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Curtis, 6/12/05

We’ve of course seen plenty of egregiously unhip fake “rapper” names used in Curtis, but I believe this is the first instance of egregiously unhip fake “rap” lyrics. Let’s take a moment to savor them, shall we?

Den ah snuffed ‘im!
I snuffed ‘im! Woo!
He looked at me wrong,
so ah snuffed ‘im!

Yeah! Woo! I put quotation marks around “rap,” of course, as an homage to Curtis’ tendency to put quotation marks around “rap,” along with almost anything else, including, in this strip, “complaints” and “Bullet-Wound’s” (and what’s with the hyphen? Is he an 18th century rapper or something?). Bizarrely, the word “spanker” in panel four is left unquoted.

The question that really gets me in this strip, though, is: how old is Barry supposed to be, anyway? I mean, Curtis may be about three years too young to be listening to the ultraviolent stylings of Bullet-Wound and Fortyounce and what have you, but I have Barry pegged at about three years too old to be shouting “yay” at the choo-choos and the teddy bear town and all that sugary crap. And incidentally, the top two panels of this strip were cut off by my paper, so I was severely traumatized when I downloaded this strip and actually saw Charlie Chipmunk in the flesh. If I had a little brother who insisted on watching this, I might have a very strong urge to, well, snuff ‘im.

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Curtis, 5/2/05

Much as cruelly mocking Curtis has become part of my schtick here, I must give “props” where they are due and admit that I do love the strip’s vocabulary of hyper-exaggerated facial expressions. Take this installment, for instance. Curtis’ bug-eyed, dilated-pupil look might say “trippin’ on ‘shrooms” to the casual observer, but long-time Curtis readers (of which, God help me, I am one) recognize it as the strip’s symbol for “I’m assuming an extra-nice appearance to cover up something bad I’ve done.” The I’ve-swallowed-my-lips manuever in panel three makes Curtis look like a Warner Brothers cartoon character who has swallowed “Alum” (whatever that is), but in fact it’s Curtis visual shorthand for panic and distress. And it may look like Curtis is drooling for no reason in panel two, but … um, actually, I think he’s just drooling for no reason. No, scratch that, I guess he’s sweating. Most of us usually don’t do so much sweating in the mouth region, though.

Nice kicky beret on mom in panel one there, by the way. And lord knows where that sock is flying in from in panel four. It’s crazy chaos over there in Curtisville!

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Longtime readers know that I am very strict about my commenting-on-one-comic-from-each-day policy. Except, you know, when I’m not. But Sunday’s pickings were pretty slim (except for the appalling Family Circus that was well covered in the previous post’s comments section), and there were two comics on Monday that screamed out for attention, so here they are.

Curtis, 3/7/05

In its continuing efforts to offer a positive image for today’s black teens, Curtis has taken some interesting steps. First it portrayed its tweenage hero as a leering, bug-eyed misogynist (I still can’t get the phrase “nothing more to him than a sexual playtoy” out of my head). Today, we see that he’s so hypersexualized that even his relationship with his bed is layered with lust. Now I have as hard a time getting out of a warm bed as the next guy, but the blandishments (which we can only hope are happening inside Curtis’ cap-adorned noggin) used here are way too smooth-jazz-style flirty for my taste. For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, I find the term “hunny-pot” particularly vile.

The ass-scratching in panel two is a nice touch as well.

So that’s what’s going on in Harlem. Meanwhile, down in Midtown:

Apartment 3-G, 3/7/05

Why don’t you relax and enjoy your “Cereal”-brand cereal, Margo? Every night that Mim spends in some sex-crazed 19-year-old’s filthy Bed-Stuy walk-up is a night that she doesn’t sleep on your couch, which as of two weeks ago was your primary concern in life. For her part, Tommie here shows us that, thanks to her roommates’ longstanding policy of ignoring her, she’s quite good at holding conversations with herself. She’s her own best friend!