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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.

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Archie, 8/2/07

The Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 managed to churn out a serviceable punchline today (by the abominably low standards of the legacy comics industry) but it’s the weirdness of the setup that really places this strip squarely in the uncanny valley. Who is gap-toothed Leroy? Why does Archie hold him in such contempt? Did Archie’s chest expand between panels one and two, or did his head shrink? Why is he wearing an ankle-monitoring bracelet? Why are Riverdale’s beaches studded with ominous-looking targets? Sadly, I fear that the all of these anomalies are just the AJGLU’s idea of background color.

Mark Trail, 8/2/07

Seeing Mark announce “I’m your worst nightmare!” is of course a delight, a little love letter to everyone everywhere. Still, it wouldn’t be Mark Trail if the dialog emphasis failed to violate all norms of conversation among English-speaking human beings. Mark emerges from his hidey-bush and bellows “I KNOW ABOUT IT!” at the top of his lungs, then politely adds “I’m your worst nightmare” in his indoor voice. Perhaps all the boldfacing in the first word balloon tired him out.

Anyway, we are of course all on tenterhooks to see tomorrow’s punchery. Your firearm is no match for Mark’s bare fists, Buzzard!

Mary Worth, 8/2/07

If you ever needed proof that Mary Worth is some kind 18th-level Jedi ninja archbishop of meddling, this is it. By having a relationship with a somewhat older man, Dawn is enjoying herself in an ever-so-slightly unconventional way, which Mary obviously thinks is the moral equivalent to genocide. Rather than let our young romantic see her revulsion at this depravity, however, she instead pretends to be on Dawn’s side, only to plant a tiny seed in her mind by comparing her and Dr. Drew to the Camerons, Charterstone’s most loathsome couple. Now, every time Lover Boy, M.D., moves in for a smooch, Dawn will be unable to keep from visualizing Ian’s bloated, chinbeared visage, purple with drink and contempt, hovering before her. She’ll move on to a more age-appropriate boyfriend — or a nunnery — in no time, and Mary with allow herself a brief, subtle smile of satisfaction.

UPDATE: In this context, I simply must post to this excellent post at Subdivided We Stand, from faithful reader Smitty Smedlap.

The Phantom, 8/2/07

I know it’s not socially acceptable to test this out, but I’m reasonably sure that, while there are probably several more or less accurate ways to transliterate the sound made by an oar handle plunging into a man’s solar plexus, “PUNT!” is probably not one of them. I will allow that “UHHFF!!” is probably a pretty good approximation of the sound one would make when so oared, however.

Note that the Ghost-Who-Uses-The-Mori-Youth-Entrusted-Into-His-Care-As-Bait has sent a group of mostly naked teenagers with improvised bludgeons into a fracas against men armed with automatic rifles, while he stands above and fires a desultory round or two from his pistol in the general direction of the action. I suppose that if he leapt down, we’d all be denied yet another shot of his stripey ass.

Marmaduke, 8/2/07

This is one of the filthier things I’ve seen today. If you’re a sicko like me, it’s fun to imagine the caption without the second sentence.

Dick Tracy, 8/2/07

“The chief has just issued an APB for an elderly man!” And the cooks at Gitmo start making fewer halal meals and more bran muffins and prune juice as the several million Americans who fit this one-sentence description are rounded up for interrogation.

The Family Circus, 8/2/07

Sadly, the attempt to assassinate the Keane clan was botched. “Next time,” swore a cowed human race, sick to death of their antics. “Next time.”

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Apartment 3-G, 7/16/07

On Saturday, Eric Mills announced that he had picked up “something priceless” from the Orient. Today we learn what that priceless item is: his brother’s mouldering corpse. Actually, if he found it on the cold, dry Tibetan plateau, it may in fact be freeze-dried rather than mouldering, but either way it’s technically “priceless” because of course nobody would pay good money for it. (This also meant that he didn’t have to declare it on his customs form upon his return to the States.)

