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Apartment 3-G, 1/31/10

Margo has been largely absent from the A3G panels of late, privately mourning the death of her fiance in her own way (which way I assume involves equal parts cocaine and fisticuffs). While Sunday installments of this strip usually just consist of recaps of the previous week’s action, today we at least get a welcome Margo cameo. Her mind clouded by grief and/or drugs, she takes the opportunity to berate Tommie for no good reason, just screaming things at her that may or may not actually be responses to anything Tommie is actually saying.

Meanwhile, Professor Papagoras, realizing the implications of his sexy affair with a pill addict, contemplates two asprin and wonders if they’ll be a gateway to the hard stuff. Will he be on the street in a few weeks, desperately seeking a connection who can supply him with some black market Nuprin?

Mark Trail, 1/31/10

Mark extols the cleverness of the fisher without really dwelling on what its plans for that adorable old porcupine are now that it’s been flipped over on its back. The Wikipedia article on the subject assures us that stories that the fisher will “scoop out [the porcupine’s] belly like a ripe melon” are exaggerated; however, actually observed behavior, in which the fisher kills the porcupine over the course of half an hour by biting it on the face, is no less unsettling. Such a scene would be inappropriate for the Sunday funnies, though it might be amusing to depict Rusty watching on and weeping in terror at the end of the gruesome process.

Judge Parker, 1/31/10

Today’s Judge Parker is pretty much all about fucking! Sam, who lived in sin with Abbey for years before she made an honest man out of him, shows further hypocrisy by fulminating about Neddy’s sexual autonomy while crowing over Rocky and Godiva re-energizing their Hollywood sham marriage out in the guest house’s bed. Meanwhile, Randy Parker has arrived at April’s, for sex. Unfortunately, his disastrous new brush cut and ill-advised decision to pair a brown jacket with a black t-shirt may mitigate against this desired outcome; April is already openly fantasizing that he had decided not to show up.

Panels from Blondie, 1/31/10

Dagwood’s odd gait, with his unnaturally low shin-to-thigh ratio and his knees perpetually bent even in situations where normal people would stand upright, is one of this strip’s most striking artistic conventions. I believe it was a commentor on this blog who suggested that Mr. Dithers at some point had Dagwood’s hamstrings cut to limit his mobility and prevent him from fleeing his sinister employer. However, in this final panel, we see that his unusual leg structure may be an evolutionary adaptation that allows him to sleep comfortably on the family’s too-short couch.

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/31/10

The throwaway panels of today’s Snuffy Smith offer an explanation of the strange mixture of modern and archaic that defines the strip’s universe. At some point, perhaps several generations before the action began, the America we know was destroyed in some terrible cataclysm, possibly a nuclear war, leaving behind a ragtag, malnourished group of survivors attempting to rebuild their civilization, using their dim memory of the previous golden age as a guide. The disaster has also left its mark on the language these characters speak; just as the English language changed rapidly in the Middle Ages, when the ruling Norman aristocracy spoke French and English was used only by uneducated peasants, so too have these hardy survivors been too busy over the past decades rebuilding their smashed world to worry about the niceties of a bygone era’s grammatical rules. Thus, it’s not too surprising that the polity just beginning to arise in the aftermath of this destruction has the neologistic name of the “Newnited States”.

In unrelated news, the Smith (or “Smif,” in the new orthography) family gene pool is lousy with criminality.

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Herb and Jamaal, 1/25/10

Good lord, Herb and Jamaal, I think it would be best for you to stick with what you know — risible non-specificity — because when you try to make up actual names for the inhabitants of your fictional universe, you fail in discombobulating ways. I admit to being totally baffled as to what image “Who Waa Twang” is supposed to evoke — some horribly misguided attempt to create a Chinese or African name, maybe? I’m also having a bit of difficulty buying Herb, who has two young children and a sprightly mother-in-law, as being old enough to have even as a child enjoyed an art form that had more or less vanished by 1955. It’s possible that he managed to convince a significantly younger woman to marry him, since his diminutive stature might have made him appear younger in her eyes.

