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Mark Trail, 10/15/08

I cannot believe that I was taken so completely aback by this totally obvious development, but I was, to my great delight. Ha ha, another sexy seemingly not-insane gal cannot resist Mark Trail and his grinning, tan-clad quasi-autistic stylings! There’s a lot to love about this strip, but I’ll start with the fact that Sue Butler was apparently relaxing in her home with her feet tucked underneath her; note how she daintily slips her toes into her slipper, like the lady that she is! I also like the fact that she’s hanging around the house wearing some kind of form-fitting all-white outfit; she knows that if she wants to bag Mark, she’ll have to advertise her purity, because nothing repulses him like sex appeal.

Curtis, 10/15/08

180 degrees by 180 degrees? That’s … that’s not how geometry works, I don’t think. I’ll admit that those measurements may well denote something that’s not round, but rather “round.”

Note that Gunk’s enormous head appears to be protruding from a Flyspeck Island volcano in the third panel. Does that make him the strange land’s Supreme Being? Is he cheerfully telling the tale of how he, as a vengeful God, wiped out all life on earth as a whim? That would go a long way towards explaining this.

Family Circus, 10/15/08

“Yes, sweetie! You see, your daddy and I got to be about sixteen and we couldn’t resist our filthy, sinful urges for each other’s hot, sexy bodies anymore, so we had to wrap them up in marriage’s holy sacrament.”

(I was originally going to write a joke about a failed attempt to abandon newborn Billy in the bathroom at the prom, but I decided it was in poor taste even for me.)

Apartment 3-G, 10/15/08

Oh, Margo, you lovable minx! “This unholy mess” is, naturally, Alan’s blood, splattered all over the Mills Gallery. You could try collecting it for your delectation later, Margo. I know you usually go for the blood of the innocent, but if you’re lucky there might be some traces of dope left in it.

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Mary Worth, 10/13/08

Well, Toby Cameron’s Big Identity Theft Adventure, having been beaten to death with a bludgeon of love and understanding and openness, has finally gasped its last; today, without even the foreplay of a Charterstone Pool Party, we’re thrust rudely into our next storyline, which is: Mary and Jeff watch TV. Taste the thrills! Who do these people think they are, characters in Spider-Man?

Anyway, it’s hard to predict where a Mary Worth storyline is going to go based on its opening moments — who could have foreseen that an innocent lunch with Mary would have led Toby down the road to credit card fraud and shameful kilt-porn purchases? — but based on today’s strip I’m hoping that we’ll get back to my favorite theme in this strip, which is the humiliation of Dr. Jeff. “Frank Griffin? I haven’t seen him in ages, since that time I refused to let him get past second base! But that was before I realized that he was a famous person, on TV. Hmmm, if I make good time I could be at the skating competition in less than two hours … Jeff, don’t wait up, dear.”

Curtis, 10/13/08

Key questions about today’s Curtis:

• Why is Curtis, whose main interest in Christianity seems to be in the outrageousness of the hats worn by the ladies at the church he attends, so excited about a book of Old Testament lore?
• Why is Curtis, who is old enough to be a seething cauldron of lust-hormones, so excited about finding a children’s book?
• Could there possibly have been an even more awkward way to introduce the concept of Noah’s Ark into this conversation?
• What kind of pagan terrorist Lord of the Rings-based religion do they practice on Flyspeck Island, and why haven’t we clamped down on immigration from this breeding ground for un-American weirdos?
• Did Curtis’s ass sigh in the final panel? Seriously?

Spider-Man, 10/13/08

Yes, that’s right, Jonah — Maria, who is a successful and attractive television personality, can’t afford her own food, so obviously the only way she can avoid starvation is to accept dinner invitations from irritating blowhards with terrible haircuts and Hitler mustaches. And of course, if you’re so desperately famished that what you want is a free meal with which you can gorge yourself as quickly as possible, what you’re going to order is the lobster.

The sad thing is that this is by far the most interesting of the current Spider-Man storylines.

Blondie, 10/13/08

This wouldn’t be such a big deal if not for the fact that this is the only outfit that Dagwood owns.

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So, longer, more effusive thanks, plus more info on the phrase “Hot Blogger” and what it means for you, when I do the COTW post tonight, but: a huge THANKS! for Uncle Lumpy’s turn as guest blogger, and an even HUGER THANKS for everyone who gave money to the fund drive. Aw, you guys! You’re the best! Blush, etc.

Anyway, on to Monday’s comics!

Archie, 10/6/08

The AJGLU 3000 may not know much, but it knows this: a couple of old people talking about raising the prices of nitrate-laden cafeteria food isn’t enough to sustain a strip. It also knows that depictions of pretty teenage girls move product. Unfortunately, its grasp of “pretty” is fairly loose, as panel two indicates. Yes, my vacuum-tube-driven friend, large breasts are generally considered attractive on human females, but not when they only emphasize how freakishly tiny the skull of such female is. And even if one has a tiny pinhead perched at the end one’s neck, generally a true nose, rather than some barely visible lump just north of the upper lip, is an important element on a face. Sadly, what we have here is less “easy on the eyes” and more “candidate for the freak show.”

On the other hand, she has distracted me from the terrible punchline.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/6/8

White rural voters are apparently up for grabs in swing states like Virginia and Missouri this year, so here’s a bit of advice for Barack Obama and John McCain: when campaigning in the Blue Ridge Mountains, promise that the perpetrators of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith will be jailed and tried for crimes against humanity. Today’s strip encapsulates a number of this feature’s common tropes about the noble hillbilly — that he is mooch who will ask random strangers for money; that he’s so dumb that he doesn’t immediately recognize someone who’s new in town, despite “town” having a population of roughly 150; that he wears patched shirts and hideous overalls; that he considers “Mistofer” some kind of acceptable form of address — all of which amount to nothing more than slanderous hate speech.

Curtis, 10/6/08

Nothing would have made me happier than if Michelle had on carried her usual contemptuous conversation with Curtis with her clothing going completely unremarked upon. I must admit to being both amused and unsettled by the final panel, though, in which we learn that she’s not wearing a fencing outfit, but a “fencing” outfit.

Momma, 10/6/08

I tried really hard to figure how, or why, this might be about Hillary Clinton and/or Sarah Palin, but then I decided, why bother? Just enjoy a Momma that consists of one dotty old lady saying something inscrutable to another, and not, say, Oedipal horror.