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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/09

In the early days of this blog, I poured scorn on Sally Forth for accepting product placement money from progressive rock legends Rush. In the subsequent years, however, as the newspaper business has imploded and the comics industry upon which I have come to rely has been brought ever closer to extinction, I’ve rethought my position on nontraditional revenue-generating strategies. For instance, Beetle Bailey is both a hilarious comic that will provide a much-needed laugh over your morning coffee and a brand that is highly trusted by the coveted 55-to-80 demographic. So, when Sarge admits that his recurrent incontinence causes him to shun social situations or long trips into unfamiliar territories, that would have been a great time to open up a conversation with readers about Detrol, or Lyrinel XL, or, you know, whoever’s willing to pay more. Not only would this have been both lucrative for the holders of the intellectual property rights pertaining to Beetle Bailey and educational for consumers, it also would have replaced a baffling and distasteful punchline about Otto carrying his urine-soaked fire hydrant around with him.

Mark Trail, 10/17/09

Poachy McSideburns is proving himself the master of the at once obvious and profound question about Mark Trail. “How did he stay alive?” touched on matters both biological and philosophical; today’s “Is he a wild-life man?” gets right to the paradox at the heart of this strip. Mark is clean-cut, straight-arrow, not a hair out of place; yet he is more in tune with the natural world than he is with the experiences of those of us living in so-called “civilization.” Is he “man,” or is he “wild-life”? How does he reconcile these two different parts of his essence? We should all offer thanks to our yellow-shirted philosopher of the swamp, before he’s punched into submission.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/13/09

Many people turn to Beetle Bailey in their local newspaper and say “What, they still publish this?” Wait, did I say “many”? Because I meant “all.” Anyway, of those who put forth any more brain effort than that to the matter, many wonder what, exactly, Camp Swampy is for, since none of its soldiers are ever shipped out to fight in America’s various wars, which is just as well because their training regimen seems suspiciously lax. But today’s strip reveals that the sloth and squalor exhibited by the base’s inhabitants are just a cover for its real purpose as the secret research center for the next generation of deadly military technologies. Just look at that blackboard! Numbers … arithmetic … physics … my God, what sort of superbombs are these geniuses working on? Known braniac Plato is of course one of the top researchers, living incognito as an enlisted man to throw off suspicion. It’s too bad Beetle’s got a little too interested in matters above his pay grade, though, because now Plato’s going to have to beat him to death with a broom.

Crankshaft, 10/13/09

Oh, look at these two damned souls! Every non-recurring Crankshaft character must fulfill one of two roles: “Person who makes an unfunny pun or play on words while smirking grotesquely” or “person who responds dubiously to said wordplay.” Like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, they manifest themselves to occasionally offer a commentary on the other fate-crushed denizens of the strip, only to fade back into the wings, ready to appear again later as another smirking/dubiously responding pair.

Apartment 3-G, 10/13/09

Someday, we’ll look back and say, “Gee, Apartment 3-G turned into Aristotle Papagoras Gets So Much Middle-Aged Ass so gradually we barely even noticed it.” Margo gets plenty of facetime in this strip, so I’m willing to allow for her brief absence, but if I were Lu Ann I’d be a little miffed that we’re following the swath Dr. P is cutting through Manhattan’s ladies rather than her tormented family life. Tommie, of course, is glad to avoid to narrative’s glare, because every time she appears in the strip she suffers terribly.

Family Circus, 10/13/09

And that’s when Jeffy learned that he wasn’t the fairest of them all, at all.

Pluggers, 10/13/09

I have to admit that I am charmed by the look of shock on the he-plugger’s face in the background. “My goodness, my poor wife has been possessed by that demon-widget! It’s going to take a lot of snake-handling to fix this!”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/13/09

“Someday soon, because we’re going to be in the hospital, because of illness. It could happen at any time! Cancer! Hospital! Cancer death hospital death death death!”

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Beetle Bailey, 10/11/09

This is a pretty sad demonstration of how Beetle’s half-century stuck in the timeless limbo of Camp Swampy will make it impossible for him to reintegrate into normal society upon his release. Like the hero of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Private Bailey will leave the military and find a civilian world with mores and values outside of his understanding. For instance, he’ll find his clothes to be laughably out of date, and discover that the whimsical pastimes of his native 1950s, such as tree-sitting and breath-holding contests, are no longer relevant in the age of reality TV and Internet pornography. However, he will be pleased to find that the competitive eating scene is still alive and well, and moreover that revolutionary new technologies allow hot dogs to be cooked without being blackened to a crisp.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/11/09

Remember the classic narrative switcheroo at the climax of Silence of the Lambs, when the scene edits make you think that the FBI team is assembling outside the serial killer’s house, but it turns out that they’re in the wrong place and Jodie Foster is ringing his doorbell instead? Well, that’s sort of what happened here, without the tension or excitement. Becka and Tim have been heroically driving through a sodden golf course looking for his runaway mom, whom we’ve been led to believe is holed up in the pro shop there — when in fact they’ve broken and entered into some punk rocker’s trailer, perhaps miles away! Everything about this punk rocker — his piercings, his shaved head, his use of “street” slang like “crib” — is supposed to be terrifying and menacing to us, the solid middle-American comic-reading audience, but I feel obliged to point out that it is, in fact, his crib, and he has a right to protest random old people breaking in and attempting to hold golf lessons there.

Sally Forth, 10/11/09

Oooh, contest — what terrible habit is causing Ted to drain the Forth family finances? Keep in mind that Ted is pure of heart, so all the sleazy things you sickos are thinking of (cocaine, roulette, 15-year-old Thai male prostitutes) are out. I’m thinking that the basement shelves are groaning under the weight of his collection of first-edition GoBots, or that every time he PayPals someone on Craigslist who claims to have a copy of the Star Wars Christmas Special, he’s convinced that this is the time he won’t be disappointed.