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Crankshaft, 7/18/07

Ha ha! Crankshaft’s prostate is grotesquely swollen, making every waking moment a torture for him! Ha ha! Oh, the hilarity!

Adding to the funny, of course, is the revelation that the dickery that the ’Shaft displays pretty much every day is part of a majestic chain of misanthropy that spans the generations. At least Crankshaft Senior has some actual annoyance to overreact to, since presumably one didn’t send children off to stadium restrooms on their own, even in the sepia-toned days of yore. Since our hero does not require assistance to toddle off to the john in the present day, I guess Crankshaft III just wants to make him feel bad about being old and decrepit.

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess that’s supposed to be Crankshaft’s son-in-law, not son, since he’s the one with the unspeakably hateful Ukrainian mother. Pretty much everyone in this strip is a loathsome human being, is what I’m saying.

(Hey, isn’t the ’Shaft supposed to be a WWII vet? If he’s 70, that would have him going through his basic training at the ripe old age of 7. Of course, it’s possible that the ’Shaft-in-law just uses “70” as his synonym for “I no longer bother to keep track of how old you actually are, fossil.”)

UPDATE: As several of you who are clearly smarter than I am pointed out, the little tot in the sepia-toned first panel is a girl child, which means that the horrible, horrible adult human being next to her is the ’Shaft himself. Let this be a lesson to you about not altering the facts to fit your grandiose “cycle of hate” thesis. Presumably said pigtailed tot is in fact the wife of the non-’Shaft dude in panel two, and thus he’s dishing out a little payback on her behalf.

Apartment 3-G, 7/18/07

“Yes, Nora, in my experience, there’s nothing an impoverished Oriental peasant respects more than a white man in an electric blue suit waving hard currency around and offering him the chance to choose between selling centuries-old pieces of his cultural patrimony and starving to death. The little buggers adore me.”

Something is seriously awry with Nora’s shirt in panel three. “God damn it, if I show him my left boob, will he stop nattering on about my dead husband and the filthy foreigners he forsook me for?”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/18/07

Curmudgeon dominance of TDIET proceeds apace: today’s entry is from faithful reader Damian Penny, who sent this entry straight out of m************ Newfoundland, before he up and moved to Halifax. It may be the first TDIET to end in a twisted pile of steel and flesh — but not the last, I’m hoping.

HONK-A is an amusing but not outrageous variation, but I dare you to find a horn that can produce a sound like HONK-K. On the other hand, I really like the way the trucker’s wordless curse symbols are all tiny-like and entirely contained within the cab.

Mary Worth, 7/18/07

You get the feeling that Drew starts a lot of his sentences with “I love talking about my”.

Sally Forth, 7/18/07

So, long story short, that’s why everyone at Splash Land died of cholera.

Finally, I offer the latest in an extremely occasional series of potential LiveJournal icons from the comics, this one from today’s Crock:

It should correspond to “Mood: Incontinent”.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/19/07

Every time he opens his mouth, Hugh serves as a further indictment of the English public school system, keeping in mind that in the crazy mixed-up world on the other side of the pond “public” means “private and very, very exclusive.” At whatever posh boarding school he went to, he clearly didn’t pay very close attention in Introduction To Talking To The Lower Orders So That They Can Almost But Not Quite Tell That You Hold Them In Contempt.

The last two day’s worth of this soap opera strip actually achieve something that most gag-a-day strips flop at, which is good timing. Yesterday, June curtly informed Hugh that she was in the medical business but wasn’t a doctor; clearly he’s been standing in the doorway, gears grinding in his blond, mop-topped head, trying to get his mind around the concept, before he amusingly stumbles in and continues the thought in panel three.

Crock, 6/19/07

I have long been concerned about the Desert Sage’s home, which I think is supposed to be a cave but is always depicted as the same unnatural bright yellow as the rest of Crock’s desert setting. It’s as if he’s living in a sand castle, one with an entrance so large as to render the whole thing structurally impossible. Today is the first time I can remember seeing this hovel from the back, which makes it clear that it’s really about the size of a single person; it also appears to only be about forty feet from the Foreign Legion fortress, which sort of takes away a little of the Sage’s isolated hermit mystique. On the other hand, given how tiny his sand castle/cave/whatever it is, it’s probably for the best that he can just go knock on the Legionnaires’ door when he has to use the bathroom.

Mark Trail, 6/19/07

There’s something heartbreakingly tender about the Mark’s facial expression and the way he’s cradling that dead duck. It’s as if he’s saying, “Gosh, you sure were a noble and beautiful creature! If things were different, you’d be flying free, a gorgeous bird up in the sky! I’m going to give you the dignified funeral you deserve, just as soon as I finish tearing open your torso and poking around inside your digestive tract.” Frankly, I expected that when he found the duck he’d immediately start punching the corpse and shouting “WHERE ARE SAM’S EYES? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SAM’S EYES?”

