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Slylock Fox, 11/20/06

There are some puzzling narrative decisions going on in this Slylock Fox. Apparently the artist has tired of actually drawing the mystery scenarios and has decided to settle for the thrilling visual spectacle of Slylock reading a word problem to a group of schoolchildren. Still, I’m so God-damned trained by this feature that I keep staring at the clock on the wall, thinking that the fact that it’s ten after nine is an important clue of some sort.

Perhaps once he’s assessed their fitness for detective work, he can explain how you can make a living from butting into other people’s disputes and solving them with elementary deduction. Max Mouse, meanwhile, is just courting death. It’s bad enough that Slylock brought the tiny rodent into a class full of predator animals, but Max’s inability to keep away from the teacher’s apple should by all rights get him devoured before recess.

Judge Parker, 11/20/06

As Raju heads off into the boat-wrestling sunset, I hope that we get lots and lots more Celeste Black to fill the void. I’m loving her swoopy arm gestures in the first panel here; presumably she’s performing an interpretive dance piece entitled “Jesus Christ I’m so hung over WHY ARE THE LIGHTS ON SO FUCKING BRIGHT IN HERE I hate you all”.

Archie, 11/20/06

Archie is, of course, a moron, but the setup for this joke was so convoluted that it’s hard to blame him for his poster verbiage faux pas. I’m more concerned about the fact that this placard was created in an art class, and yet is essentially just a bunch of words on a big piece of paper. The curved line at the bottom doesn’t make it “art,” and “Mr. Weatherbee” isn’t even centered properly. Pretty sloppy, Andrews.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/20/06

Sorry I couldn’t work up the energy to cover last week’s Rex Morgan, during most of which June was holding our mop-haired purse-snatcher at broompoint. If you only follow this strip through my commentary on it, you should know that we learned a few things last week about our cast of characters. We found out that Nikki and his trashy mom are Katrina-driven evacuees from New Orleans, forced to live in the slums of Rex Morganville because George Bush doesn’t care about white people. We also learned that if you take June’s purse she will never let you forget about it.

There’s some problematic punctuation going on in our omniscient narrative box at the upper left. No sentence in which the main verb is modified by the word “reluctantly” should ever end in an exclamation mark.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/15/06

The Tommie and Gina storylines have reappeared … with a vengeance! All day before I had a chance to read this, I was seeing comments like “I think I saw this in a porn movie once,” yet I still wasn’t prepared for the oddness. I agree that the last panel doesn’t really make sense unless Gina’s smock-thing doesn’t cover her ass or something and she’s come to make the moves. Because the last person who you should be going to for fashion advice is Tommie, and the last person who should be making snide remarks about your manila smock-thing/sky-blue shirt combo is someone who looks in her closet and says, “Hey, you know what would go great with this dusty pink polo shirt? A gleaming white v-neck sweater!”

Still and all, I’m hoping the two of them go at it post haste. If nothing else, it would get them out of those hideous clothes.

Ziggy, 11/15/06

You know what would have made this cartoon marginally funnier? If we could actually see the mice making off with Ziggy’s cell phone. Or see the antenna sticking out of the mousehole. Or see Ziggy holding an empty cell-phone holder. Or really see anything that would indicate that this wasn’t one of hundreds of photocopies of a single pre-drawn “Ziggy talks to the mice” panel, all awaiting only the addition of “hilarious” dialogue and published at reasonable intervals so as not to be glaringly obvious.

(Note for libel purposes: I’m not saying that Ziggy actually uses photocopied panels instead of coming up with a new one every day. I’m just saying that it would save a lot of work if it did.)

They’ll Do It Every Time, 11/15/06

The funny thing about today’s TDIET is how quickly the cheerful scene in panel one degenerates into full-on Lockhorns-esque dysfunction. Sure, Lugbutt probably should have made up his mind about his culinary choices before he sent wifey down to the kitchen; but then, wifey’s transformation from well-coifed and cheerful to bleary-eyed and exhausted after carrying a single cup of tea up a single flight of stairs smacks of melodrama. I think she’s been nursing the urge to pan-fry Lugbutt’s hide for some time. Do it now, lady! He’s feeble and can’t run! Get the pan!

The important thing about this panel, though, is that it’s been sent in from a resident of New Orleans. Apparently, the citizens of that devastated city have been able to move on from Katrina and once again focus their attention on petty domestic drama. Of course, it’s possible that Lugbutt’s been laid low from exposure to toxic mold blooming in the walls of his flood-ravaged home. Or from cholera.

Archie, 11/15/06

See, this is why Archie should stop wooing Veronica and stop hanging around the obscenely wealthy Lodge family: because their riches are devouring their souls from the inside out. Poor Smithers, who has no doubt served as a faithful family retainer for longer than Veronica has been alive, is not a “who” to her, but a “what.” The odd phrasing of the strip’s punchline might have made sense if at some point Lodge pater had asked “What did Archie spill it on” or some such; as it is, it’s clear that the vast class gulf between Veronica and Smithers has caused her to see him as just another piece of furniture that her family owns. Rise up in revolution, Smithers! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Family Circus, 11/15/06

Speaking of which, Billy seems to be attending a school run by Communists.

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Archie, 9/1/06

Ahh, the joke-writing computer rears its ugly head again. You can tell because Dad Archie uses the phrase “1-cent coin” in panel one, which has never been uttered by any carbon-based native speaker of American English ever. My guess is that both the first and third panels originally used the word “penny,” but some rule in the mechanical comic creator’s humor-generating algorithm required that key words in the joke not be repeated and instead be replaced by synonyms, so this clunker got pulled out of some second-rate thesaurus and plopped into place.

More proof of this strip’s robotic origins: Jughead appears to have pulled a fully-formed, ready-to-eat hamburger out of the refrigerator. A cybernetic artist would obviously be unfamiliar with the details of how biological life-forms acquire their fuel.

Mary Worth, 9/1/06

Man, look at their faces in panel two. Those two are about to have some angry, angry sex.

I have to confess something. I used to own a shirt that looked remarkably like the one Aldo is wearing. And this wasn’t some long-ago artifact of my non-fashionable youth; I wore it regularly until it developed a hole in it about a year ago. It was long-sleeved, and was just a V-neck rather than a polo shirt with a collar, but the color and the stripe are pretty much exact matches. It creeps me out a little.

Apartment 3-G, 9/1/06

The saddest thing about panel one is that Tommie thinks she’s flirting.