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Beetle Bailey, 8/4/12

I was going to go into this whole thing about how “Halftrack Dysfunctional Marriage Saturdays” are always the most depressing day in the comics all week, and that Mrs. Halftrack is doing a great job of gleefully pushing her husband further down his little shame spiral rather than trying to free him from it, but then I noticed that the General’s trademark neck-wattle is visible from the side and I got distracted.

Spider-Man, 8/4/12

Sorry, everybody, we’re going to have to start speaking some other language now! English hit its pinnacle with “Never suspected I booby-trapped my clown nose!” and it’s all going to be pretty much downhill from here, so let’s get out while the getting’s good.

Garfield, 8/4/12

AHH AHHH AHHH GARFIELD TURNED JON INTO A HEAD OF CABBAGE WITH FELINE DEMON MAGIC AHHHHHH

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Last week for pre-orders of my novel, everybody! Now that I’ve reached my Kickstarter goal, the thing will be produced, so you can always hold out for the finished product. But Kickstarter supporters will be the only ones who can get the hardback edition, or an e-book version sold outside of the DRM’d major distributors. So if those thing are of interest to you, check out the Kickstarter project page!

Slylock Fox, 7/23/12

You know, if I had a time machine, I’d probably do a lot of prep research before voyaging into the past, getting down all the details I could to make sure I go to just the right time and see the most awesome and interesting things … at least, for my first few trips. After that I imagine I’d get kind of sloppy, as one tends to do when things become old hat. Instead of going down to the library and spending hours figuring out the exact place and time where I could, say, catch Napoleon alone to have a few moment’s intimate conversation with him, I’d just hit Wikipedia real fast to make sure I have the date right and head off into history. I mean, whatever, everyone today just knows the Wright Brothers as “the Wright Brothers” and I just want to go sit out on the dunes with a cooler full of beer and watch them fly that crazy plane. I don’t really give a shit which one was at the controls, you know? It’s not like I’m going to get close enough to talk to them and, oh, I don’t know, alter the course of history and disrupt the timeline, Slylock.

Meanwhile, speaking of disruptions, why exactly is Slylock hanging out on the lawn of Count Weirdly’s mountaintop castle-lair with a bunch of kids and some tie-wearing duck? Were they planning on sneaking through Weirdly’s labs while the Count was away, forgetting that time travelers can always just return to the present moments after they left? Clearly Slylock has been caught off guard and decided to pull this “Loser can’t tell his Wright brothers apart” dick move to distract from his own misconduct.

Beetle Bailey, 7/22/12

“Puritanical” is not a word I usually associate with Private Bailey, but here he is, worrying about the coarsening effects of the Internet on our language, right as he’s getting punched in the throat.

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Beetle Bailey, 7/15/12

To westerners, the most distinctive aspect of Hindu deities is the fact that they’re usually depicted as having many arms. This is meant to be understood allegorically — we use our hands to wield tools and otherwise impose our wills on the outside world, and the gods and goddesses, being more powerful than us, have more capabilities to impose that power. These deities are also often depicted holding holding in their many hands objects or icons that represent their various attributes, which is remarkably similar to the artistic tack that General Halftrack has taken here. On the other hand, most Hindu devotional art manages to depict a humanoid figure with many arms without making their torso freakishly extended like the General’s statue’s, and the idea of having the soldier depict happiness by holding a terrifying disembodied grin is an innovation in this particular sculpture.

This is also a strip where the noble if eccentrically executed sentiments of the main gag are undermined by the throwaway panels. Behold the virtuous American soldierly ideal, contrasted with actual soldiers, who respond sullenly to orders because they’d rather sit on the couch watching pretty ladies on TV. Why does Beetle Bailey hate America, is what I’m saying.

Hagar the Horrible, 7/15/12

Meanwhile, I’m having a hard time parsing how I feel about the politics of this Hagar the Horrible strip. I mean, yes, Hagar is guilty of monstrous crimes against humanity, leading murderous armed bands in multiple expeditions of violent plunder that don’t even have the flimsiest of ideological justifications, so he really should be hauled before whatever the late Carolingian equivalent of the Hague is. On the other hand, the depiction of the dungeon is particularly grim, even for a strip that routinely uses torture as a punchline — hey, see those tongs stuck into the big cauldrons of red-hot coals? GUESS WHAT THOSE ARE FOR — and of course one shouldn’t imprison lawyers for the crimes of their clients, or else the whole adversarial legal system is pointless. “Life in the 9th century is brutal” is I guess the overall theme here.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/15/12

You know, all this time everyone’s been raving over poor dead alcoholic Foster’s book, but I’m beginning to think it may not actually be very good. Specifically, any book that contains enough blunt anatomical detail for a six-year-old to follow easily but also uses the cliched euphemism “roll in the hay” seems like it would be kind of muddled. Unless Sarah means that it’s taught her the difference between boys and girls … emotionally? Based on what we know about Foster’s marriages, this information is bound to be dubious, though it may help Sarah navigate her own domestic situation. “Mommy, now I know why you’re always trying to sit closer to Daddy on the couch but he keeps moving away and then he goes into his office and you drink wine and cry!”