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Shoe, 2/1/10

Say what you will about Funky Winkerbean, but at least it’s totally upfront with its non-stop cavalcade of misery. Some strips hide a core of intense gloom that occasionally peeks out from underneath the cheery front end of a gag-a-day strip. Take today’s Shoe, for instance. The Perfesser thought-balloons that “mama said there’d be days like this” as his morning alarm goes off. In other words, he’s already written the day off as terrible in his first few seconds of wakefulness. “Oh, look, I didn’t die painlessly in my sleep. Yep, it looks like it’s gonna be one of those days!”

It’s also possible that the alarm has been going off for hours now, and the Perfesser is simply unable to move close enough to the clock to turn it off, due to some combination of obesity and decrepitude.

Gil Thorp, 2/1/10

Like many an angry, aimless dropout of his generation, Steve Luhm uses sarcasm to get in little digs at his elders that they’re too irony-deficient to catch. “My dad taught me there’s honor in any job if you work at hard at it … even coaching! And you know what’s a good sign that someone’s a hard worker? When they just hand off part of their workload to some other random person at the first opportunity! Anyway, I’ll be sure to thank my dad for that pearl of wisdom.”

Judge Parker, 2/1/10

Speaking of sarcasm, the Judge Parker narration box’s is particularly transparent today. At breakfast, Sam is still talking about Neddy’s live-in boyfriend! Still! The guy just will not shut up about it! Come on, dude, move on into the 21st century with the rest of us, OK?

Curtis, 2/1/10

I admit to being charmed by the enormous unblinking eye on Michelle’s t-shirt today. Curtis’s romantic ardor must be intense indeed, as it would instill a major case of the heebie-jeebies in the soul of a lesser suitor.

Luann, 2/1/10

Wait, they wish they had more time together? Every time we see them in this God-damned strip, they’re endless hashing out the terms of their perfectly gross relationship. Admittedly, each panel featuring Brand and/or Toni is one that doesn’t feature Luann and/or Gunther, but one shouldn’t have to settle for the lesser evil. Why not just retool the strip around Knute, Puddles the dog, Shannon, and Mr. Fogarty, and do everyone a favor?

Mary Worth, 2/1/10

Dear young people everywhere: do not ask either of your parents why he or she cannot forget a past lover unless you want to hear things about his or her past sexytimes that will shake you to your core. Fortunately, Wilbur is such a negative nelly that he goes straight to the arguments while meaningfully adjusting his glasses, though this may only presage tomorrow’s vivid recounting of the mind-blowing post-argument make-up sex. The description will blow Dawn’s socks off, assuming that purple bands of gauze wrapped around the middle of one’s feet can be said to constitute “socks.”

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Gil Thorp, 1/12/10

Say, let’s catch up with Steve Luhm, the promising young man who decided to turn his back on his college career and become a high school janitor! Why would an obviously clever person do such a thing? Today, we learn that Steve is looking for easy access to high school girls, who he wrongheadedly believes will be impressed when he superciliously corrects their basic geography mistakes. Sure, Steve, rub the back of your head bashfully if you will, but you’re obviously hoping that your easy command of body-of-water nomenclature will somehow compensate for your lack of earning power and social status and get you at least to second base with sexy vest girl there. Let me assure you right now that it will not.

One might forgive Steve if he is genuinely the compulsive geographer that he claims. The chances that anybody, even in the “halls of academe,” would be having a dismissive conversation about various seas are extremely low, and this might be the only chance he has to strut his stuff. But I’m thinking it’s more the terribly-awkward-advance thing.

Spider-Man, 1/12/10

Like Spider-Man himself, I’m pretty disoriented by today’s Spider-Man strip. Not only is our hero being abruptly forced in mid-banter to engage in actual heroics, but there wasn’t even any elaborate set-up establishing the extremely low stakes in this conflict. Will this battle somehow reduce Peter Parker’s already low income, which he doesn’t really need anyway because his wife is a movie star? Will it reveal his secret identity to his Aunt May, who probably already actually knows? Will it embarrass him in the press? Will it interfere with his enjoyment of NBC’s Thursday-night lineup?

I’m assuming that the radiating black lines in panel two represent tingling spider-sense, in which case said sense is even less useful than I have hitherto imagined it. Note that Spidey encountered Sabertooth when the former was idly web-slinging around town, only to be abruptly punched in the chest by the latter. If his sense of prescience is only firing off now, as a giant mutant with razor-sharp claws is verbally threatening to kill him while actually lunging at him, I’d have to imagine that this supposed super-power is more distracting than anything else.

Curtis, 1/12/10

Credit where credit is due: “I’m, like, the black Greg Louganis of ice skating” is extremely funny. I’m a little concerned that Curtis appears to have lost a finger on his gloved hand between panels one and two, however.

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The Lockhorns, 1/7/10

Today’s Lockhorns is particularly rich in the delightful seething contempt that keeps me coming back day after day. As if the naked animosity on the principals’ faces weren’t enough to bring joy to fans of marital misanthropy everywhere, we also have the fork jabbed into Leroy’s pile of undifferentiated food-like matter to amuse us. While it’s easy to imagine Leroy leaving it there sticking upwards to serve as a sort of visual confirmation of his complaints about the meal’s unappetizing physical qualities, the angle of the utensil, with its handle pointing away from him, implies that it was actually Loretta who put it there. Perhaps she initially appeared to thrust the fork at Leroy’s doughy torso, before changing her angle of attack at the last minute and leaving it in the home-cooked meal her husband is unable to appreciate! I also note that the configuration of the Lockhorns’ dining area seems to have changed, with Loretta’s seat being replaced by a portal to some kind of ecru nothingness, into which she can stalk when inevitably provoked.

Curtis, 1/7/10

I was about to rag on this year’s Curtis Kwanzaa storyline for its less-than-lunatic plotting and all-too-zen ending when I got to today’s final panel and found out that the whole thing was actually a touching tribute to a late friend of cartoonist Ray Billingsley. So, uh, thanks a lot, Mr. Billingsley, for making me feel even more like a petty jerk than I usually do. You’ve left me with nothing to do except point out that panel two’s depiction of an adorable bunny sleeping on the back of a contented hippo is quite charming.

Mark Trail, 1/7/10

Anyway, I certainly hope that nobody involved in the production on Mark Trail is dying inside due to neglect from his or her spouse, because I’m sure as hell going to make fun of that. Today’s exchange shows that each of the Trails has their role in this terrible dysfunctional marriage down pat, with Mark openly acknowledging that leaving his wife in a desert of emotional emptiness is just what he does!

Like a sonnet, each Mark Trail storyline is built out of a strictly defined series of components, and each story must begin with Cherry being ritually humiliated. First, she herself becomes the unwitting agent of her own loneliness. Why did she even tell Mark about that phone call, when she must have known it would lead to his almost immediate departure? In truth, she had no real choice in the matter, being driven on by her universe’s remorseless narrative logic. Compare her dialogue in that earlier strip to one from several years ago, as acted out by my lovely wife in our production of Mark Trail Theater. Amber read Tuesday’s dialogue out in her best Cherry Trail voice, and the echo was uncanny. Today, Cherry completes her debasement by launching a desperate and doomed sex advance at her husband. In panel three, Mark is closing his eyes and holding absolutely still, in the hope that Cherry will eventually lose interest and go away.

Beetle Bailey, 1/7/10

Meanwhile, Beetle Bailey grows less circumspect by the day, with Beetle no longer willing to pretend that Sarge’s elaborate exercise instructions have any purpose other than to get the young private out of his uniform trousers.