And yes, as many of you have pointed out, that “female” mallard clearly has male markings. Can anyone who gets this strip in the paper tell us if the coloring is implied in black and white, or was added later by non-animal-loving colorists?

Family Circus, 6/19/07

The Family Circus children are always unnaturally small, but the trend has reached a really disturbing point today. Either Jeffy is only eighteen inches from head to toe or Grandma is a terrifying giant. Either way, she can probably just crush him like a mosquito with her book if he keeps nattering on like this.

Mary Worth, 6/19/07

From: Dr. Jeff Corey <jefffcorey3@yahoo.it>
To: {undisclosed recipients}
Subject: EXPECTING YOUR REPLY

My name is Dr Jeff Corey ,”special friend” to Mary Worth, widower to Jack Worth, accountant of REPSOL PETROLEUM AND GAS company in Equatorial Guinea. I am 69years old, suffering from long time cancer of the prostate. From all indications my condition is really deteriorating and it’s quite obvious that I won’t live more than expectations according to my doctors.This is because the cancer stage has gotten to a very bad stage. I want your pity but i need your trust.

My “special friend” is wealthy from her husbands ill-gotten gains and has allowed me to manage her finances,but she only spends the money on cravats and pool parties,she does not care about the poor or needy.The doctor has advised me that I will not live for more than few months, so I have now decided to use my access to her accounts to spread all her wealth, to contribute mainly to repairing CLEFT PALATES in VEITNAM.

Before my “special friend’s” late husband died he was a major oil tycoon as I said,and deposited the sum of US$14,000,000.00( Fourteen million dollars) in one of the Security Finance Firm in the Netherlands. i need you to collect this funds and distribute it according to the God wishes and for charity . so that when i die my soul can rest in peace, instead of being doomed to hell like my “special friend”.

The funds will be entirely in your hands and management; i beg you to send them to “peace village hanoi” in VEITNAM. i hope God givesyou the wisdom to touch many lives,that is my main concern. 20% of this money will be for your time and effort,while 80% goes to charity. So if you know you can assist me then forward to me immediately the following informations to my email (drjeffc0rey@yahoo.es): FULL NAMES AND ADDRESS, PRIVATE PHONE, YOUR NATIONALITY, OCCUPATION, AGE and your Marital Startus.

May God bless and protect you always.
Dr. Jeff Corey

They’ll Do It Every Time, 6/19/07

Curmudgeon domination of TDIET continues! This one comes from faithful reader Dan B. “Hoo-ray for generalizations!” he says.

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Crock 6/5/07

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d say something nice about the art in Crock, but, well, when you get to 1,100+ posts on your damn comics blog, you end up in places you could never have imagined.

I kind of like the empty thought balloon over Grossie’s head in the second panel. (Yes, her name really is “Grossie,” and yes, she’s married to “Maggot.”) The execution is sub-par, but conceptually, I like it as an indicator that the thought balloonist is thinking something important for the narrative, but not something that you the reader is allowed to be privy to just yet. However, in this panel I am distracted from my brief feeling of artistic appreciation by the horror show that is Grossie’s mouth. It’s bad enough that it’s usually depicted as an black lipsticked bow that floats disconcertingly on the outside of her niqab; here it yawns open hideously, with the right corner stretching halfway down her chest to create an image out of a Dali-esque nightmare.

Hmm, so I guess I ended up not being very nice here after all.

Mark Trail, 6/5/07

Sure, we all love it when Mark Trail punches the fake beard off some ne’er-do-well, or when a badger the size of an Abrams tank appears with a word balloon coming out of its rectum, but I think we need to appreciate the lower-key installments of this strip as well. Today’s episode gives any Trailhead so many reasons to keep coming back. There’s Buzzard’s dialog, which ranges from the impossibly stilted (“I think this is the place I should be”) to the frankly ungrammatical (“It can’t be good, but as long as they pay me!”), and Buzzard’s tiny, Ted Forth-like hands, which seem so at odds with his bulky body (which is just poured into those overalls, by the way). Then in panel three, we’ve got Sam Hill, with her sexy eye makeup and sexy bangs and sexy cravat, practically throwing herself at poor, oblivious Mark as they head over to OPERATIONS WEATHER. Bliss, I tell you, pure bliss.

Shoe, 5/6/07

I’m kind of surprised the newspaper is bothering to review Roz’s diner. If I’m remembering correctly (and I might not be — despite appearances, I do try to minimize the time I spend thinking about Shoe), Roz’s is the only place you ever see the characters in this strip eating outside of their homes, and thus might be the only restaurant in Treetops. The review should just read “Roz’s: If you give them money, they will prepare food for you to eat.”