Post Content

Blondie, 5/20/09

You know, it used to be that Elmo served as a foil to draw out Dagwood’s barely concealed child-like side, with his penchant for cute little songs and whimsical nostalgia for mass unemployment and the like. But lately, it seems like he’s increasingly forced to stand in for The Kids Today, and specifically for the worst thing that The Kids Today do, which is texting. I suggest that Blondie should just take a solid week that consists entirely of Dagwood shouting “I HATE TEXTING! I HATE AND FEAR IT EVEN THOUGH I ONLY HAVE THE VAGUEST IDEA OF WHAT IT IS OR HOW OR WHY ONE DOES IT! IT MAKES ME FEEL OLD! I’M NOT OLD BUT TEXTING MAKES ME FEEL OLD! IT IS WORSE THAN GENOCIDE!” Once that’s out of his system, the feature can go back to what it does best (i.e., sandwich-based hilarity).

Pluggers, 5/20/09

Boy, the plugger chicken-lady sure is obsessed with her various surgeries, isn’t she? I look forward to this little plugger-plot escalating creepily. “Pluggers always like to keep their old stuff around — you never know when it will come in handy” will be the caption as the chicken-lady opens up a closet full of her jarred organs.

Gil Thorp, 5/20/09

Wow, so it looks like the current Gil Thorp storyline will be not so much “the Internet is terrible” but “don’t put pictures of stuff you don’t want people knowing about, such as pictures of you breaking the law, on the Internet, you stupid jackass.” This is actually a pretty useful lesson for today’s teenagers to learn, so it’s kind of too bad that none of them read Gil Thorp.

Dick Tracy, 5/20/09

“Get it? Because … that’s something you’d say in a poker game? And there’s sort of a card motif going on here? Anyway, long story short, I beat this guy to death.”

Post Content

Blondie and Archie, 5/19/09

Let us take a moment to appreciate some particularly hard-working comics characters: those that refuse to deny us the pleasures of a hilarious reaction shot even when they don’t appear in our field of view! For instance, in today’s Archie, the final panel chooses to linger in a loving close-up on Jughead’s face; the title character is forced to express his disgust with his friend’s aggressive ignorance by emitting Cathy-style sweatballs into the panel from the left. Meanwhile, Dagwood’s rage at being duped on pepperoni-related matters is so palpable that it radiates right through his front door; presumably he or the mailman closed said front door to avoid devastating the entire neighborhood with his terrible wrath.

Cathy, 5/19/09

Speaking of Cathy-style sweatballs, with “Your dog just puked in there” we add another shameful entry to the List Of Cathy Installments At Which Josh Has Laughed Non-Ironically.

Gil Thorp, 5/19/09

Oh, God, this Gil Thorp storyline won’t just be about Gil discovering YouTube; it will be about Gil discovering the Internet, in general, with the help of Coach Kaz, who’s long been using MySpace to lure 16-year-old girls into his custom-airbrushed Kaz-van. Anyway, this plot might be worth it if we get more close-up horrified reaction shots from Gil like the one in the final panel (I’m assuming that he’s stumbled upon the “For the ladies” album on Andrew Gregory’s Facebook account), but I will be very disappointed if Marty Moon’s Twitter account isn’t involved somehow (though I’ll be unsettled if it involves mine).

Mark Trail, 5/19/09

If you had to pick a member of the Trail household to feel sorry for, you’d probably pick Rusty (neglected, funny-looking, kind of dim), Cherry (neglected, sexually frustrated, only allowed to wear pink shirts), or maybe Andy (not neglected, especially when someone is needed to serve as bait). But what about Cherry’s father Doc? Being trapped in a remote forest compound with only Mark, Rusty, and someone dumb enough to marry Mark and adopt Rusty for company, you can see why he’d start to disengage from his environment and retreat into his private world. In today’s first panel, it’s obvious that he knows it would be socially inappropriate to just continue his dinner in silence, but he really hasn’t been following any of the last hour’s worth of conversation; since everyone seems generally pleased, he plays it safe. “Yes, it’s great that things happened … you know, the way they happened! Probably at least two of you here were responsible for that outcome!”

Soon, however, we learn why Doc is emerging from his shell: he needs Mark’s help with something! What could it be? Veterinarian Doc seems to be what passes for a health-care professional in rustic Lost Forest, but I dearly hope it isn’t medically related. “Mark, it’s about time for my colonoscopy! Doing it myself like I did last year was trickier than I thought, so I’d like you to hold the mirror this time around.”

Mary Worth, 5/19/09

A lot of commentors thought it was strange that Adrian is only thought-ballooning her intention to answer the doorbell, but is it really any stranger than her father talking loudly about her delicate emotional state right in front of her? A lot of commentors also thought that Adrian’s dress was hideous, but is it any worse than Dr. Jeff’s snappy one-orange-shoulder shirt? What I’m trying to say is that Mary Worth is a maelstrom of insanity, and there’s no point in trying to focus on individual elements and make them work in some sort of real-world context.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/19/09

Silly Herb! You can’t vacuum a mass grave!

Post Content

Let’s start today by taking a step into the past — specifically, yesterday.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 5/17/09

Margo is about to jet off to China to single-handedly rescue her fiance and force the People’s Bank of China to revalue the yuan in the process, but first she’s stopping off at her mother’s for a free meal. What could possibly be the cause of the girlish glee occurring inside Gabriella’s apartment?

Apartment 3-G, 5/18/09

OH MY GOD, IT’S HER PARENTS! And they’re being all … nice to each other. Surely the last thing any of us want to see is our parents flirting like they’re on a third date and have consumed exactly the right amount of wine for magic to happen twenty to forty minutes in the future; this is especially true for Margo, whose very self-image requires her to imagine the act of her creation as a moment of pure mutual loathing and contempt, so you can imagine her disgust at seeing this happy little tableau here.

(Margo’s creation story is actually pretty sordid, which gives this whole scene a vibe of genuine ick that I’m not sure is intended.)

Blondie, 5/18/09

As panel three indicates, Blondie is under the suffocating, restrictive gaze of her husband at all times, so she’s learned to choose her words carefully so as to avoid his wrath while still speaking the truth. “I thought he was all those things, but boy howdy was I wrong. Look, Cookie, the results of my carefree flapper days should make it pretty clear that bathtub gin dulls both your eyesight and your judgment.”

Family Circus, 5/18/09

Oh, look, the Keanes have apparently acquired a crazed neighborhood enemy! This can only escalate; tomorrow, they’ll presumably wake up to find the words “HUMAN GARBAGE” spray-painted across the front of their house. The real question, of course, why it took so long for this to happen.

Mark Trail, 5/18/09

You’re probably laughing at this because you’re imagining Rusty, dressed in his best khaki paramilitary uniform and his brightest blue kerchief, earnestly showing a college admissions officer his “transcripts,” which consist entirely of poorly lit and composed pictures of those forest animals dumb or ill enough to be lured into the pen behind the Trail cabin. But that scenario, of course, assumes that Rusty has any idea what “college” actually is. Once he’s saved up enough, Mark and Cherry will probably find a glove factory or third-world rebel army willing to accept some cash in return for taking the mutant freak-child off their hands; then they’ll tell him he’s going to Bowdoin or something and send him on his way, never to be seen again.