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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/5/10

Say, it’s been a while since we checked in with the refugee-ne’er-do-well wackiness in Rex Morgan, hasn’t it? Today, it seems that Sarah is learning a valuable lesson: that, when you’re in a position of power over someone in a desperate situation, they might give up their most treasured possessions “voluntarily,” just to buy themselves a few more days or hours of survival! This knowledge will come in handy for her future career as a brutal post-apocalyptic warlord.

Unfortunately, Toots is about to learn a similar important lesson as well: when you’re a refugee and not in a position to be economically productive, you only have so many things you can trade away for safety. When Sarah comes back for more — and she will — the pickings will get slimmer, and fast. “Say, little girl, do you want this stripey shirt? All the other kids will think you’re super cool if you’ve got a stripey shirt? Hmm, how about this half-empty paint can? No? Uh … dirty socks? I found some dirty socks over here…”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/5/10

As part of my policy about being open and honest with you when normally unfunny comics make me laugh, I admit to being amused that Elviney is reading a publication called Tabloid Doin’s. However, the fact that Loweezy is perusing something with a much more conventional name confounded me a bit, and forces me to conclude that in fact Tabloid Doin’s is some kind of trade magazine detailing the hiring and firing of editors at various tabloid publications. “I don’t care what you say, Loweezy! Ain’t nobody in this latest crop o’ gossip maven ken hold a candle to Bonnie Fuller!”

Gil Thorp, 3/5/10

The Mudlark basketball team has once again failed to even make the playdowns, which I’m frankly glad about, as it allows me to focus more energy on Coach Thorp’s increasingly twee wardrobe. First a sweater vest, now some kind of cardigan, complete with a chunky piping? I love it, Gil!

Shoe, 3/5/10

Roz’s interlocutor is in fact a bird; so, while she shouldn’t be anxious about using her wings to travel through the air, being killed, dismembered, fried, and eaten is a legitimate concern.

Jumble, 3/5/10

I kind of love how enthusiastic this guy is about fresh-ground cheese. “Yes! It adds so much flavor! Look, look at this cheese I’m pointing to, everyone! Oh my God, it completely transforms the dish! Keep adding more! Pile on the cheese! Don’t ever stop!”

Pluggers, 3/5/10

You’re a plugger if the terrifying secret government lab that created the man-animal abomination that you are saved money by grafting variously sized torsos onto identical sets of cloned legs.

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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.