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Mary Worth, 11/16/09

So, it looks like Scott is going to be A-OK, now that Dr. Jeff has given him and his sexy legs the once-over! Adrian is of course a doctor as well, but her medico-vision was disabled by grief and estrogen, so it was important for Jeff to make sure. (A competent doctor who was not a relative or potential relative of the patient was unavailable, as Dr. Jeff has made sure that everyone who works with him at Santa Royale General is one of his cronies or offspring.)

Anyway, with a mighty MEANWHILE, our narration box thrusts us pell-mell into the next storyline, and panel two shows us why we keep tuning into this feature. Who is making a phone call, and to whom? Is it someone calling to tell Mary that she’s wearing a hideous canary-yellow skirt-suit just like the one Mary’s been wearing all week, presaging a “Single White Meddling Biddy” storyline? Let’s hope!

Dick Tracy, 11/16/09

Here is the ethical dilemma for me as a Dick Tracy reader: each and every storyline inevitably ends in a scene of gruesome violence — with people being electrocuted or torn to bits by vicious dogs or run over by bulldozers — that I am genuinely shocked and discomfited to find on the comics page. And yet the rest of the strip is so baffling and dull that these flesh-mangling episodes are all I feel that I have to look forward to in this feature. Thus, I’m feeling pretty cheated right now, because despite several months’ worth of foreshadowing, not a single person in this interminable circus storyline has been mauled by a tiger, despite many chances for such a thing to happen. One can only hope that the plot’s various ne’er-do-wells have been spared that fate so that Dick can line them up and shoot them in the face one by one.

Luann, 11/16/09

For the record, this is a bad idea because Brad will try too hard and screw everything up, plus TJ will attempt to seduce Brad’s mom. His whipped sweet potatoes will still be exquisite.

Curtis, 11/16/09

I have never claimed to some kind of consistency in my comics likes and dislikes. Thus, while Marvin’s endless poop-smeared antics repulse me, I will always laugh at jokes about Curtis’s little brother picking his nose with malice aforethought, especially when this is indicated by comical sound effects.

Hi and Lois, 11/16/09

I realize that “nostalgia music” was more or less necessary to set up the punchline here, but for full sneering-at-old-people effect, I prefer “dinosaur rock” myself.

Oh, and Vintage Guitar magazine? It exists, my friends. Order it now for the dinosaur rocker on your Christmas list!

Spider-Man, 11/16/09

Newspaper comic strip Spider-Man trufans have been enjoying this plot so far, but have been waiting with mounting anxiety for the moment when the plot will hinge on the non-functioning of an ordinary household electronic device. Never fear, faithful readers! You know this feature always comes through for you!

More Josh-on-the-radio news! If your local public radio station carries Dick Gordon’s “The Story,” I am on it, today, talking nostalgically about being laid off during the last recession! In the Baltimore area it’s on WYPR at 8 pm. I will post a link to the podcast when available!

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Curtis, 11/9/09

This may not be interesting to anybody else (though really, what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t write about things that aren’t interesting to anybody else?), but I was sort of intrigued by Curtis’s father describing The Day After Tomorrow as a “Dennis Quaid movie.” I mean, yes, Quaid got top billing, but the film featured an ensemble cast, and you certainly wouldn’t call it a Dennis Quaid vehicle. It got me wondering whether films with large casts jockeying for screentime aren’t sort of Rorschach tests, with people seeing as most prominent the actor with whom they have the most in common. So, whereas middle-aged dad Greg Wilkins might call the film a Dennis Quaid movie, younger adults might consider it a Jake Gyllenhaal flick, whereas short sixtysomething Brits would identify it as an Ian Holm film. (As a believer in the auteur theory, I’d call it a Roland Emmerich movie myself, and who else is going out on opening day with me to see 2012, the latest from history’s greatest artiste of delightful computer-generated mass destruction? Anyone? Anyone?)

Getting back to the comic, I’m sort of amused by Curtis’s “Um, yeah” in panel three. “Dad, The Day After Tomorrow was a huge Hollywood blockbuster with an enormous marketing budget, so obviously I saw it. I’m the film industry’s perfect consumer! It’s like they grew me in a lab!”

