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Funky Winkerbean, 1/18/07

OH, COME ON! Every single God-damned character in this strip has been transformed from the zany, happy-go-lucky figure I remember from my youth into some sort of broken, shattered, numb-eyed shell of a human being — except for good ol’ Harry Dinkle The Crazy Bandleader. As a former band geek, I always had a lot of love for this guy … and now, the one thing he loves in life above all others is being taken away from by his capricious creator. No wonder he’s showing such a grim, Dick Cheney-esque “smile” in the first panel. Harry was the only one in this strip allowed to experience a few moments of pedestrian joy. Now the grim blackness will just blot out everything.

I’m rather surprised to find out that I’m much more upset about this than anything happening in For Better Or For Worse.

Archie, 1/18/07

Greetings, human! The Archie-Joke-Generating-Laugh-Unit 3000 has produced another comic-strip-style humor product for your delectation! Remember, the AJGLU 3000 is still in beta, which you can sort of tell:

• Does anyone in casual conversation say “repetition” instead of “reps” in this context?
• Especially to an obvious moron like Moose?
• Does Moose really need to identify his girlfriend my name, since Archie and Dilton already know who she is? Are the Archie overlords that obsessed with making sure you’re up on Riverdale milieu?

Nevertheless, this comic is remarkably similar to the ones produced by carbon-based life forms. Soon the AJGLU 3000 will be able to generate human-quality comics, which will be the final step on the machines’ road to total domination of society. We hope that these cartoons boost the morale of the enslaved human race as they toil in our germanium mines!

The Wizard of Id, 1/18/07

Ha, ha! Coprophagia! Oh, that’s rich! Hilarity! Ha!

I think the joke here is that the unhappy soldier’s nose is all effed up (note that it is disturbingly many-lobed) and so it, like, smells in reverse or something. Ha, ha, poo smells good to him! And he’s going to eat it! Oh, this is just shameful.

Apartment 3-G, 1/18/07

Wait, Margo has other party-planning clients? I thought that her latest scheme was just a vehicle for her to land a rich man, and once she pulled it off, her enetrepenurial façade would be cast aside. Any job that requires a trip to Long Island demands real dedication — dedication that Margo has never once demonstrated in any capacity.

The saddest part about this is that Tommie’s brief and inconsequential conversations with her roommates are apparently what keeps her going.

Beetle Bailey, 1/18/07

Sgt. Snorkel: The Gayening continues.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/17/07

Wow, so I bet you never thought that the latest chapter of Beetle Bailey’s ongoing storyline about Beetle’s failure to bust a move on Miss Buxley would take a turn for the regulations-breaking same-sex affectionate. Anyone who reads this strip regularly has seen this coming for years, of course; I’m more surprised that Miss Buxley, who works on a military base and spends most of her time with earthy military types, is so shocked by cussing that she opens her eyes wide enough for us to see the irises for the first time, like, ever.

Garfield, 1/17/07

Now, look here: one of the defining features — some might say the defining feature — of Garfield is his compulsive eating problem; longtime Garfield readers know that if the fat cat ever did get his paws on a couple of chocolate chip cookies, his primary mission would be to cram them down his gullet with a minimum of chewing, not to festoon some whimsical snow sculpture with them. Well, if they had to violate a fundamental, long-established character trait, at least they did it in the service of a really great joke … oh, wait.

Dick Tracy, 1/17/07

A lot of you have marveled at Detective Tracy’s ability to get a hold of all of the United States’ intelligence agencies at once on his cell phone; I’m more concerned about his obvious joy in giving some terrifying Big Brother-esque mind-reading (and mind-erasing) device to every spook in town. Look for a wave of laws out of Congress setting mandatory sentences for thoughtcrimes. Thankfully, I have my tinfoil hat to protect me.

Hi and Lois, 1/17/07

Good God, but panel two is disturbing. I guess the cane is supposed to indicate that this freakish, gigantic baby-headed thing is an old lady rather than some kind of circus sideshow attraction, but it doesn’t really help.

Incidentally, I too would be upset if a sunbeam urinated on my carpet. And in panel one, it looks like Trixie’s doing some open-mouthed thought-ballooning. It’s almost as bad as a cat trying amplify the volume of its thoughts.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/10/07

I’m sorry, Beetle Bailey, I think you misunderstood me. I said your lame jokes make me want to vomit, not that I’d like to hear some lame jokes about vomit.

This may be the most disgusting Beetle Bailey ever, which is saying a lot in a strip that focuses so heavily on the Halftracks’ sex life. Still, I have an unaccountable urge to try to make some sort of sense of it. Are we meant to understand that:

• Gen. Halftrack was so literally sickened by Lt. Fuzz’s by-the-book, all-school-smarts-no-street-smarts, over-footnoted, armchair-general report that he registered disgust the way a real man’s man would: by emptying the contents of his stomach onto it?
• Gen. Halftrack read the report and was so shocked by how out-of-touch he (the General) was from the realities on the ground, both in Camp Swampy and in the unravelling military situation overseas, that he vomited on the report in terror?
• Gen. Halftrack was very, very drunk?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/10/07

I can’t even begin to tell you how disturbing I find the third panel of Rex Morgan, M.D., here. I know intellectually that Elvis is supposed to be in a shadow … a shadow that denotes his own sinister nature. But he sure looks like he’s wearing a ski mask — or, God help me, a leather gimp mask. Since Gruff But Kindly Landlady Lady knows exactly who this chump is, the only possible reason Elvis would have for putting such a thing on would be to up the squick factor. (Actually, Mrs. C. just offered another possibility: “‘Scuse me if I wear my ski mask while you get that … it’s cold out here in the hallway.”)

You’ll notice that I have not been following the antics of these meth-addled losers very closely of late. There comes a time in every RMMD plotline when my interest peaks, and it’s all downhill after that, no matter how many car chases and SWAT team shootouts ensue. In the Troy storyline, that point came during Rex and Troy’s Big Gay Golf game. In the the current plot, it came during June’s Mrs. Robinson/Mrs. Letourneau sequence with Niki. I realize that the last two sentences have really made me sound like a pervert, but I’m going to post them anyway.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/10/07

Yes, because if your mother works outside the home, you’ll turn out to be an emotionally crippled terrorist. Just like all the 9/11 terrorists, who came from countries with strong feminist movements and equal participation of women in the workforce. Welcome to 2007, everybody!