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Ziggy, 12/18/09

Wow! Like a lot of people, I assumed that Ziggy would make a token response to Pearls Before Swine’s put-pants-on-Ziggy crusade before getting back to the bizarrely optimistic despair that is its stock in trade. But today brings us back to pants, and puts a whole new spin on things! Ziggy is visiting his wizened dry cleaner, who offers to give back the gnomish alopeciac’s trousers — along with his Nehru jacket, a garment that went out of style many years ago. Thus, this panel turns our scorn back upon us. Pants are so out of date, it seems to be saying. Maybe you narrow-minded losers are walking around, your thighs unfairly constricted by fabric tubes; but Ziggy is the new model man, his legs exposed to the open air, as is the style here in the future. You squares with the pants can do what you want. Ziggy won’t be having any of it.

Wizard of Id, 12/18/09

Hurl all the epithets you want at the Wizard of Id — “unfunny,” “irrelevant,” “badly drawn,” “minimizes torture” — but one thing you have to give it credit for is its unflinching attitude towards alcohol. While Hi and Lois, for instance, has gone along to get along, with “Thirsty” Thurston’s gin blossom-scarred nose of old having long ago vanished, the Wizard of Id’s Bung remains on the funny pages as an unrepentant alcoholic, and not the fun, charming kind. Today, for instance, we learn that, in the brief period of time after he awakes from his booze-numbed slumber but before he can stumble down to the bar to start drinking again, his hands are shaking so badly due to the lack of alcohol that he injures himself while attempting to attend to basic grooming. This may shock and horrify you, but anything that leads to awkward conversations along the lines of “Daddy, what’s the DTs?” is OK in my book.

Six Chix, 12/18/09

Speaking of horror, there’s something quite touching about this scene, in which ephemeral snow-lovers trade a last few endearments even as their bodies droop and melt.

Mark Trail, 12/18/09

Sheriff Stogie Q. Doublechin is right! That is a good one! What kind of monster leaves a little boy trapped under a car on the beach? How the hell does a car even get onto a beach on the first place? And would anyone leave a child in the care of this obvious lunatic? No, the sheriff doesn’t think he’ll be following that lead, than you very much. He’ll just stay here with his thumbs hooked into his belt and glare at you there in your cage, mister! Haw haw!

Note just what a state Mark is in, with no less than five hairs somewhat out of place. This is really the most desperate we’ve ever seen him.

Crock, 12/18/09

So, uh, the Lost Patrol, after years of all-male company, has been saved by water and masturbatory fodder? Eh, why not, it’d hardly be the most distasteful Crock ever produced.

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Heart of the City, 11/25/09

I’ve enjoyed a couple of trips to Philadelphia, where Heart of the City is set, and I’ve always considered Ben Franklin to be my favorite Founding Father. Still, if I were walking through a scenic Philly park and encountered a tiny Franklin-gnome staring ahead with dead eyes, I think I would be profoundly disturbed.

Luann, 11/25/09

“So it turns out that Brad is pretty good at picking out gifts for both of us! How incredibly awkward, for baffling, inscrutable reasons of narrative convenience!”

Crock, 11/25/09

It obviously makes total sense that Captain Preppie is being eaten from the inside out by his own handsomeness. However, I’m unsettled by the way he’s brandishing that corn dog with a heavy-lidded leer.

Hey, kids, I’m going to be gorging myself on turkey and drinking gravy straight from the boat for the next few days. See ya Monday or thereabouts!

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Shoe, 11/23/09

It is not often that I offer unironic congratulations to the writers of any comic, let alone to those of Shoe, but: Unironic congratulations, writers of Shoe, for slipping what seems to me to be a fairly transparent premature ejaculation joke past the censors at Cassatt and Brookins, Inc. I guess you could just bat your eyes innocently and say, “Oh, no, that’s just the length of their relationship!” but, uh, yeah. And the joke would have maybe worked better if she had said “six and a half feet,” though would anyone actually say that in idiomatic English? Also: six and half foot tall prematurely ejaculating bird, yeesh. But still, a comics coup!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/23/09

Speaking of coups, I’m pretty unsettled by the sheer quantity of ammunition that Snuffy is stockpiling in his rickety rural shack. Apparently he’s tired of just killing muskrat for stew and firing warning shots over the head of the occasional revenuer, and has decided to launch a full-on armed assault on Sheriff Tait, who as near as I can tell is the only legally sanctioned authority figure resident in Hootin’ Holler. If Lukey’s head-shakin’, tongue-wagglin’ approval is any indication, he assumes he’ll have a privileged position in Snuffy’s New Order, though of course one can never really trust the word of an unstable military dictator.

Gil Thorp, 11/23/09

Tightly wound rage case Duncan Daley has been working hard at being good because of some inspirational blah blah his brother tried to hand him before he went to prison, but now that his brother is starting prison fights, Duncan has decided that being good is for suckers. His disconcerting facial expression in panel three — the tight little smile, the faraway eyes — promises that he’s going “celebrate” with grim, fanatical intensity, possibly leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

Crock, 11/23/09

OH OH WAIT EXCEPT WE LIVE IN THE SAHARA FUCKING DESERT