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Blondie, 6/9/10

Here is a 100 percent true story: When I was about 10 or so, my dad and I were driving through downtown Buffalo, and this car sort of cut us off, and my dad said, “Jeez, what’s up with this clown,” exactly the way you would in such a situation, and then I looked closer and saw that the car in question was being driven by an actual, literal clown, in full make-up and regalia and everything. His car was not unusually small, nor was he sharing it with dozens of other clowns. This was endlessly hilarious to me, and whenever I see clowns depicted in everyday life, I think of this incident, and it makes me laugh. Certainly it was much funnier than Blondie’s grim and off-putting attempt to wring surrealistic yuks out of a vicious clown assault.

Mark Trail, 6/9/10

You know who really, really likes working zoning disputes into his stories? Jack Elrod, author of Mark Trail! Now, it probably is true that land use regulations are a much more important part of rural life than we city slickers realize, but now all of the sudden a dramatic change in zoning laws is arising as a plot point in this unusually urban storyline. Thus, I must assume that Elrod is a member of the small, misunderstood community of zoning fetishists, or “zonies.” While he toils away on the outdoorsman strip he inherited from Ed Dodd, he’s always hoping that one day one of the alternative presses will pick up Fred Gorski, Zoning Board Co-Chair Of Destiny!, the erotic graphic novel he’s been tinkering with for years.

Apartment 3-G, 6/9/10

Uh, is it just me, or are those oven mitts really, really big? They look more like the freakishly oversized novelty hands you get at sporting events. Naturally, Tommie has cut off the protruding index finger, as neither she nor anyone else believes her to be “number one.”

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Blondie and Crock, 5/10/10

One of the defining features of legacy comic strips is of course their trapped-in-amber quality, which goes beyond just the characters’ archaic motivations and gender roles and goes right down to their homes’ decor. In fact, incidental details are even less likely to change than major points; Blondie might have started a business with much fanfare sometime in the ’90s, but the Bumsteads will apparently only have a single corded phone, sitting atop an early 20th century credenza in some out of-the-way location in the house, forever. (At least it’s a modern push-button model!) It’s such an ingrained part of the Blondie universe that I can’t decide if today’s strip is some kind of knowing wink to it, or just the logical extension of having the layout of chez Bumstead so burned into your brain that its anachronisms seems totally natural to you.

Crock, meanwhile, shockingly manages to be more in touch with modern reality today, in the sense that it acknowledges that phones untethered by wires do, in fact, exist. Of course, the strip artists seem to believe that you can create one merely by detaching the handset of a classic bakelite phone from its base, but hey, baby steps.

Apartment 3-G, 5/10/10

At long last, all distractions will be put aside and we’ll now enjoy unfettered A3G-girl-on-A3G-girl-on-A3G-girl action! Three will enter — how many will leave? I suppose this is supposed to be the first time Tommie has seen Margo since the latter’s spa vacation, but I prefer to believe that our redhead has taken to just groveling before Margo every time they encounter each other, to reduce the frequencies the beatings. “O Margo, our days were like nights without the warm glow of your sun! Please, do not remove your divine presence from us again, for we cannot stand the thought!” Meanwhile, Lu Ann has finally decided to face Margo’s tyranny head-on, the prospect of which fills Tommie with obvious terror. Lu Ann knows there’ll be bloodshed, which is why she’s prepared herself by putting on a butcher’s apron.

Mark Trail, 5/10/10

Sassy’s wide, haunted eyes in panel three don’t say “excited” to me so much as “my God, I’ve seen things no living thing should have to bear, and which you can’t even begin to imagine.” Oh, but we can imagine them, Sassy! We’ve seen panel two!

Pluggers, 5/10/10

Longtime Pluggers readers know that Reed Hoover is a relentless, unstoppable Pluggers-idea-submitting machine, whose name pops up in this feature with unsettling regularity. Thus, it comes as no real surprise that the Chief Plugger has just given up and gone on vacation for a week and handed the strip over to some classic Hooverisms. Reed is no doubt celebrating pretty mightily down there in Dallas, presumably by hiking his pants all the way up to his nipples.

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Blondie, 4/24/10

Why do cartoonists feel like they can’t say the actual names of products and companies in the comics? Today’s Blondie is fairly transparently referencing the “Flame” meat-scented body spray put out by Burger King. Are there trademark issues, or fears of lawsuits? Perhaps Blondie was hoping to reap product placement money from Burger King, and decided to go with this genercized reference only after the elaborate negotiations for that deal collapsed, which would explain why Dagwood is reading an article in the paper describing a product that was released nearly a year and a half ago.

Of course, this doesn’t get at the core horror of the strip. What foul meat-based sex perversions did Blondie agree to participate in on the Bumsteads’ tenth anniversary? Surely the barbecue sauce behind the ears (and whose ears?) were only the start of it. She’s still so ashamed all these years later that she won’t even make eye contact with her husband, or us.

Apartment 3-G, 4/24/10

“I mean, sure, wimps might think that having a crazy woman wave a gun in your face constitutes something bad happening in and of itself, but I say that so long as nobody gets shot, it’s just one of those moments of adrenaline-soaked terror that really make you feel alive, in the long run! Anyway, like I was saying I graduated from the school of bad choices — choices, like, say, throwing myself at a man who enabled his girlfriend’s pill habit and then had her bundled away to a mental hospital when she got too crazy. That’s good boyfriend material right there!”