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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.

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Luann, 7/14/09

You might think that being a big-shot semi-professional comics-mocking blogger is all fun and games, but I suffer for my art, and for you, my faithful audience. If you doubt the extent to my suffering, consider this: while most of you probably read today’s Luann and allowed an icy shiver to travel the length of your spine for a moment before moving on to something that didn’t make you doubt the existence of a loving God, I’ve spent most of today trying to figure out something to say about it, because, despite my previous declaration of disgust on this point, I sort of feel obliged to do so. Here’s the best I could come up with: I dearly hope that Brad and Toni are unable to back away from the implications of their cut-rate ham-handed “suggestive” dialogue and end up screwing right there on the sidewalk, at which point they’ll be arrested for public lewdness, thrown in jail, and murdered by revenge-minded but dimwitted criminals who can’t distinguish between firefighters and police officers. Next, a similar sequence of events polishes off Luann and Gunther, Tiffany and Quill, and most of the rest of the cast, with the strip being refocused on the adventures of Puddles the dog and, oh, let’s say Knute.

Beetle Bailey, 7/14/09

By comparison with the above, it’s been a joy to contemplate the pink tubelike form of naked General Halftrack. Ha ha, the general doesn’t like it when the doctor puts skin cream on his anus!

Judge Parker, 7/14/09

Long-time faithful readers of Judge Parker and this blog will remember that Randy’s ascendence to the position of Judge-Dictator of Parkerville, USA, began three years ago with an election race against the sleazy Reggie Black, whose main campaign strategy was to imply that Randy was gay. Randy emerged victorious, of course, by focusing on the issues, specifically on the issues that Reggie’s wife Celeste had with alcohol and rage. Anyway, poor Reggie, wherever he is, would probably love to have heard Randy admit that he doesn’t have any lady friends. Presumably, having learned well from his sensei Sam Driver, Randy has taken April to this romantic spot so that he can gaze wistfully out over the vista, with April eventually attempting to force his nose into her cleavage, to no avail.

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Zits, 7/8/09

True story: I got braces at the age of twelve, and for the first few days the experience was so painful and disorienting that I couldn’t really eat anything more solid than well-boiled pasta. This is almost certainly typical, but nobody had really warned me about it in advance, so it sort of freaked me out, and I began to worry that I’d be spending the next two years eating things that didn’t require much chewing; thus, before my mother returned from work one evening, I staged my suicide in protest. It wasn’t a particularly elaborate simulation — a florid “Good bye, cruel world that I can no longer masticate properly” note and me sprawled dramatically on the couch — and my mom’s first reaction was laughter, which means either it was wholly unconvincing or other things I don’t care to think about.

Anyway, this is my way of saying that I may be biased here, but I don’t think Dennis is telling some hilarious anecdote in panel one. The way he’s pointing at his metal-caged mouth is particularly troubling to me, and I imagine he’s actually saying “I think you made it too tight! Oh, God, the pain is unbearable!” But, accustomed to having his feelings on the matter ignored, he just slouches off with a resigned “schormz,” knowing that the discomfort will subside just in time for his next appointment, when the cycle begins again.

Family Circus, 7/8/09

Wait, a vegetarian … and all that shaggy hair … my God, have the Keanes allowed a dirty hippie into their home? The animal cracker bit may indicate that his mind has been reduced to pudding by the demon reefer, but more likely he’s just making a joke (which is also entirely unacceptable in polite company, because it confuses the children). I also suspect that if he heard Jeffy referring to him as “Mr. Coverly” he’d say “Hey, call me Jack, little guy! My dad is Mr. Coverly.” Anyway, why would our family of upstanding patriots allow this sort of person to sit in their living room and eat their generic potato chips? I suspect that he’s a new neighbor, and the clan patriarch is giving him one last chance to renounce his hateful philosophy and get a job that requires a tie; failing that, his long-haired head will be put on a spike on the Keane Kompound’s walls, as a warning to others.

Beetle Bailey, 7/8/09

I was going to make a crack about illegal use of a work-related credit card here, but on the scale of corrupt Defense Department spending, this is probably as low as it gets, even if Beetle and Miss Buxley are eating at an establishment that makes waiters wear tuxedos to serve soup. Anyway, I’m guessing she’s paying because she thinks that this way he’ll have to put out. Good luck with that, sweetie!