This shocking fact has sent his sister-in-law into a Level Four Swoon, though the segue from “missing” to “prayed his body would be recovered” seems to have skipped over a vital point. Presumably once a death certificate is on file, their illicit love affair can be upgraded from actual adultery to merely kind of icky, and Eric can dispense with his Margo-dating pretense. That should get ugly fast.

Gil Thorp, 7/16/07

There are few things in this world more disturbing than panel two of today’s Gil Thorp. I mean, sure, we all like to see ol’ pearl-earring-wearing Heat-Miser-lookalike Coach Kaz give a drunken lout what for by punching him right in the teeth, and the fact that his girlfriend responded to his act of lightning-fast violence with a look that says “Do me right here in the middle of CAFE, I beg of you” is only to be expected. But where the hell is the rest of Kaz’s arm? As disturbing as the thought that his fist might have gone right through the Lout’s teeth and headed back towards the uvula is, at the angles we’re seeing, it just doesn’t seem possible that Kaz’s fist isn’t protruding out the back of the drunken fellow’s head. My theory is that the inside of this bottle-wielding field’s body is some kind of dimensional anomaly: he’s literally bigger on the inside than on the outside. This bizarre evolutionary adaptation presumably allows him to ingest a greater volume of alcohol than a normal human could contain without bursting open.

Archie, 7/16/07

Today the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 has actually manage to cobble together a gag that, if not “funny” per se, at least makes a vague sort of sense and is based on the Archie gang’s (admittedly broad) established characterizations. However, we do get an interesting indication that the AJGLU 3000 is not connected to the Internet. Sure, bizarre fake domain names are in fact used as the names of retail establishments in real life — my favorite is the newsstand at the Oakland airport called WWW.NEWS.OAKLAND — but Eat.com is actually the homepage for for Ragú®, currently featuring some “Soccer Mom Shortcuts.” (“Today’s tip: Your kids don’t have what you’d call ‘discriminating palates,’ so don’t feel bad about feeding them mediocre spaghetti sauce out of a jar.”) Presumably the domain was reserved by some smartie in the IT department of whatever multinational corporation owned the rights to the Ragú® brand in 1998; the current owner, Unilever, has deep Dutch pockets and teams of lawyers, so look out, AJGLU 3000, is what I’m saying.

(Note to outraged soccer moms everywhere: I feed myself mediocre spaghetti sauce out of a jar, and I don’t have kids who I have to shuttle to soccer practice, or even a job that requires me to leave the house, so please do not take offense at the above.)

For Better Or For Worse, 7/16/07

Coming this summer, to theaters from Vancouver to Halifax:

When does their house … become your home?

When does accommodation … become self-abnegation?

When does a doormat … say enough is enough?

When does murder … become emotional self-defense?

Will any jury convict her?

All these questions and more will be answered in the thinking person’s summer blockbuster: Oedipus Wrecks: The Housening!

Gasoline Alley, 7/16/07

Driven to madness by the incessant basketball-dribbling of a bunch of young African-American fellows, Slim has decided to destroy the public court on which their noisy pastime is played by simulating a meteor strike. Dear God, I wish I had a made up a single word in that previous sentence.

Family Circus, 7/16/07

“So you see, the Great Leader used his Third Sight to recognize the sympathetic vibrations between us during Morning Inspection at the Compound. Three weeks later, we were joined in the eyes of the Unknowable God in the Sacred Dell, along with three hundred other people. The end. Now go do your homework.”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/16/07

Hey, everybody! Today’s TDIET was submitted by “Allison Everett,” who’s really faithful reader Allie Cat! “Just to give you some backstory,” she says, “I log a lot of phone time with my work; my colleagues and I all get voicecalls (although we call them ‘voice mails’) like this daily and they’re irritating (and I haven’t learned how to rewind on my current system, so that makes me an idiot in my own right, but we won’t go there). Also, I don’t currently own a black sweater vest, but it’s on my list for fall fashion must-haves.”

Beetle Bailey, 7/16/07

Beetle and Killer are not putting their IED training to use in the ways that their superior officers might have hoped.