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Sally Forth, 5/4/06

Tune in for future installments of Sally Forth’s alcohol-fueled blackouts and ancillary hilarity:

• “Gee, Sal, you say the car had four tires when you came home from work?”
• “All I know is that Ralph says you were the most giving and nurturing lover he’s ever had.”
• “Mom, Faye says she won’t come over for dinner again until you get rid of that gun.”
• “So you say you remember punching the other softball coach in the face, but you don’t remember kicking him in the gut after he went down?”
• “All I know is that Alice says you were the most giving and nurturing lover she’s ever had.”

Judge Parker, 5/4/06

I’m not familiar enough with the rich Judge Parker backstory to know whether Abbey was born to fabulous wealth or if she came by it by marrying (or just shacking up with? I can’t keep it straight) Sam Driver, but she clearly has a lot to learn when it comes to ordering her henchpersons about. She’s got the part where you make them dress up in ludicrous uniforms right, but she doesn’t really know how to talk to them:

• Incorrect way to respond to relayed information from an underling: Allowing to them learn unnecessary details by engaging them in a rousing game of Exposition.
• Correct way to respond to relayed information from an underling: “Did I give you permission to make eye contact with me? Return to your duties at once, Unit 39-D!”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 5/4/06

This panel ignores the tremendous pressure anyone named “Neato” is under to be tidy. As if four grueling years of male nursing school weren’t enough!

B.C., 5/4/06

OK, but see, this is just totally insane.

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B.C., 4/19/06

See, here’s the thing: “an eclipse of the sun” and “night”: not the same thing. Having long waged war on biology, B.C. has apparently decided to move on to astronomy next.

Hey, look at what’s-his-name’s face in the second panel! He hates this just as much as we do.

Gil Thorp, 4/19/06

Wow, Gil looks pretty pissed off in panel three. I think his motivation for this little heart-to-heart with the Rap Dog is less “Here’s a kid who could really benefit from a college education — if only he’d get motivated!” and more “God damn it, I thought I was finally going to be rid of him — if this hump is still hanging around this town next year, I will have to kill him.”

The Middletons, 4/19/06

Ha ha, it’s funny because his mother wants to harvest his organs! Wait, did I say “funny”? I meant “horrifying.”

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Mary Worth, 4/15/06

“Whale”? Did Mary just sit through a grueling week-long dinner dominated by savage passive-aggressive battles over eating and weight loss and just think “whale”? OH NO SHE DIDN’T! That skinny old biddy has crossed the line: even if it was just in thought balloon form, the sarcasm quotes around “whale” make sure that we know all about her smug superiority.

I’m looking at this strip again and just noticing that Lou is continuing to attempt to force-feed his hapless wife: he’s got a death grip on the back of her neck and he looks like he’s doing the “airplane” game with that spoonful of off-white mush, much as you would with a recalcitrant infant. Even creepier to me is Kelly’s attitude, which seems to boil down to, “Ha ha, that husband of mine, he’s an angry control freak who refuses to allow me to have any will of my own! Whaddya gonna do?”

B.C., 4/15-16/06

God and Mammon met head-on as B.C.’s Easter weekend took a Holy Saturday break for some good-old fashioned tax humor. I’ll ignore the joke of Saturday’s strip to point out that the keen-sighted blonde caveman dude in panel one (Peter? Thor? Does anyone actually know or care?) is suddenly transmorgified in panel two into dark-haired, glasses-wearing Clumsy, who is one of the easiest characters in the strip to recognize. I’m sure there’s a totally legitimate reason behind the miraculous transformation and I encourage you to post your ideas about it in the comments.

Easter Sunday we get the real goods, though. I think I caused some confusion Friday when I praised Johnny Hart for not hating on Darwin or the Jews; I meant that he didn’t do so in that particular comic strip, not that he never did. However, since I spent the weekend chowing down on a lot of unrisen matzo bread, I have to admit that I found the opening two-panel joke a bit unsettling.

The rest of the strip makes use of a technique found in some New Testaments, in which everything that’s a direct quote from Jesus is printed in red. This is, I suppose, intended to help us figure out when we have switched between the two speakers in this dialogue, though I’m intrigued that a convention used to highlight what most Christians believe to be the literal word of God is here used in a second-rate Dr. Seuss pastiche in the Sunday comics. When I showed this to Mrs. C., she asked, “Is this supposed to be funny?” I answered with a venerable Simpsons line: it’s not ha-ha funny.

Apartment 3-G, 4/16/06

On a happier note, Apartment 3-G continues to tease us with he prospect of a Tommie-centered storyline. Either wacky adventures await her (and us) as she journeys into Lucy and Ted’s den of boring lovesickness, or it’s just a device to write her out of the strip for the next few months while Margo and Lu Ann do more interesting things. As much as I want to see our favorite redhead in the spotlight, I hate to see the Margo not get her due: I love the first panel in bottom row, where she’s air-quoting so vigorously that she looks like she’s about the sprain something. The use of quotes in the word balloon to match her little bunny-ear finger gesture really drives the point home. Much as I love Margo, though, I am of course one half of a perfect couple, so I’m going to choose to take offense to her decree in the final panel.