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Hi and Lois, 9/14/08

Here’s a rare case of a Sunday strip being radically altered by the presence or absence of the throwaway panels in the top row of the comic. If, like me as I read my physical dead-tree comic section, you saw the strip beginning with Dot asking Ditto “What do you want to do today?” you get a fairly pedestrian parable about young boredom. But with those first two panels, the strip suddenly stands at one step removed, with Dot setting her Dale Carnegie-like powers of persuasion against Ditto’s persistent and chronic ennui. Dot isn’t trying to have fun with her brother; she’s set herself up in mortal combat with his own shapeless self, trying — and, as you can see by Ditto’s state at the end of the strip, supine and refusing even to move, failing — to mold her brother into a man of some semblance of action.

Crankshaft, 9/14/08

Much as I enjoy the thought of Crankshaft spending a week alone stewing in his own old-man filth, I must object to his barber’s use of the neologism “batching it” in the third panel. I’m assuming the terms derives from the word “bachelor,” but I fear that it may also somehow involve Crankshaft’s batch.

And here’s a couple of amusing out-of-context-panels for you:

Panel from Beetle Bailey, 9/14/08

This is a charming and whimsical scene, as Corporal Yo regresses into nonsense child-talk as he drifts aimlessly through the sky.

Blondie, 9/14/08

This is funny because it makes it look like Dagwood is paying for sex.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/27/08

Focus groups conducted by Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC determined that last Wednesday’s strip, which contrasted General Halftrack’s lecherous fantasies about his comely secretary against the more staid reality for comic effect, greatly reduced the strip’s effectiveness among one of its key demographics — namely, lonely perverts who like to imagine having sex with Miss Buxley. So this one’s for you, sickos! Look, she’s exhausted because she spends her evenings taking Ecstasy and participating in orgies with other hot cartoon ladies and one dude who looks exactly like you. Are you happy now? Huh?

Gasoline Alley, 8/27/08

Speaking of cartooning sex appeal, Gasoline Alley has decided that its previous attempts to titillate were just too subtle. So enjoy some cartoon ass-crack from this once-proud franchise, everybody!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/27/08

Today’s Rex Morgan, M.D., provides us with not one but two smashingly entertaining examples of classic Rex dickishness. First he feigns ignorance so as to imply that his elderly patient might be working on some kind of sex doll to keep her company in her lonely old age; then, after passive-aggressively getting her to admit that she needs his help on the boat, he cheekily wishes her luck and tells her that something will come along to solve her problem. Well played, sir!

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Family Circus, 8/20/08

Billy is continuing to tear his swath of contempt through our nation’s capital, and I for one couldn’t be happier. Today, we see that the New 21st Century Man, his soul purged of all feelings of patriotism or sentimentality or historical awe by the cleansing fires of our violent, amoral world, is incapable of understanding what emotions these monuments from a dying culture are meant to evoke, seeing only their physical properties and none of their symbolism. Jeffy, still too young to comprehend the hellscape that he will inherit from his elders, apes their belief that these piles of dead stone still mean something, and wordlessly holds a picture of the grotesque phallus that the Victorians somehow thought would honor America’s long-dead first leader.

Beetle Bailey, 8/20/08

Speaking of grotesque phalluses, there are few better illustrations of the term “creepster” than General Halftrack gazing rapturously heavenward as he imagines the erotic shenanigans that his young secretary is committing to her journal. Hopefully he’ll at least get into his office and get the door shut before he starts pleasuring himself.

Judge Parker, 8/20/08

NOOOOOOO! NOT THE CELL PHONE! WHY, GOD, WHY? Cut down in the prime of its battery life … *sob*