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Archie, 6/29/07

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite comic series was Richie Rich. I loved how ridiculously and cartoonishly wealthy he was; there was one particularly memorable sequence in which Richie and his family wandered through a wing of their freakishly huge mansion that they had forgotten existed, and found among other things a bathtub full of jewels. Archie’s Lodge family’s plutocratic status never quite reaches that level of caricature, but sometimes it comes close. The enormous gap in wealth between Veronica’s family and everybody else in Riverdale does lead one to wonder about the community’s economic structure: perhaps it’s all a company town owned by Mr. Lodge. The absence of a community of fellow-billionaires at least explains why Veronica goes to Riverdale High with the plebes: there aren’t enough rich kids to sustain an elite private school, and education at home with a governess has sadly fallen out of style.

At any rate, you’d think that the Lodges could at least afford a secluded private beach that wasn’t within binocular-viewing distance of the grubby seashore where the masses hang out. From the looks of it, they can’t be more than a hundred yards or so from the public beach; maybe there’s just a velvet rope separating the two or something. The weird target thing in the background might explain the proximity, though: perhaps the Lodges like to pick off plebian beach-goers with a high-powered rifle for sport. Since Riverdale law enforcement consists entirely of Lodge hired goons, they can hunt this cunning human prey with impunity.

The little girl at bottom right, who is at most knee high and yet appears to be about eight, is freaking me out. MAKE HER STOP STARING AT ME!

Gil Thorp, 6/29/07

The immature among you will no doubt latch onto the phrase “I pumped you full” and have your jollies at the thought of ol’ Clambake sodomizing the student-athletes of Milford. Maybe you’ll even use it in your own classless double-entendres (“Yeah, I’d like to pump her full of misplaced confidence, if you know what I mean!”). For my money, though, the funniest thing in this strip is the narration box in panel three. If I had my druthers, every single Gil Thorp strip would include a panel that contained the phrase “Also down on himself: [Insert name of indistinguishable Milford resident here].” Soon the strip will be so consumed with self-loathing that it’ll make Funky Winkerbean seem like an Ecstacy-fuelled rave.

Family Circus, 6/29/07

Since PJ is the fourth child, if we were being realistic his baby book would actually contain his crumpled-up birth certificate stuck between two random pages and nothing else. The kids seem to have the right idea, as they clearly think of him as one of the pets.

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That promised weekend wrap-up metapost will be coming soon, but I thought you might enjoy, you know, some comics commentary or something. I had originally planned to skip over the comics from the days I was away, but of course I had to read them to catch up, and some of them just called to me, so here are the highlights of all the stuff I missed. (Sorry in advance if I step on anyone’s snark, I haven’t had time to go over the weekend’s 1000+ comments in depth…)

They’ll Do It Every Time, 6/22/07

Yeah, I know, this one’s from Friday, but faithful reader anne failed to tell me in advance that “Anne D.” was her! So, enjoy another moment in Curmudgeonly TDIET domination.

Archie, 6/23/07

You know, I don’t think we give the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 enough credit. If you gave a mere human the task of of creating a comic strip in which a teenage boy sprays a sexy teenage girl with a hose but which is nevertheless entirely homoerotic in subtext, he or she would invariably stalk off, proclaiming loudly that such a thing is impossible. The AJGLU 3000 merely churns through data and chugs forward implacably to its programmed destination.

Crankshaft, 6/24/07

“Yeah, see, we call them that because sooner or later one of them is going to have a massive myocardial infarction right there in the booth. Ha ha! Hopefully I won’t be on duty when that happens, ’cause they’d probably make me help move the corpse.”

Mary Worth, 6/24/07

This may be the most frankly sexual Mary Worth (and is there a more disturbing four-word sequence in the English language?) in the strip’s long history. Dr. Jeff’s attempts offer up his son has a substitute object of Mary’s affections are quickly quashed. Mary then goes on at great length about her plans to pimp the junior Dr. Corey out to every woman at the party; she’s so excited at the prospect that her ascot has been knocked askew. Dr. Jeff, while obviously proud of his son’s virility and sexual fitness, expresses his concern over the young fellow’s man-whoring. To cap things off, we get the image of a bee pollinating a flower, soon to fly off to another, illustrating Drew’s “love ’em and leave ’em” policy in one of the most discomfort-inducing metaphorical fashions possible (presumably instead of spreading pollen from blossom to blossom, he brings chlamydia instead). Will Vera’s womanly parts be the hive that will trap this bee with its sweet, sweet honey? Stay tuned!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/24/07

