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Blondie, 9/14/06

Since I try to say something nice on this blog at least once a month, I will say that today’s Blondie actually made me laugh. I too would watch debates on the Sandwich Channel with great interest. Plus, if this exchange actually occurred, it would be the first time in the history of punditry that the construction “shove [something] down my throat” was used correctly. Note to TV talking heads and angry talk radio callers everywhere: something being paid for with tax dollars or featured prominently on television is not being “shoved down your throat.” Please try to keep this rhetorical device in reserve for something that merits it, like, I dunno, mandatory fellatio laws.

Pluggers, 9/14/06

Commentors on yesterday’s thread have already pretty much said everything I would want to say about the ostensible “joke” of this panel, but I do want to address the reason why the Chief Plugger has chosen to not actually depict a plugger in today’s feature. Note that the individual who contributed the idea is known only as “Sapiens.” This presumably is meant to emphasize that he is a member of our species, Homo sapiens (the reason why a plugger would drop off the “Homo” should be fairly obvious). Since the inhabitants of the Pluggers strip are not human beings at all but rather freakish, mutated Beast-Men, it’s probably for the best that no attempt at visual representation was made today.

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Blondie, 3/3/06

I think we should take a break from the rampant gay sex innuendo in Rex Morgan, M.D., and take a look at the rampant drug lingo in Blondie. I was in a bowling league for the better part of a decade and never, ever heard of anyone bowling a couple of “lines.” I think we all know what Herb and Dagwood were doing with some “lines” without their wives before the censors got their hands on this strip. Soon the comics will no doubt be rife with drug innuendo:

• Sally Forth to Ted Forth: “Say, Hillary’s at her friend’s; do you want to go out back and ‘pull’ some ‘weeds’?”
• Leroy Lockhorn to nameless acquaintance: “Loretta used to really get to me, but now I make sure to ‘ride’ the ‘horse’ before I get home, and I’m too blissed out to worry about anything.”
• Dot Flagston to Ditto Flagston: “Let’s get f’ed up on PCP and try to ram mom’s station wagon into a cop car.”

Tsk.

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Spider-Man, 2/20/06

What the exclamation point Peter Parker is uttering in panel three ought to mean: “Whoa! My wife is making enough money to support both of us and doesn’t want me to work! Now I can dedicate myself to fighting crime full-time without worrying about money — or, better yet, dedicate myself to watching TV and drinking expensive hooch full-time without worrying about money!”

What the exclamation point Peter Parker is uttering in panel three almost certainly is actually supposed to mean: “Oh, no, I’m too macho to handle any woman taking care of me blah blah blah stupid pointless boring wrong-headed crap.”

I know I’ve harped on this before, but seriously, dude: With great power comes great responsibility. And with a rich wife comes zero responsibility. So get with the program!

(I will step back from my Spidey-hating long enough to acknowledge being pleased by panel one: Peter hangs up on his boss so vigorously, the phone glows!)

Apartment 3-G, 2/20/06

Yeah, I realize that the disheveled hair is just comics visual shorthand for Having A Rough Week, presumably meant to ease any illiterate Apartment 3-G fans into the storyline’s events. But wouldn’t it be great if Margo’s normally perfectly primped bun got unwound during some kind of peacock-wrangling episode gone horribly awry? I know that I can only ever see that in my mind, but is it wrong to try to see it in my mind again and again?

Blondie 2/20/06

I don’t really have much specific to say about this. I just wanted to record here for posterity the moment when Blondie went completely insane.