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Mark Trail, 11/29/07

Johnny’s in jail and his wife is getting in touch with the only one who can help him: nature writer and vigilante Mark Trail! How will Mark help his fiery Québécois friend? By punching the mountie who arrested him? Punching the guards at the jail? Punching the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and every member of the jury at Johnny’s trial? Punching Bull Malone’s corpse? Mark’s the expert, so we’ll just have to wait and see, but it’s sure to be exciting.

Apartment 3-G, 11/29/07

OK, now the narration boxes are just being cruel. “Lu Ann takes a deep breath…” OF CARBON MONOXIDE.

Crock, 11/29/07

“Then she realized that we live in a tent in the desert without any electricity — or, for that matter, phone service.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/4/07

I suppose I’m expected to say something about this, right? God damn, you know, I got into this gig to make jokes about Rex Morgan’s sex life and stuff. Well, if I had to sum it up, I’d have to say:

I don’t hate it.

I don’t hate it on principle, for starters. I don’t believe that the comics, or the newspaper comics in particular, should be a all-fun death-free zone. And, to touch on a specific aspect that seems to have pressed a lot of buttons: I’m a big proponent of quality-of-life decisions in medical care. I think that, if given the option of adding a few extra months to your life at the price of constant pain, “no” is a legitimate answer.

In a bigger sense, as I noted in a quote in a newspaper story whose author was nice enough to solicit my opinion like I’m some kind of expert, I’m in favor of comics artists deciding to do things that are kind of ambitious. Whatever my thoughts are on the execution of this, my esteem for it is boosted by its context: it sits in the middle of a section of the paper full of “legacy” strips now produced by committee, whose tired punchlines seem quite often to be literally phoned in. This series was undeniably trying at something a little grander.

As for the execution of the storyline, to me it was kind of hit and miss: some of it was really affecting, and some was pretty tin-eared. That quality has been on ample display over the past few weeks. There was a lot of this final sequence that I found quite moving, but then, hey! It’s weird cheesy Phantom of the Opera/“Puttin’ on the Ritz” guy! It kind of, um, spoiled the mood for me a bit.

But in the end, the decision for this storyline to go the way it did didn’t shock or upset me because of the other context it exists in, namely Funky Winkerbean itself. Honestly, this is the strip with the missing arms and the alcoholism and the murdered fathers and the infertility and the hey hey. You want to know what FW plot really pissed me off? Harry Dinkle going deaf. Because in real life, people get cancer, people get second bouts of cancer, and people die from it, all for no good reason. But when you get ironic, O. Henry style afflictions — well, that just seems needlessly cruel.

That’s all just my opinion, of course. And one thing I do appreciate is all of you commentors who have been sharing your opinions — and your really touching and harrowing stories — over the past little while. The comments on yesterday’s post are particularly worth reading. Whether you think this outpouring is because of the strip or in spite of it, I’m touched that you chose my blog as a place to share this stuff.

For Better Or For Worse, 10/4/07

Meanwhile, Grandpa Jim: totally not dead, FYI. Ha ha, old man, you thought it’d be easy to get out of this strip? You were wrong — dead wrong!

But you’re not dead. Just to make that clear.

Crock, 10/4/07

This is the first Crock I’ve genuinely and non-ironically laughed at in about ever. It’s about the fact that Crock only shows the slightest bit of consideration towards other living things if it somehow forwards his interests or his appetites; as a bonus, there’s an undertone of cannibalism. I began to worry that I might be kind of mean spirited.

Marvin, 10/4/07

But then I was appalled at this comic, which is about putting babies in prison, so I felt better about myself.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/07

That final panel isn’t artsy visual narrative, or a metaphor for Rex’s dual nature, or anything like that. It’s actually offering us a look into Rex Morgan’s head, wherein lies … another, slightly smaller, Rex Morgan head. And what’s inside that Rex Morgan head? You’ve got it: yet another Rex Morgan head. It’s like those damn nesting Russian dolls, only with Rex Morgan heads.

Oh, and they can all talk, apparently. Damn creepy.

Herb and Jamaal, 10/4/07

Actually, Herb, he’s a 16th century writer, but what’s 1,200 years in the grand scheme of things? We shouldn’t let minor details detract from your achievement: you just managed to use an entirely irrelevant quotation that you got out of Bartlett’s to justify to yourself the fact that you’re a crappy friend. Bravo!

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Archie, 9/12/07

There’s just one thing wrong with … no, wait, scratch that. There’s one thing that’s immediately obviously wrong with the latest offering from the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000: Andrews père apparently considers a wallet to be something comfortable to settle down on, instead of a painful ass-irritant that any normal person would remove before plopping down in a big comfy spiral-covered chair. Of course, the AJGLU 3000 is a soulless collection of wires and semiconductors, so it can probably only dimly understand how physical comfort works. Perhaps it has concluded that something customarily placed in a back pocket must by definition be comfortable to sit on. It also has only a loose grasp on human biology, as evidenced by panel three: that tiny bald head is perched atop an impossibly spheroid body, which, being composed of some perfectly pliable substance in the AJGLU 3000’s internal volume map, merely oozes around the wallet without any discomfort.

The AJGLU’s defense, I will admit that the images on the screen in the background — funny-looking men! pretty girls! cars! — demonstrate a perfect grasp of the concept of television.

Crock, 9/12/07

So, if, before today, you had asked me, “Josh, which of the unfunny recurring gags in Crock do you find most disturbing?” I’d have answered without hesitation, “The cook’s conversations with the chickens he boils alive, who are wholly sentient and all too aware of their impending horrible fate.” And if you had asked, “Well, is there any way this could be made more disturbing?” I’d probably have said, “Nope! It’s pretty grim!” And if you had then followed up by saying “But what if you found out that the flesh and fat and skin of these chickens were being used to flavor soup while they were still alive, which soup was then consumed by eager humans right in front of their death-haunted eyes?” I’d have said, “Huh. Yeah, you’ve managed to top it, all right.”

Curtis, 9/12/07

And today’s nominee for Use Of Quotation Marks That Is Most Unsettling For Reasons I Can’t Quite Put My Finger On: “Isn’t peppermint your ‘favorite’?” The little floating musical note only adds to the unease.

Pluggers, 9/12/07

Pluggers are vampires. Cheap, unattractive vampires.

UPDATE: So, as Sherm was the first to point out, vampires like the night, not the day. I’m, like, dumb.