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Beetle Bailey, 7/29/09

The action in today’s Beetle Bailey obviously violates every workplace sexual harassment regulation known to man, not that I expect Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC to realize that there might be something inappropriate about handing a co-worker a skimpy undergarment and then demanding that she put it on right in front of you. Ignoring that for the moment, though, I do have to say that I like the (probably accidental) way that the always-unsettling wiggle lines of horniness emitted by Killer’s hat-nodules form what appear to be quotation marks around the word “present.” “I got you a ‘present.’ Well, it’s not really a present for you.”

Crock, 7/29/09

Now here’s a problem that arises when the art in your strip is mangled and impenetrable: I guess today’s punchline is supposed to some cruel joke about how the librarian’s girlfriend is ugly, but this being Crock, who can tell? Whether the joke is about supposedly ugly people or supposedly pretty people, they’re all just barely-recognizable Crock-squiggles.

Dick Tracy, 7/29/09

Wait, did I say that Dick Tracy was like German expressionist film? Now that we have an elaborately dressed ringmaster responding to a tragic scene by repeatedly shouting “It happened!”, I’m updating that assessment to David Lynch.

It’s nice of Dick to address our no-doubt-implicated-in-the-crime-but-still-emotionally-tortured ringmaster as “Mr. Ringmaster.” He knows that it costs him nothing to be polite, just as it will cost our overburdened court systems nothing when he executes everyone involved without trial in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers.

Mary Worth, 7/29/09

Oh, goodness, Charley isn’t just a sex pervert, but also an alcoholic, by which I mean “someone who drinks alcohol that isn’t the terrible ketchup-red wine they serve at the Bum Boat.” Delilah is right to cringe on that couch in terror! Of course she wants plain soda water, as flavored sodas are far too exciting.

Family Circus, 7/29/09

As several faithful readers have pointed out, this Family Circus camping sequence actually consists of reruns from the early 1980s. This explains the vintage station wagon, and the hanky code.

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Crankshaft, 7/20/09

Oh ho. Oh HO HO HO. Remember a few years ago, when beloved comic strip Funky Winkerbean killed off one of its main characters and then leapt pell-mell a decade into the future (of internal narrative space, not of absolute time)? Of course you do, because you’re all comics obsessives, but even if you weren’t, chances are you might have heard of it because there was actual coverage of this event by the legitimate media. And here today, in Funkyverse sister strip Crankshaft, we appear to have the exact same chronological discontinuity happening, which, as near as the Google can tell, has been mentioned exactly nowhere. Ha ha, Crankshaft, nobody likes you, just like nobody likes your title character!

You’ll forgive me for chortling just a little at the sight of Crankshaft’s slumped, broken form slouching semi-consciously in a wheelchair, kept alive by machines and underpaid but still perky nurse’s aides. Normally I’d only have the deepest sympathy for someone whose body and mind have been ravaged by time until they’re only a shell of their former self, but since Crankshaft is (a) a fictional character and (b) a colossal dick, I’m not feeling too guilty about my terrible glee.

Anyway, in the absence of any sort of Big Event-style coverage, I’m guessing that this is a temporary thing, a brief glimpse into the ’Shaft’s terrible future — or, if the middle panel is any indication, his future and his past, like Slaughterhouse Five with less firebombing and more groan-inducing puns. Eventually we’ll settle back on the present, in which Crankshaft is old and cranky but not senile or wheelchair-ridden. The journey will have made him more sympathetic to us, right up to the first time that he opens his mouth.

Gil Thorp, 7/20/09

Wait, are we sure that Shep Trumbo isn’t behind this? Because the sinister message on that baseball appears to be written in text-speak, and if there’s one thing I remember about the Shep Trumbo storyline despite my best efforts to purge it from my memory, it’s that it involved texting in some way. (Though I guess a full-on text-stalker-ball would read “U O M3.”)