One thing I do like is the fact that The Guy Who Played “Who Waa Twang” is still an imperious, self-centered ass, like the movie star he is. Fishing saliva-covered false teeth off of the no doubt filthy floor? That’s for the little people! TGWP“WWT” (as they call him in the tabloids) doesn’t bend over to pick stuff up when there are adoring fans to do it for him, and there always adoring fans to do it for him.

Family Circus, 1/25/10

It’s true that I’ve been on a bit of a Family Circus run of late, but how can I not be when it’s so continually and hilariously cruel? My favorite part about today’s panel is the smug little smile on Billy’s face in the background. Clearly Billy realizes that his little brother is so monumentally stupid that he’s literally forgotten how to walk. Perhaps he’s been out there for days, holding that snowball and hoping someone will come within range; it would explain the pile of snow that’s accrued around his feet.

Gil Thorp, 1/25/10

There’s nothing that turns Gil and Mimi Thorp on more than inappropriately matchmaking with their students! Cassie Corman, for those not following along, is a just-turned-18 senior engaged in a tempestuous and parentally unapproved affair with Ray, a pizza jockey with few social or economic prospects. Obviously her parents will be thrilled when she ditches this lout for Steve Luhm, a college drop-out and high school janitor, who under certain conditions might appear to be marginally higher on the social ladder.

Judge Parker, 1/25/10

Whoah, older Spencer adoptee Neddy will soon at last be returning from her Paris sojourn! And with a new boyfriend to boot. I’m intrigued by Sam’s “How young … and how talented?” question, as he appears to be trying to find the sweet spot between “Neddy is shacking up some some 45-year-old has-been” and “Neddy is molesting a child prodigy.”

Also, when Neddy left for Paris (four years and an artist ago in real time, which is, what, three weeks ago in strip time?) she had some boyfriend to whom she tearfully bid goodbye by doing some kind of cool tongue thing, so there’s sure to be room for drama!

Spider-Man, 1/25/10

Whee, Spidey’s thrilling tales of cowardice continue! “I’ve made myself safe by hiding from Sabretooth! Maybe I could make the city safe … by hiding more effectively! I can’t see anything going wrong with this plan, in the sense that if I can’t see it happening because I’m not around to see it, I won’t know about it!”

Blondie, 1/25/10

“I mean, you might think that a genuine pink-and-purple macaw would be pink and purple! But that’s a rookie mistake.”

UPDATE: Uh, speaking of mistakes, as several commentors pointed out, that’s a pink-and-purple beaked macaw, with the coloring actually pretty good for once. The Comics Curmudgeon regrets the error.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/25/10

Wait, the mule is Looweezy’s aunt? And is also related to her husband somehow? Hootin’ Holler’s kinship networks are even more unsettling than I would have imagined.

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Gil Thorp, 1/23/10

“Help” = all-too-interested-in-high-school-athletes creepster janitor Steve Luhm, obviously, whose stint “helping” the girl’s basketball team will turn out to be even less appropriate than his efforts with the boys.

Family Circus, 1/23/10

This is an illustration of the empathy-free horrors that the Keane Kids have become as a result of their monstrous upbringing, and a good reason why the Keane Kompound must be bombed, from a great height, for the safety of all mankind.

Sally Forth, 1/23/10

Having gone behind Ted’s back to loan family money to her deadbeat sister, Sally knows that she has only one chance to deflect her husband’s anger: to finally cater to his fantasy of having sex with Han Solo. Will Han shoot first in this scenario?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/10

Since Hootin’ Holler has long been neglected by the flatlander-dominated government and has never been serviced by any sort of municipal water supply, its impoverished rustic residents have only their own bodily fluids with which to bathe themselves.

Pluggers, 1/23/10

After a plugger dies of a massive coronary, the indelible dents his enormous ass left in the furniture make up the monument he leaves for his descendants to remember him by.