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Spider-Man, 7/15/07

I know it gets old hearing me go on about how Spider-Man is an incredible feeb, but … Jesus Christ, Spider-Man is such an incredible feeb. Today’s he’s decided that he’s just had about enough of this terrible secret identity curse, and so he’s going to pack up his things and go retire the Spider-Man identity entirely. Here’s a hint, Spidey: Spider-Man is the interesting one — by comparison, anyway. You know who should be going into retirement? Mr. Peter “Waaaah my wife makes more than me” “Waaah I don’t have health insurance even though I have super powers and don’t need it” “Waaah I can’t reach the remote” Parker, that’s who. Does this happen to all superheroes eventually? Were Rex Morgan and Mary Worth originally crime-fighting mutants who retired their superhero personae but somehow held on to their spots in the comics pages? Because Peter Parker sans Spidey could out-dull either of them.

I do like the leftmost panel in the bottom row, though, which dramatically illustrates the insane mob of camera-wielding maniacs that would surely drive even the most powerful superhero into seclusion. “Look, there’s a guy on the roof — he might be Spider-Man! Photograph, photographers, photograph!”

However, in the long run, even the usually reliable NEXT! box disappoints. Is that Papyrus font? Sheesh.

Judge Parker, 7/15/07

You can tell Mr. Caesar is a bad guy, because he wears a full three-piece suit when he goes to inspect his sinister industrial operation, which probably exists solely to transform crude oil directly into global-warming-causing CO₂ without even refining it into useful gasoline first, because he’s just that evil, you see. So also clearly this “Rusty” will have something really awful in store for Sam and Sophie. I’m guessing that when he makes his arrival tomorrow (tomorrow in Judge Parker time; actual date: June 3, 2008), he’s going to look a little something like this:

“GEEEAAHHH!” Sam will say. “YOU CAN HAVE OUR SHARES IN THE WINERY — JUST STOP POINTING THAT FACE AT ME!”

Sophie, meanwhile, is so worked up about environmental disaster that her left eyeball is rolling into the back of her head. It’s kind of freaking me out.

Crankshaft, 7/15/07

“Wait a minute … damned souls, trapped in trees and begging to be urinated on? Packed swimming pools full of boiling water, with the scent of cooking human flesh wafting over the whole neighborhood? That’s not ‘the past’ … those are my fantasies about the torture of my enemies in hell! Sorry, I’m old, I get things mixed up sometimes.”

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Hi and Lois, 7/13/07

The eldest Flagston child apparently hasn’t noticed that the background to the strip, which in Hi and Lois is usually rendered with a certain amount of detail, as if someone feels obligated to at least pretend to care, is completely absent today; Chip and his dad (and his dad’s disgustingly ancient chair and side table) are floating at random in a nightmarish vacuum of gleaming white nothingness. This indicates that their already fictional universe is becoming less and less detailed, leaving them with only a few concrete items and concepts to latch onto, one of which is apparently Chip’s job. So, the poor boy won’t just be flipping burgers for the rest of his life; in this existentialist blankness, he’ll be flipping burgers for the rest of eternity.

Beetle Bailey, 7/13/07

Not that I have a long history of drinking binges or anything, but in my experience they result in giddiness, a heightened and unjustified sense of competence and/or attractiveness (one’s own and others’), lapses in judgement, and loss of motor control and digestive stability. They do not, however, generate pleasant hallucinations. Still, it’s kind of heartrending and pathetic to see what General Halftrack’s perfect world is like. Apparently it involves sexy half-naked angels, birds, a gnome tending a pot of gold, and some kind of golf club rainbow (and I hope I don’t offend anyone here, but if your transcendent fantasies involve equipment that you can buy at Dick’s Sporting Goods, I pity the narrowness of your imagination).

Incidentally, does anyone want to explain what the deal is with Beetle Bailey and gnomes? In a way that won’t scar me for life?

Crankshaft, 7/13/07

I come before you today not to criticize Crankshaft’s hateful misanthropy, nor to comment on his awful punning, nor even to remark on the fucking smirks to which his entire family is prone. I seek only to express concern at their awful pallor. Seriously, they look like death warmed over. Was this particular shade of off-flesh intended for Funky Winkerbean and accidentally misrouted? Or is Crankshaft going to one-up zombie strips written by the sons and nephews of the original creators and become a strip that’s literally about zombies?

Sally Forth, 7/13/07

This actually made me laugh aloud this morning. Ted says it hurt, but look at his eyes. You can tell that he stopped feeling pain — or feeling anything at all, really — about three weeks ago.

Hey! Remember how a little band called the Quarrymen eventually changed their name to the Beatles? Well, New Delhi Monkey Gang (that would be Hil and Faye) are looking for a similar shift in fortunes to go with a new moniker. Head over to Ces’s blog to help him pick a new name. I’m pushing heavily for “Teenage Girl President.” I’m also pushing for Faye to get a new guitar that isn’t so hideously green.

Pluggers, 7/13/07

Pluggers are awful damn cheerful, considering how close they are to all that manure.

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Gil Thorp, 7/9/07

Unlike most of you naysayers, I unabashedly love Gil Thorp, and I particularly love Gil Thorp’s summer storylines. As regular readers know, while the strip is pretty demented plotwise at all times, during the school year it at least is obligated to stay within the stately rhythms of high school athletics: football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball and softball in the spring. In the summer, though, without the structure of the traditional American team sports, anything can happen to the denizens of Milford. Here are some past summer storylines:

• Von worked as a late night DJ, had a weird on-air romance with a 30-year-old, and saved her from a stalker.
• A gymnastics team full of elementary school girls descended into racial hatred and fisticuffs.
• Marty Moon lost thousands of dollars in ill-advised golf bets to a Ben Franklin lookalike grifter, and ended up passed out drunk in his car.

And that’s just off the top of my head! You can understand why I’m very excited to see where the next few months will take us. As we begin, Coach Thorp and Assistant Coach Kaz are celebrating the fact that they don’t have to be around teenagers anymore by getting ripped at the local PUB. Hopefully once they get drunk enough, Gil will work up the nerve to finally ask Kaz why in God’s name he wears pearl earrings.

Crankshaft, 7/9/07

I was a little disappointed when I saw that the ’Shaft was reading Readers Digest; I had thought he’d get his versifying from Adirondack Review or maybe the Inkwell Journal. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve had piles of Readers Digests in the bathroom I frequent, but in my memory that publication focuses less on poetry and more on funny but true-to-life anecdotes from the workplace and common-sense features on the liberal lies that are destroying America. But I do really like the look of languid blankness on our hero’s face in the second panel. He captures the ennui of the modern cultural consumer, always looking for the entertainment that requires the absolute minimum of psychic energy, but vaguely aware of his dissatisfaction when he’s done.

Apartment 3-G, 7/9/07

Cousin, eh? You ever notice that all of Lu Ann’s relatives, like Ruby and Blaze and Mim, are vaguely-defined cousins and nieces? My theory is that her home is actually a sprawling polygamist compound in Wyoming foothills of the Rockies, where, after two or three generations of isolation, everyone is related to everyone else by marriage or blood in one way or another. It would explain the squishiness of the family ties, and the stupidity.

I love the imperious command in panel one. Margo’s victories over her enemies have no meaning if there is nobody present to witness them. The combat must be memorialized in the form of epic verse for the generations yet unborn.