Anyway, I just thought of someone else from the past who could be sinisterly stalking Gil: Brent Raptor! Or, better yet, Brent Raptor’s mom! Brent was a pudgy white kid who played baseball for Gil a few years ago and loved the rap music, thus earning the nickname “Rap-Dog,” which was probably meant to be insulting and/or ironic but he adopted it because it was the only affection anyone ever showed him. Brent’s life was made a living hell by his trashy, overbearing mother, out from under whose thumb Gil tried very hard to extract Brent, eventually succeeding by arranging for her to take a trip to Phoenix (really!). Anyway, since obviously nobody has ever done anything in return for a trip to Phoenix, I’m guessing Gil made a dark, secret promise to Mrs. Raptor, and now she’s come to collect … in blood. Or in off-brand corn chips and menthol cigarettes, which would seem more her style.

Mark Trail, 7/20/09

Jack Elrod knew he’d come under fire from religious and cultural conservatives for his latest work, Virgin Mar(k/y): Pieta. Fortunately, his editors at the syndicate knew that the newspaper comics were the last venue where uncompromising art like this could be showcased, and published it without fear of the consequences.

Archie, 7/20/09

The funniest thing about this Archie — other than Reggie getting punched in the face, obviously — is the lava lamp decorating the floor of Archie’s makeshift ashram in the first panel. Because meditation = the ’70s = lava lamps, obviously! Ha ha, the AJGLU 3000 has no idea what year it is.

Slylock Fox, 7/20/09

More proof that Shady Shrew is an unlovable loser: as his yellow bandana indicates, he was considered insufficiently cool to join either the Bloods or the Crips, and instead had to affiliate himself with a lesser gang, the “7th Avenue Insectivore Crew.”

Beetle Bailey, 7/20/09

Oh, Beetle, we know you yearn for Sarge’s abusive attentions, but you should really try being at least a little subtle about it.

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Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, 7/16/09

Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois may share the same offices over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC (in a low-slung business park, just off the interstate), but that doesn’t mean that they march in creative lockstep! That’s particularly clear today. Beetle Bailey uses Otto, the strip’s most intelligent and self-reflective character, to contemplate serious philosophical questions. Since he’s a dog, one could say that he was put into this world to bark; yet, like so many of us, he suffers a crisis of identity, a belief that even the actions that reflect his innermost nature are ultimately unrewarding and unrewarded. One is reminded of Arjuna expressing his doubts in the Bhagavad Gita, before going into battle; however, whereas Arjuna had Krishna to explain to him the spiritual importance of fulfilling one’s dharma, or duty, Otto has no teacher or framework to show him the essential value of barking. In this way he is like us, who toil away in alienated post-capitalism, unsure of the larger connection between what we do and the world we would like ideally to help build.

Hi and Lois, meanwhile, takes a different tack. Did you know that vomiting is funny, and that babies are prone to vomiting? The first panel is a little crude artistically, but seeing as it’s probably the first point-of-view depiction in a nationally syndicated comic strip of what it’s like to have someone puke into your face, we should probably cut it a little slack.

Phantom, 7/16/09

Oh, hey, what’s going on over in the Phantom, where we’re being shown how the first two lady Jungle Patrolpersons are fitting in to this elite paramilitary unit? Well, the lady cop patrolhuman has been enlisted for her helicoptering skills, and has picked up the Unknown Commander from an urban location, from whence he had unceremoniously nabbed a suspect out of his own home. Now she’s dropped them off in an isolated rural area, where, without any wimpy liberal niceties like a trial, he will presumably be viciously attacked by a wolf or just shot in the back of the head. And our heroine’s main goal throughout has been to get a look at this human rights abuser’s handsome face. Ha ha, women, am I right, people?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/16/09

Hey, remember how the new Rex Morgan, M.D., plot was going to be some sexy story about adultery? In classic bait-and-switch fashion, it turns out that the promise of extramarital relations and the drama they cause was just to lure you into reading about something much more important, and depressing, namely the poor care that people with Alzheimer’s receive. Becka has been shocked — shocked! — to find that a private clinic is interested in cutting costs, even if that means lowering the quality of medical attention given to its paying customers! As we learn in today’s strips, the clinic’s revenue-generating ideas push the boundaries of medical ethics: they’ve set up an “Alzheimer’s enclosure” at the zoo, near the primate house, where members of the public can buy tickets to come and gawk.