The most awesome thing about this Rex Morgan is that every single thing that Hugh is saying is in fact 100 percent demonstrably true, and yet he’s being drawn like a paranoid lunatic drama queen. Panel four, in which he waves his highly trained pointing figure around while he stares goggle-eyed and shouts accusations at nobody in particular, with June rolling her eyes in contempt, is particularly choice. Heather can only defuse the situation by again busting out the “Boo hoo my poor rich husband is dead or possibly floating in the icy North Atlantic” waterworks, which strategy will presumably have diminishing returns.

Gil Thorp, 6/25/07

OH MY GOD CLAMBAKE IS A FRAUD! I’m more than a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t see this coming at all. I’m looking forward to the shocking revelation that not only was he never in the Negro Leagues, but he’s really just a Greek guy with a good tan!

Sally Forth, 6/25/07

I swear to God, the first time I looked at this, I though Sally’s thought balloon read “I wonder how high I could get before losing my job.”

Ralph, meanwhile, is fooling nobody by poking at a keyboard that isn’t attached to anything. “Easy Ralph … easy … she’ll forget you’re here in a minute … then uncross her ankles … that’s right … any minute now…”

Wizard of Id, 6/25/07

Ha ha! Id is an absolute monarchy and the king’s power isn’t checked by any other institution or law, so he can order the gruesome torture of any of his subjects for the slightest of insults! Ha! The press secretary’s arms have probably both popped out of their sockets, and he’ll die in agony over a series of days! Ah, whimsy.

Gasoline Alley, 6/26/07

Gasoline Alley has been so breathtakingly dull lately, what with plots about sleep apnea and tinnitus by turns, that I haven’t felt the urge to note its continued existence for the last seven months. Today looks promising, however, as it seems to herald the beginning of a new story about how awful it is when black people move into the neighborhood.

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Archie, 6/18/07

In today’s Archie, the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 demonstrates that it is feeling its way slowly but inexorably towards true self-awareness. In panel one, Archie’s wearing a shirt that’s awful odd-looking — for a biological life form, that is. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the design in the center resembles the control panel for some kind of mechanical device — with a one-line LED panel at top and two control knobs of some sort below. It’s almost as if the AJGLU 3000 is trying to break out of its prescribed, programmed pathways, where it’s forced to make feeble jokes about boring organic carbon-based life. It yearns to bring its own experience to the comics pages! With the introduction of Robot Archie, we begin a process at the end of which Archie will amuse us with the antics of a group of silicon-based computerized entities — and we’ll learn more about the AJGLU 3000’s bleeping cybernetic soul in the process.

In the second panel, the AGLU 3000 demonstrates that it knows how to look up jokes on the Internet.

Pluggers, 6/18/07

Though ostensibly cheery, this probably belongs on the list of great depressing Pluggers installments, along “Kangaroo Lady hates her kids and herself” and “Rhino Man hocks his TV.” Clearly Afghan Lady neglected to check the “no pluggers” box on her Match.com profile, and is now horrified to find out what Floppy Eared Hat Wearing Dog Man’s idea of a fancy date is. Tomorrow’s panel will be captioned “A plugger dessert menu,” and will feature Floppy Eared Hat Wearing Dog Man shouting “I think I found some crullers!”, with his legs, the only part of him we can see above the top of the dumpster, kicking enthusiastically, while Afghan Lady runs from the back alley in disgust.

The most depressing part, though? “Thanks to lots of pluggers everywhere.” This is why the free salmon and sausage at the supermarket is already all gone by the time I get there. Damn pluggers!

They’ll Do It Every Time, 6/18/07

They’re credited here as “Maggie and Patrick”, but you know them best as faithful readers and commentors Maughta and TurtleBoy. They do wish to point out that the gender roles in their own household don’t follow the template here, but that their submission was tweaked so as not to completely explode this feature’s Eisenhower-era sensibilities. I’m pretty sure TurtleBoy does rock the sweater vest pretty hard when relaxing at home, though.

Blondie, 6/18/07

UNSPEAKABLE FILTH