probably just walked in on a little Dr. Jeff-Mary make-out time. So in panel two, he’s responding the only way he knows how: by shrugging the most epic shrug that human shoulders have ever attempted. I mean, look at that thing. He’s even putting his knees into it. He’s going to need some long hours at the chiropractor afterwards, but his form is so perfect, it’ll totally be worth it.

Luann, 9/25/07

Actual, not-made-up discussion my wife and I had last night as we were falling asleep:

Me: Hey, does TJ have a job or anything?

Her: He’s a vest salesman! …no, a vest model.

TJ apparently only uses his snazzy sweater vests as formalwear, though: when he’s cooking for his hard-working man, he wears a more casual black button-up white collared number. Today, Brad suggests that his friend might make some extra money by serving as the firehouse’s sexual plaything, a proposal that’s not being dismissed out of hand. Oh, TJ! You’ll do anything to avoid getting a real job!

Apartment 3-G, 9/25/07

Yeah, you know, “family matters.” Like in junior high, when they separated the boys and the girls and showed them filmstrips about “family matters.”

True Margo-watchers know what that vibrating index finger presages. Eric and Nora need to get down on the floor now and cover their heads with their arms if they want to have any hope of coming out of this with their pretty faces intact.

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Marvin, 9/19/07

At some point between my childhood, when I read and disliked Marvin, and my decision a few years ago start reading and disliking Marvin again, the strip expanded somewhat from its initial emphasis on infant-related humor. In these days of shrinking newspaper circulation, this may be because babies very rarely actually read the comics. Anyway, Marvin now also features thought-ballooning-animals (who don’t read the paper but who have been repeatedly demonstrated to appeal to those who do) and cranky old people, who do definitely read the paper (boy, do they ever). Fairly typical of the Marvin old people schtick is today’s comic, which features two sick, angry old men, their body language transparently demonstrating their mutual dislike, sitting together (because they have nobody else to spend time with, except their even more hated wives) at the mall (because they have nowhere else to go).

By the way, Roy’s “I hear you” isn’t a way of showing solidarity or agreement or anything like that; it’s part of this duo’s continuous game of mutual oneupmanship, and he’s just boasting that he hasn’t gone completely deaf yet.

Family Circus, 9/19/07

“Actually, Jeffy, after years of horrifying mistakes and experimental subjects that had to be put down as an act of mercy, Grandma determined that it’s best to go with leathery, bat-like wings. She’ll be forming them out of the skin from your thighs, since you won’t be using your legs anymore. Oh, also, you’ll be living in her basement from now on, OK?”

Archie, 9/19/07

Haw haw! It’s like men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, am I right, everybody? Like two different planets entirely! Haw! Also, it’s like women will believe completely bogus statements and men are high all the time! Haw haw!

Pluggers, 9/19/07

Pluggers are both unbearably cheap and completely thoughtless.

Oh, and confidential to everyone who couldn’t get enough of yesterday’s slap-happy Mary Worth action: thanks to faithful reader Dingo, you can get in on it!

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Archie, 9/12/07

There’s just one thing wrong with … no, wait, scratch that. There’s one thing that’s immediately obviously wrong with the latest offering from the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000: Andrews père apparently considers a wallet to be something comfortable to settle down on, instead of a painful ass-irritant that any normal person would remove before plopping down in a big comfy spiral-covered chair. Of course, the AJGLU 3000 is a soulless collection of wires and semiconductors, so it can probably only dimly understand how physical comfort works. Perhaps it has concluded that something customarily placed in a back pocket must by definition be comfortable to sit on. It also has only a loose grasp on human biology, as evidenced by panel three: that tiny bald head is perched atop an impossibly spheroid body, which, being composed of some perfectly pliable substance in the AJGLU 3000’s internal volume map, merely oozes around the wallet without any discomfort.

The AJGLU’s defense, I will admit that the images on the screen in the background — funny-looking men! pretty girls! cars! — demonstrate a perfect grasp of the concept of television.

Crock, 9/12/07

So, if, before today, you had asked me, “Josh, which of the unfunny recurring gags in Crock do you find most disturbing?” I’d have answered without hesitation, “The cook’s conversations with the chickens he boils alive, who are wholly sentient and all too aware of their impending horrible fate.” And if you had asked, “Well, is there any way this could be made more disturbing?” I’d probably have said, “Nope! It’s pretty grim!” And if you had then followed up by saying “But what if you found out that the flesh and fat and skin of these chickens were being used to flavor soup while they were still alive, which soup was then consumed by eager humans right in front of their death-haunted eyes?” I’d have said, “Huh. Yeah, you’ve managed to top it, all right.”

Curtis, 9/12/07

And today’s nominee for Use Of Quotation Marks That Is Most Unsettling For Reasons I Can’t Quite Put My Finger On: “Isn’t peppermint your ‘favorite’?” The little floating musical note only adds to the unease.

Pluggers, 9/12/07

Pluggers are vampires. Cheap, unattractive vampires.

UPDATE: So, as Sherm was the first to point out, vampires like the night, not the day. I’m, like, dumb.