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Bizarro, 12/6/23

A fun fact is that while “Frankenstein,” in the sense of a story about creature sewn together from corpses and reanimated via forbidden science with unexpected results, is in the public domain, Frankenstein’s monster, in the sense of the green-skinned corpse guy with a flat head and bolts in his neck, is the intellectual property of Universal Studios, for whom that design was created in 1931. I really had it in my mind that the flat top of the head was meant to indicate that the skull had been sliced open to drop a brain into it, but I can’t find any citation to that now; however, the Wikipedia article for Frankenstein’s monster does have the unsettling note that “Jack P. Pierce … based the monster’s face and iconic flat head shape on a drawing Pierce’s daughter (whom Pierce feared to be psychic) had drawn from a dream.” Anyway, today’s strip raises a lot more questions than it answers: are the Monster and his Bride having sex, reproductively, and are their corpse-mangled qualities passed down to their offspring via some Lamarckian mechanism? Or did the pair conspire to reproduce the sins of their creator, assembling in their own image a son from scavenged corpse parts, continuing the hideous cycle? Also, is the kid’s full name “Frankenstein’s Monster Junior,” and does he get mad if people just call him or his father “Frankenstein?” I honestly care about all this much more than his potential head injury situation.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/6/23

This week’s Rex Morgan is really just dragging out a plotline we had all hoped would be done by now, but honestly I’ve been enjoying a lot of the facial expressions so I’ll give it a pass. Today, Mr. Ollman (get it? he’s an “old man”????) has hit the end of his patience with this entire conversation, as his face in panel three makes very clear. “Look, doc, I came here because I need my prostate checked out and I heard you weren’t gonna give me a lot of pushback when I asked for a painkiller prescription. I stopped making new acquaintances 15 years ago, and I certainly don’t want to hear anything about some Italian I’m supposed to know, got it?”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/6/23

It seems to me that you should be rewarding a budding young musician for time spent honing and practicing his craft in whatever way works best for; demanding a new song in exchange for each cookie feels like it’s encouraging quantity over quality, just my take.

Gasoline Alley, 12/6/23

Rufus’s dick has burst out of his elf costume, right? That’s what’s going on here? He’s hanging hog? That’s what’s going to get the beloved comic strip Gasoline Alley cancelled after all these years? Rufus with his dick out?

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Bizarro, 8/6/23

Josh’s dogged (foxxéd?) seventeen-year investigation into the post-animalpocalypse world of Slylock Fox has given us deep insights into the cruel, authoritarian, and relentlessly petty society that replaced human civilization. It’s like a worldwide Home Owners’ Association using a gestapo and tactical nukes to enforce garage setbacks and paint codes.

But what of the Before Times? Alas, we have only fragments, no doubt because the social and technological structures that maintain a historical record were destroyed in humanity’s collapse. We know that Count Weirdly struggled to replace mankind with terrifying genetically-engineered animal-folk who were somehow not pluggers, and that his first attempts went horribly wrong.

Now we see the fruits of Weirdly’s second try: The Age of Cats. This fully realized urban civilization sprang Covid‑like from the Count’s lab and swept across the earth. The Age ended suddenly when the cats invented the Internet and were instantly absorbed into it. Sort of like the Maya, but in the cloud, with adorable memes.

Sally Forth, 8/6/23

Who’s up for a Sally Forth recap? You are? Okay!

The Forths head off for a fun-in-the-sun vacation and rent their house to the Park family for the duration when strange things happen. Young Emma Park joins and tries to boss around Hil’s band, develops a werewolf obsession, starts showing up in Hil’s friends Faye and Nona’s Apartment 3-G‑style flash-forwards, and gets all chummy with Hil’s boyfriend Duncan. Dad Dae Park starts freaking out at the sound of the ice cream truck and launches a campaign to grill the perfect summer burger. Mom Joon Park dives into Sally’s Starlee and the Moonbeams reruns and finds them “glorious.”

Faye and Nona deduce that the house is turning the Parks into the Forths, and likely releasing its hold on the Forths themselves as well. They negotiate with the evil spirit of a doll that’s also haunting the house (yes this is a double haunting, stay with me here) to blackmail the Parks—who by now are so Forthy they believe they have always lived there—into leaving.

