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Apartment 3-G, 8/11/07

WOO-HOO, ALAN’S BEATNIK BUDDY IS BACK! If you don’t remember this bad-news countercultural type, check out his first appearance, from more than a year ago. Crazy kick! I don’t know if we knew before today that his name was “Jones,” though. I wonder if this fellow is actually the Archie gang’s resident nonconformist, Jughead Jones, all grown up, who’s traded his first name and his felt crown for a soul patch and a gig dealing weed (“good”) and smack (“bad”).

Momma, 8/11/07

I was going to write a screed about how if you weren’t a dedicated Momma reader, you wouldn’t get the “joke” of today’s strip, which is that Francis doesn’t really have a steady job and so “getting up and going to work” probably means putting in applications or working at one of his various menial but otherwise not particularly stressful jobs and that based on the level of dishevelment in his hovel, you might assume that he did literally work in a salt mine, albeit one with complimentary wake-up calls, and that furthermore this meant that nobody would get the “joke” in today’s Momma because there was no such thing as a dedicated Momma reader, but then I realized that I was a dedicated Momma reader and that I got the “joke” (keeping in mind that “getting” is not the same as “being amused by”). Then I was sad.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/07

Good news, everyone! Hugh’s conscious and his histrionics levels are back to normal!

Judge Parker, 8/11/07

All right, Judge Parker, you’ve been waving those things around all week trying to get my attention, so here it is: boobs. BOOBS. Boobs boobily boobs boob. BOOBS. Are you happy now?

Mark Trail, 8/11/07

Speaking of boobs: You’d think that Sam, who’s been through a lot with Mark, would take the lead in thanking him for his help in saving this small-town airport, which help mostly took the form of violence and threats of the same, but it’s her dad who’s doing all the jawing here. Still, in panel three it does sort of appear that she’s about to thank him … visually.

And now, a little something for the ladies…

Gil Thorp, 8/11/07

Legitimate questions were raised about whether yesterday’s crotchtastic Gil Thorp was really as crotchy as all that, or if it was perhaps just the view through Bill Ritter’s boxing gloves. There’s really no doubt today, though. No, sir. That’s quite the crotch shot. Yep.

By the way, if Bill were holding a pack of cigarettes and wearing chaps, panel three would look uncannily like an enormous Marlboro billboard that loomed a mere two blocks from my high school when I was a kid, I swear to God.

The Lockhorns, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because Leroy has a crippling problem with alcohol! Funny!

Beetle Bailey, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because General Halftrack has a crippling problem with alcohol, and is so drunk that he’s managed to intoxicate his golf ball, in defiance of all the laws of biology and physics! Funny!

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Hi and Lois, 8/9/07

Ho ho! Hi’s decided to take his family on a bizarre Western “dream vacation,” which, as we’ve seen over the past week or so, several of the Flagstons are dubious about. Now we learn that they couldn’t even afford the trip! Hi knows the family is being crushed by credit card debt, and he’s looking desperately for some magical way to get out of the hole! Maybe they’ll go bankrupt and their house will be repossessed! Too bad about that housing bubble bursting, eh Lois? Wait, where’s Lois? My guess: prostituting herself so they can afford dinner tonight, or perhaps committing suicide.

Beetle Bailey, 8/9/07

Hee hee! Cookie has one job to do at Camp Swampy — one — and he’s terrible at it, and everybody on base — the men who are supposed to be his comrades — lets him know it. Naturally this is killing him inside, so he climbs up on the roof. Maybe he just wants to get away for a bit, maybe it’s a plea for attention. Either way, the soldiers’ hatred is just further inflamed, and they openly call for his suicide.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 8/9/07

Hardy hardy har! That feeling of overwhelming love and oneness you get at the beginning of a relationship? Turns out it’s just equal parts sexual attraction and self-delusion! Once you’ve finally chosen to spend your life with a person, that’s when the scales fall from your eyes and you realize you’re chained to another insufferably imperfect human being, forever — and the only way out is suicide.

(Dear God, I hope “you know who” isn’t Al Scaduto’s wife.)

The Phantom, 8/9/07

It’s been pretty well established that what’s-his-name, the dude with the gun, is pretty reluctant about using it, so it’s actually fairly plausible that this couple could literally be beating up an armed man with both hands tied behind their back (the husband is doing the head-butting today, but yesterday his wife managed to get in a good foot to the groin). This is fortunate, because otherwise the Ghost-Who-Doesn’t-Do-Much might have to intervene, which would cut into his valuable musing time.

Family Circus, 8/9/07

I feel weird saying this about the Family Circus, but there’s a lot I love about this cartoon. I love that Billy looks genuinely angry that he’s going to be spending four valuable hours a night staring at this tiny television set while they’re at the grandparents’ house — so angry that he appears to be shouting at the screen at the top of his lungs. I love the look on Thel’s face in the other room, as she realizes that her unruly, obnoxious children are once again going to make her look bad in front of her own parents. I love the way Big Daddy Keane is marching in from off-panel — because this is a panel from the pre-PC ’70s, presumably Billy will be getting the strap again in short order. And I love the fact that PJ is awkwardly holding his shorts up, probably because he’s just crapped in them.

Mary Worth, 8/9/07

Drew, you’re a healer! You took the Hippocratic Oath! And yet your colleague here is clearly either having a stroke or is bombed out of his mind on the job, and all you can say is “Geez”. For shame!

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Mary Worth and Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/28/07

Maternal visit or no, I certainly could not let these two explosive comics from Saturday go unremarked. I’d urge you to try to reproduce the bizarre angles of Drew and Dawn’s approach in panel two at home, but you might then be tempted to photograph it and send me a picture, the prospect of which makes me distinctly uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure the lines of radiance represent the aura experienced by epileptics just before a seizure, because that’s the only reasonably explanation for the awkward poses and facial expressions of otherworldly detachment from reality.

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, M.D., stuff (and here I mean “stuff” U English sense to mean woolen fabric, specifically the woolen fabric in the very U Hugh’s suit) blows up. Even more exciting than that, though, is seeing June say, “Did he grovel for you like he did for me?” That very well could have triggered the explosion — the explosion of sexiness.

Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, 7/28/07

Meanwhile, although I’m usually left cold by golf jokes (and WE GET IT CARTOONISTS YOU’D RATHER BE GOLFING THAN DRAWING FUNNY PICTURES) and Beetle Bailey generally, I have to admit that Saturday’s Beetle Bailey golf joke actually made me laugh aloud. I do wonder why Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC doesn’t have team meetings once a week to prevent this kind of overlap, though.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/28/07

And once again TDIET is Curmudgeon-inspired! Gabe Owens is in fact faithful reader Gabe. Since Gabe is in the Navy, this cartoon could have featured some epically outdated uniforms and insignia, possible from World War I, but I guess that’s Beetle Bailey territory; when you’re in a TDIET, you toil away in a generic Eisenhower-era office and you like it, buddy. Gabe has used his real name (and rank? I thought MC2 was some variation on “Master Chief”, but I couldn’t find any evidence to that effect online; maybe it’s his rap name?), so he’d better hope that having “The Urge” isn’t a court-martialable offense.