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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/07

Yes, thank goodness General Halftrack is keeping up with radical newspapers like Vorwärts and the Daily Worker to keep tabs on their stinging and remarkably specific criticisms of the quality of American general officers! By exposing the rot and incompetence at the upper echelons of the US military, they help forward the cause of proletarian revolution!

No, seriously, what the hell. My guess is that this cartoon is what happened when the whole ludicrous New York Times/MoveOn.org Petraeus/Betray Us kerfuffle managed to seep through the layers and layers of Out Of Touch that surround the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Funny Enterprises LLC compound. Though I’m guessing that if anyone bought a full-page ad entitled “General Halftrack or General Half Assed?” there wouldn’t be any kind of Congressional resolution condemning it.

On the other hand, Halftrack could be reading a radical right-wing newspaper, which puts a whole different spin on things. “Under Halftrack, Camp Swampy has sunk under the scum, his corps lousy with blacks, Asians, and homosexuals. Under his leadership, the army is incapable of bringing the cleansing fire to this nation that it so desperately needs!”

Momma, 10/17/07

This may mark me as a bad son, but when I see an (I assume) adult describe living at home with their dwarfish, clown-haired freak of a mother as “a spiritual and emotional pleasure,” I don’t think “happy, well-adjusted young man”; I think “budding serial killer.” More specifically, I think “pretentious budding serial killer.”

By the way, when I first saw this strip, I read the final word balloon as “–is that the same as ‘the pita’?” Which, frankly, is funnier than the actual punchline. The “pita” version isn’t actually funny at all, but the real gag is anti-funny, and zero is greater than a negative number.

Mary Worth, 10/17/07

If you’re not following along at home, yesterday Vera’s creepy, estranged brother Von bought her forgiveness with a check. We have to assume that it was large enough to overcome the huge chip on Vera’s shoulder; sadly, it was not an oversized novelty check that would have allowed us to see the exact amount. Anyway, I’m hoping that now desperate Drew is ready to resort to an overworked, overpaid, oversexed young man’s answer to any current problem, which is to throw money at it. I’m sure Mary will approve of Vera’s masterly techniques of holding grudges for fun and profit.

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Mary Worth, 9/20/07

Well, the slapping seems to be over (for now), but Dawn continues to give Dr. Drew the tongue-lashing of his life (and not in a good way). While Dawn may be the younger of the two ladies vying for Dr. Drew’s affections, this co-ed definitely has an edge over her competitor when it comes to brains: she’s keeping up a blistering stream of accusatory rage while spoiled rich girl Vera is still scratching her chin in total befuddlement. (“Wait … does this girl … know Drew somehow? There’s something fishy going on here … but what?”)

Dawn’s invective is so powerful that she doesn’t even need to waggle her fingers to add quote marks around the key terms. The significance of the quotes around “working” is obvious enough, but I’m a little puzzled about “new girlfriend.” I mean, Vera is Drew’s new girlfriend, right? If only there were some kind of quote-mark expert we could consult to parse the meaning…

Well … now … you don’t have any proof of that, Margo! Jeez, that girl’s totally out of hand.

Mark Trail, 9/20/07

I don’t pretend to understand what exactly this trio of boneheaded duck-lovers is doing in the third panel — building an elaborate system of dikes around Shirley’s nest? Trying to bail out the entire swamp? Nor do I know exactly how we went from “Shirley must be protected from sinister, heartless developers” to “Shirley must be protected from an entirely natural flood that would have washed away her nest whether the mall was under construction or not.” But I do know who’s pulling the strings here. It’s not Shirley herself, as I had guessed earlier, as she’s proven herself to be about as smart as you’d expect an animal with a walnut-sized brain to be. No, take a good look at Mark’s smug bastard of an editor in panel one. He’s realized that the mouth-breathing reading public is eating this duck drama up, and as long as he can drag out the drama, his magazine for outdoorsmen will be flying off of the supermarket racks faster than all the celebrity gossip rags combined. Look for him to give Mark a series of increasingly bizarre and improbable orders to keep the story going. (“OK, I think you should carry the eggs over to the food court. No, not inside the Ruby Tuesdays! Are you insane?”)

Beetle Bailey, 9/20/07

I, uh…

I thought today’s Beetle Bailey was pretty funny.

Ha! They all had to go to the bathroom!

What?

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Beetle Bailey, 9/17/07

There’s been much speculation as the real nature of the relationship between Beetle and Sarge. In the absence of any leadership from Camp Swampy’s officer corps, has Sarge’s near-limitless authority over his subordinates simply allowed his inner brute to emerge in full, sadistic force? Or is Beetle no mere subject, but rather a participant in a complex and largely unspoken sadomasochistic relationship? Today’s strip offers another, even darker take: Sgt. Snorkel is an artist — an artist whose medium is human flesh and bone and blood, and Pvt. Bailey is and will forever be his greatest masterpiece. In this view, the opinion of Beetle on his role in this transaction is really no more important than a dab of paint’s views on being part of van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The chaplain, naturally, is horrified by the human price of art, but the angry beauty of Beetle’s mangled still-living body cannot be denied.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/17/07

Hey, remember a while back when gym teacher Bull implied that he wanted Les to knock up his ever-smirking wife? And now here they are, black-helmet-haired tot in tow? I’m sure that it was really adopted from Romania or something, but let me just for a moment revel in the idea that Les is at long last seeing the result of a fairly lucrative 20 minutes he spent “running errands” while Lisa was in chemo.

Marvin, 9/17/07

Marvin’s look of numb, wide-eyed horror tells us all we need to know about mom’s sadistic will to power through infinite punishment. Presumably he realizes that he’ll spend the rest of his life in that playpen. When he gets tall enough to climb out, his mother will simply put a lid over the top of the pen, leaving him to become a tiny, bonsai-sized adult with stunted limbs, a gruesome example to any toddlers thinking of doing whatever I’m-too-lazy-to-come-up-with-something-specific act of mischief the cowed dog is referring to in panel one.

Mary Worth, 9/17/07

I’ve played a fair amount of Wii Boxing in the past few weeks, and I’ve even seen filmed evidence (with audio) of what I look like while playing Wii Boxing, so I have a pretty good idea of what Dawn’s fists in that position portend. Drew and Vera, get ready to have those little knuckle sandwiches come flailing at you while she lets out little high-pitched grunts of rage! You won’t be able to fend off her head-vibrating assault without giggling.

Dawn’s “And I thought you were the ‘one’!” is actually a pretty effective comeback, in the sense that it riffs off of Drew’s “I thought you were studying” excuse, which is so lame that she could never have anticipated it in advance. I hope she uses her razor wit to further humiliate Drew and Vera as she pummels them. I suggest she start with their bizarre decision to wear matching brown pants.

Pluggers, 9/17/07

A plugger’s body is a battleground where the marketing departments of major pharmaceutical companies fight to the death.