Meanwhile the vacationing Forths, released from all agency, responsibility, and idiosyncrasy, are having the time of their lives lolling around a tropical paradise like normal people until the moment the Parks walk out their door back home. The house, Sauron-like, instantly locates and locks on to them, and here we are.

But hey. I understand Sally’s panic at returning to her pinched, neurotic life. I mean who would want to live for even a minute in that lady’s head, amirite? The puzzle is Ted: as the house slips its evil tendrils back into his consciousness, he should be manically nattering “Let’s play Tenet Monopoly” or announcer-voicing “It’s time for the Star Wars Christmas Special.” But instead he deadpans his home maintenance to-do list, as though he and the house have somehow fallen symbiotically into cahoots. What, I wonder, will Ted demand from his house-accomplice in exchange for that sweet coat of fresh blacktop?

Watch out, Sally.

The Phantom, 8/6/23

Josh may want to wrap up the current Phantom Multiverse of Mozz storyline, but I remain all in. Especially since the Sunday strip has become a sort of sidequel to the dailies, and double especially because it features Patrolwoman Hawa Aguda, my #1 non-Savarna Phantom crush object.

But first, my sincere compliments to author Tony DePaul for revisiting the Mina Braun story the past few months of Sundays. Mina is a talented and pretty “scholar/adventurer” who fell in love with the Phantom after a bout of traumatic scholar-adventuring way back in 2005. To erase her trauma and untangle his relationships, the Phantom had Guran dose her with Bandar amnesia powder—the same thing he did to spunky reporter Lara Bell in 2014 to protect the secrets of the Phantom Cave.

In this year’s Sunday strips, we see Mina again, outside the Domain of the Almost Humans (who are somehow not pluggers), and learn that Guran’s dose fucked up her life. Tormented by dreams and half-memories, thought a madwoman, and with her career in ruins, she found her way back to rediscover her past and resume her scientific work alone. Mrs. Phantom Diana Palmer speaks for readers in calling Mina’s treatment—at her husband’s command—”inhumane.” Gracefully done, Mr. DePaul.

In today‘s strip, ex-amnesiac John X (the Phantom) returns to Jungle Patrol HQ after the events at Gravelines Prison covered in the daily strip. But Hawa’s congratulations seem off: it was the Phantom, not John X, who liberated Gravelines. Somebody is having trouble keeping his aliases straight. (“Um, lessee—Walker: sunglasses, fedora, no beard; John X: sunglasses, ball cap, beard; Unknown Commander: secret mailbox, spooky handwriting …”).

Gosh, that’s a long one. Back to wisecracks and cheap shots tomorrow, I promise!

—Uncle Lumpy

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Gil Thorp, 7/26/23

Oh, wow, when I called for a wacky summer storyline, I didn’t expect a dystopian plot where a flamboyantly dressed warden named “Reno Harwood” forces criminal-teens to battle it out in his JailDome, with quadrocopter drone cameras streaming the whole thing out for the entertainment of bloodthirsty Twitch viewers everywhere. Marty Moon will enthusiastically do the play by play, and the stakes are high: the winners will earn their freedom, while the losers are condemned to death. Unfortunately, Gil’s decision to prepare his team for an indoor game by making them practice in the pouring rain may prove counterproductive.

Bizarro, 7/26/23

Like Mickey Mouse, Ronald McDonald is theoretically the most important character in his weird little world but is also the most boring one; why would you spend time thinking about this vaguely off-putting clown when you could be following the adventures of the mayor with a cheeseburger for a head, or a criminal who steals burgers, or a bird who is also Amelia Earhart, or whatever the hell Grimace is? But from now on I’ll spending a lot of energy contemplating Ronald McDonald — specifically, wondering if his partner is a hamurger or if he has latent hamburger DNA or if his partner is a normal human woman who gave birth to a hamburger and just started screaming and screaming while the doctor came out and told Ronald and he was just like “Heh heh, exactly as I expected.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/26/23

“You also keep sending us your bill, and we keep telling you that just because you commandeered one of our rooms and did surgery in it without asking anyone about it doesn’t mean we owe you money.”