Post Content

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*

Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 8/11/08

Due to Beetle’s all-too-typical incompetence, the fragging of Sgt. Snorkel is not going as planned.

Dick Tracy, 8/11/08

I have managed to avoid talking about the current Dick Tracy storyline, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it appears to be concluding with a woman being torn to bits by vicious dogs.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/08

Yes, the dramatic shadowing seems to indicate less “pleasantly surprised” and more “contemplating murder-suicide.”

Slylock Fox, 8/11/08

Then Slylock instructed Max to hand over the God-damned cake, ’cause it looks fucking delicious.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 7/30/08

I can’t hold back any longer! Summer, my friends, is the season when Gil Thorp is traditionally freed from the shackles of its need to focus on boring high school athletics and truly finds its completely deranged natural level. 2006 brought us vicious fights between little girls and Ben Franklin, time-traveling golf grifter; last summer, we saw one-legged boxing follies and the glory and majesty of Coach Kaz, PI to the rock and roll Carole King. Thus, I’ve been patiently awaiting the end of the very special “Elmer gets deported” storyline so we can move on to the summer madness.

But now, as we’re only a few weeks away from the start of football practice, it’s becoming clear that there is no joy in Milford. Elmer’s springtime woes have just dragged right on into July, as he’s been recalled from his two-week Mexile to take a spot on the independent minor league Kalamazoo Kings. So instead of boring high school sports action, we’re getting boring vaguely professional sports action, and it’s boring. The faint hopes that were raised by my first read of panel two’s narration box — “It’s the Kings vs. the Chillicothe Pants” — were dashed by a closer inspection of the text. Even the red-hot lower back action in panel three can’t save this from snoresville.

For Better Or For Worse, 7/30/08

After the trivet incident, I’m hesitant to admit when I have to look up a word in the dictionary, but: mucilage? Really? Maybe the reason Lynn Johnston is retiring is because there will soon literally be no words left in the English language to pun upon.

“An adhesive solution” is no doubt the meaning intended here, but the dictionary built in to my computer has as the word’s first definition “a viscous secretion or bodily fluid,” so this actually may not be a pun at all. “What you’re feeling? That’s mucilage! Please, change me! My own daughter refused and said I was ‘gross!'”

Beetle Bailey, 7/30/08

Like the fact that he could see right up your skirt in panel two, for instance.