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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.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/30/05

Yeah, why is she so down? Maybe it’s because she’s headed out to work, churning out awful press releases, pimping no-talent actors and playwrights, glossing over the crimes of evil multinational corporations — you know, the sort of things that keep New York, the greatest city in the world, humming, and all for a salary that isn’t going to keep a girl in Kate Spade and Jimmy Choo like she deserves. Meanwhile, the two of you, who have selfishly chosen high-paying, zero-stress jobs in the nursing and elementary-school-art fields, get to enjoy a leisurely breakfast over the paper, relaxing in your deeply dowdy but no doubt warm and comfortable robes.

Honestly, it’s like being white, unscrupulous, and upwardly mobile doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I thought that the chatter in the comments this morning had prepared me for the harrowing sight of Mark Trail’s muscular but nippleless torso. I was wrong. Hoo boy was I wrong. No one had mentioned that there was something deeply freaky about his face as well. Is that a shadow cast by his sunken, heroin-addict-style cheekbones, or is he just wearing black rouge? Whatever the case, he joins Dagwood Bumstead in the no-nips hall of fame:

Also, is anyone else as unsettled by the current teenage-jewel-theives-in-fetish-masks plot in the Phantom as I am?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

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Jeez, our power was restored this afternoon, but there was deep server wonkiness this evening that almost forced me to put off a new post yet another day. Thank goodness it got resolved just in time for me to put up a loopy, two-o’clock-in-the-morning, caffeine-fueled post. I feel like I’m seeing transparent divorce birds bumping see-through uglies in midair or something.

Mark Trail, 11/28/05

I was convinced that we were going to be forced to endure the Most Boring Mark Trail Plotline Ever™, which seemed destined to go something like this: “Hey, it’s an incredibly rare bird!” “Let’s call in an expert to verify it!” “No, that’s not the bird you’re looking for.” “Oh, well, thanks anyway!” But just in time to stave off this disastrously dull denouement arrives this clan of inbred, overall-clad bumpkins, determined to shake things up by striking back at the Northeastern liberal elite the only way they know how: by kidnapping an innocent dog. Perhaps the long, snooze-inducing buildup is Elrod’s little way of telling us that, despite Mark Trail’s ostensible nature-focused narrative purpose, actual nature is actually boring, and we should be thankful when the strip returns to its true calling, which is to say: fisticuffs in which our attractive, square-jawed hero defeats ugly people. You better watch yourself, there, no-neck: Mark Trail doesn’t take kindly to dognappers. You’re much more likely to get a knuckle sandwich than the “over a thousand bucks” you’re dreaming about.

By the way, the phrase “Pa, please don’t steal any more pets!” is going on a craptacular item that you can buy with good money soon. Mark my words.

Blondie, 11/29/05

You know what I like best about today’s Blondie? It’s the fact that the punchline depends on a homonym, so it’s only obvious in word balloon form. I’d like to imagine that Baldo McMustache here continues to stare blankly at the sleeping Dagwood, wondering desperately if there was a season of American Idol that he missed or something (“Isn’t he too old for the show anyway? My God, is that Bo Bice with his hair cut short?”). Meanwhile, Mr. Dithers looks back and forth between the idiot and the narcoleptic and wonders again about just how his HR minions make their decisions.