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Archie, 2/20/07

I find it kind of amusing that this little drama of internecine hatred and sublimated violence is taking place among members of a bowling team named the “Buddies.”

The less said about the loving attention lavished on Archie’s crotch in panel three, the better.

Cathy, 2/20/07

I honestly have no interest whatsoever in passing judgment on Cathy’s exercise regimen and ability to adhere to same, but … what about the dog? Is she just going to have to go to the bathroom in the house? Or what?

Dick Tracy, 2/20/07

If Dick looks disgruntled in the third panel, it’s because he knows that Beetle Bailey introduced this character under the name of “Chip Gizmo” in 2002, and there are few things in comics more humiliating than being beaten by half a decade to some pop cultural touchstone by Beetle Bailey. Plus, Chip Gizmo doesn’t look like a smug, svelte Richard Nixon.

Gil Thorp, 2/20/07

Dear America: Tyler and his girlfriend staged the attack on Tyler in order to get R.J. in trouble and thus solidify Tyler’s position as a starter on the Mudlark basketball team. You may now cease paying attention to Gil Thorp for the next several weeks. Signed, The Comics Curmudgeon.

P.S. You’re welcome.

Marvin, 2/20/07

Ha! It’s funny because the dog is pooping!

Wait, did I say “funny?” I meant “horrifying and shameful.” Marginally less horrifying and shameful than when it was babies pooping, but only marginally.

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Cathy, 1/27/07

Dilbert, 1/27/07

Kudzu, 1/26/07

Some comics get trapped by success. They build a big audience with a new message – professional women are insecure, cubicle life is tough, Southerners are people too. But their audiences develop expectations the authors are afraid to disappoint. So they stop taking chances. Creatively, the comics stop growing and die, often at the peak of their popularity. But they don’t go away. They keep going and going and going and merciful Heaven why don’t they stop stop just freakin’ STOP YOU HEAR ME CATHY I’M TALKIN’ TO YOU!

Ahem.

Everybody admires giants who walk away at the height of their game: Gary Larson, Bill Watterson – have there been any others?

But credit two authors trying to revive franchises that died long ago:

Garfield, 1/27/07

When he gives Jon Arbuckle a life, Jim Davis pushes Garfield out of the frame. And that could cost him a lot of desk calendars, Mylar® balloons, and suction-cup car toys. I don’t like Garfield, but I’m not the one keeping Davis in lasagna. So: bold move, pal. Way to go.

Mary Worth, 1/27/07

I owe Karen Moy a debt. I have followed Mary Worth since the freaking Kennedy administration without seeing a centimeter of character development. Now, in just six months, Mary is the center of the story, out of Charterstone, and showing the faint beginnings of self-awareness – even self-doubt. Baby steps, maybe – but steps. Thank you, Karen Moy!

OK, blah, blah, blah. Where am I going with this?

For Better or Worse, 1/27/07

Trapped between a huge, dim, slavishly-devoted audience and a self-satisfied, ham-handed Stalinist author, this strip is creatively as dead as they come. Yet it will run on and on as a Frankenstein’s monster stitched up from Mike’s mewling brats and zombies from the Good Old Days, glued up with glop from that “novel.”

But suppose somebody wanted to make it good — and without losing the current audience. Could they do that? How?

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Mark Trail, 10/24/06

Normally I would go into some sort of liberal namby-pamby crap here about how the Mark Trail isn’t going to let no goddamned fourth amendment stop him from handing out left hooks and right crosses of justice, what with him being the King of LoFo and not needin’ no warrants and all, but then I realized that MOLLY IS IN DANGER and these guys are freakin’ NAMED JAKE AND SNAKE FOR GOD’S SAKES so let’s just GET ON WITH THIS ALREADY.

Cathy, 10/24/06

I break my usual contemptuous silence on the subject of Cathy in order to point out that there’s a carrot in Mr. What’s-His-Name’s word balloon in the second panel today. Yeah, you heard me. A carrot. A frickin’ carrot. What. The. Hell.

Get Fuzzy, 10/24/06

I’m really pretty sure that this is the first Holocaust collaboration joke in the history of the comics.