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Mark Trail, 11/15/08

As a special gift to all of us, because we’ve been so good, Mark Trail is extending the Magical Moment of Fisticuffs for us for another day’s worth of punchy bliss. In today’s panel one, we seem to be seeing the same frozen-in-amber post-punch moment depicted in yesterday’s panel three, but from a different angle; however, Mark’s bellowed dialog has gone from passably bad-ass (“DOES THIS CONVINCE YOU?”) to stilted run-through-the-automated-translator-from-who-knows-what (“THIS LITTLE CONTEST OF YOURS IS UNLAWFUL”). The question is: did Mark have time to shout both of these things at Mr. Rabbit (or whatever his name is) as he tumbled slowly back into the murky swamp water? Or did Rabbit pop back up like a Weeble-Wobble sometime between yesterday and today, giving Mark a chance to lay down another punch and get in another awkward little bon mot?

The rest is no less delightful for being par for the course: Mark admonishes the gathered off-camera yokels, who sit by and do nothing, then breaks Sneaky’s chains with his bare hands and carries him off to safety. For the sake of Mark’s ego, I hope that the adorable raccoon waits until they’re out his backwoods tormentors’ sight before launching his entirely unprovoked attack on Mark’s eyes.

(Psst! This is a perfect time for you to pick up some Fist O’ Justice stuff from the Comics Curmudgeon store!)

Herb and Jamaal, 11/15/08

You know, every once in a while I say to myself, “Oh, the Herb-and-Jamaal-is-hilariously-nonspecific bit is getting old,” but then the strip goes and gets even more hilariously nonspecific. In today’s panel one, Jamaal ensures that those reading this strip in an anthology published in the middle of the 21st century will be able to relate the joke to their own experiences during the Great Disco Revival of the 2030s.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/15/08

Considering that this backwoods medico is asking our hero if he’s bothered by the sight of blood and advancing on him with what appears to be a scalpel, Snuffy Smith looks awfully chipper. My first guess was that the doctor assumes (correctly) that Snuffy would not be missed if he were to be sliced up and his organs harvested, but then I realized that nobody would want his moonshine-drenched kidneys or hog-fat-choked heart.

Apartment 3-G, 11/15/08

After a tragic romance with a brooding, no-talent, junkie urbanite, it’s not surprising that Lu Ann wants to hop into the arms of a fresh-faced Dakotan. Soon, though, she’ll learn that rural folk have drug problems too, with Cody addicted to trailer-made meth — or, as the locals call it, “prairie dope.”

For Better Or For Worse, 11/15/08

Yes, who said newspapers would become obsolete? Certainly nobody in the late ’70s, when this strip ostensibly takes place.

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So, longer, more effusive thanks, plus more info on the phrase “Hot Blogger” and what it means for you, when I do the COTW post tonight, but: a huge THANKS! for Uncle Lumpy’s turn as guest blogger, and an even HUGER THANKS for everyone who gave money to the fund drive. Aw, you guys! You’re the best! Blush, etc.

Anyway, on to Monday’s comics!

Archie, 10/6/08

The AJGLU 3000 may not know much, but it knows this: a couple of old people talking about raising the prices of nitrate-laden cafeteria food isn’t enough to sustain a strip. It also knows that depictions of pretty teenage girls move product. Unfortunately, its grasp of “pretty” is fairly loose, as panel two indicates. Yes, my vacuum-tube-driven friend, large breasts are generally considered attractive on human females, but not when they only emphasize how freakishly tiny the skull of such female is. And even if one has a tiny pinhead perched at the end one’s neck, generally a true nose, rather than some barely visible lump just north of the upper lip, is an important element on a face. Sadly, what we have here is less “easy on the eyes” and more “candidate for the freak show.”

On the other hand, she has distracted me from the terrible punchline.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/6/8

White rural voters are apparently up for grabs in swing states like Virginia and Missouri this year, so here’s a bit of advice for Barack Obama and John McCain: when campaigning in the Blue Ridge Mountains, promise that the perpetrators of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith will be jailed and tried for crimes against humanity. Today’s strip encapsulates a number of this feature’s common tropes about the noble hillbilly — that he is mooch who will ask random strangers for money; that he’s so dumb that he doesn’t immediately recognize someone who’s new in town, despite “town” having a population of roughly 150; that he wears patched shirts and hideous overalls; that he considers “Mistofer” some kind of acceptable form of address — all of which amount to nothing more than slanderous hate speech.

Curtis, 10/6/08

Nothing would have made me happier than if Michelle had on carried her usual contemptuous conversation with Curtis with her clothing going completely unremarked upon. I must admit to being both amused and unsettled by the final panel, though, in which we learn that she’s not wearing a fencing outfit, but a “fencing” outfit.

Momma, 10/6/08

I tried really hard to figure how, or why, this might be about Hillary Clinton and/or Sarah Palin, but then I decided, why bother? Just enjoy a Momma that consists of one dotty old lady saying something inscrutable to another, and not, say, Oedipal horror.

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Slylock Fox, 9/28/08

Dum de dum de dooo, what do we have here … why, it’s Slylock Fox, engaged in light-hearted math-based banter … with a pig … who’s working at … a … deli counter? Right next to a case that’s features distinctly pork-like offerings? This … this is an abomination! You just know that our cheerful cannibal is interested in the result of this little math puzzler because it can help him figure out how much usable meat he can get out of the hobos and lost children he lures into the supermarket after hours. The lovingly detailed deli slicer sure as hell isn’t helping, either. I wonder if our deli-man-pig maintains that creepy expression, with the frozen smile and huge, unblinking eyes, as he uses the slicer to turn his hapless victims into fine sandwich-ready meat products.

Yet more disturbing is Max’s fascination with the cheese, as he’s surely imagining the lady cow who produced it, who is kept in perverted captivity, complicated machinery hooked up to her nipples.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/28/08

Snuffy Smith more or less traffics in overwrought reaction shots. Usually, as in the second of the throwaway panels, these take the form of laughter so uproarious that it dislodges the tongue, and attempt by their sheer exuberance to make the strip’s lame jokes appear funny to someone. Even in this context, though, Elviney’s look of hat-popping horror in the final panel seems a bit much; to match it, Maw Smif ought to be pulling a blanket made of human skin out of her washbin.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 9/28/08

Hey, everybody, you know what’s really menacing? Illiteracy! Teach a kid to read, today!