Shoe, 11/9/09

Have you ever noticed that virtually all of Shoe’s distasteful romantic interludes are depicted as occurring in bars? I’m not just talking about the creepy courtship; even the sort of relationship talks that you’d expect to take place at home, or in the car, or in one of the more secluded booths at Pizza Hut, or really just somewhere that provides a little privacy, are instead aired out with Shoe and some interchangeable member of his cast of soul-deadened lady birds bellied up to the same bar where they presumably first set bleary, bloodshot eyes on one another. It leads one to believe each partner has someone or something at home that much be kept in the dark (e.g., children, spouse) or kept secret (e.g., porn collection, spouse) about/from the other. The logical conclusion is that the entire duration of these ephemeral relationships takes place at smoke-filled watering holes, with the drunken lovers hopefully retiring to the backseat of one of their cars to get it on rather than taking up a valuable toilet stall in the men’s room.

Marvin, 11/9/09

In somehow even more distasteful romantic news, today we learn what odor Marvin finds sexually arousing: the unguent one has smeared on one’s nether parts to soothe rashes caused by sitting in one’s own urine or feces for extended periods of time.

Marmaduke, 11/9/09

Hey, lady, don’t try to impose your square heteronormality on Marmaduke! Unfettered by humanity’s hang-ups, he’s free in his polymorphously perverse state to flirt with either the carefully groomed poodle or the big butch terrier, or both, whatever strikes his fancy. And anyway, this being Marmaduke, he’s probably not planning to “flirt with” anyone so much as to “kill and eat” them.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/9/09

Meanwhile, Wally Winkerbean, his life torn apart by a cruel twist of fate and his mind tortured by traumatic brain injury and PTSD, has decided to drink himself to death. Gonna be a fun week!

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Pluggers, 10/14/09

Oh my goodness, it’s lucky for all of us that pluggers are honest, simple folk who don’t want to make a fuss and certainly don’t go out and “protest injustice” like some kind of God-damned hippie, because otherwise this news would cause every small-to-midsized town in Real America to go up in flames, consumed by riots that make the 1999 Seattle WTO protests look like a garden party. In fact, our spokesdog looks distinctly nervous, as if he’s going to read this communique as quickly as possible and then flee back inside Pluggers HQ so that he won’t be pelted by vegetables. Use the devil’s e-mail? What do you take us for, communists?

Ha ha, I kid! It’s well known that an elite segment of the plugger population has mastered 20th-century technology; now it appears we’ll be getting entries exclusively from these folks until this whole Post Office to-do is worked out. It will be an interesting anthropological study to see if we can detect any difference in the content of the submissions. For instance, will there be fewer cartoons about the difficulties of picking up AM radio broadcasts and more about how none of these newfangled Websites seem to work with Netscape Navigator 4?

(By the way, if the post office where your P.O. Box is closes down, can’t they just forward your mail to your new P.O. Box? Am … am I missing something?)

Mark Trail, 10/14/09

Hey, Sideburned Poacher Dude, I know it’s literally impossible for any character in Mark Trail to refrain from verbalizing his every thought, and I know it’s pretty shocking to see someone who you did an extremely half-assed job of killing still alive, but there’s no need to shout, OK? Mark and Bob are close enough to see your word balloons emerging from the bushes! It’s like you want to get punched in the face!

“HOW DID HE STAY ALIVE?” is now my new go-to exclamation of surprise at the unexpected appearance of my enemies, by the way. “God, look at him … breathing … digesting … refusing to die … how does he do it?”

Curtis, 10/14/09

You know, I give Curtis a lot of crap for being almost unbearably corny — as it has for the last two weeks, say, as Curtis’s dad has complained about someone stealing his delicious tuna-fish sandwich every day from the work fridge, and Curtis has plotted vengeance against those who would harm the Wilkins clan, stealthily replacing today’s sandwich with one made out of cat food. But by God, this strip has some craft. I have to admire the three panels of Curtis’s runaway panic manifesting itself physically — pupils dilating, sweatballs flying, and his finally his lunch attempting to escape his gullet with a mighty BLORK! as he desperately clutches his throat to prevent vomit from staining his beloved red sweatshirt. It made me laugh, even if nothing about the actual plot did.

Blondie, 10/14/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because Alexander’s “girlfriend” is a prostitute!