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Apartment 3-G, 11/12/09

Dr. Pappagoras is cheerfully pressing on with his campaign to win the Most Unethical Therapist statuette at this years Psychie Awards! Most head-shrinkers I know (and I was raised by several) do not consider it a “nice surprise” when their goofball-addled patients show up at their office without an appointment and with some bullshit story about, you know, just being in the neighborhood, just wandering around the block seven or forty times in the rain and thinking about pills pills pills PILLS PILLS PILLS. I was originally going to come up with some joke here about transference and countertransference, but then I realized that strictly speaking those phenomena only arise in the course of actual patient/therapist relationships, and not in drug-seeker/quack-doctor-who-wants-to-bone-drug-seeker relationships.

Pluggers, 11/12/09

Speaking of pills, it’s nice to see that pluggers aren’t waiting for some government bailout to pull them out of their tough economic times. Police looking for the distributors bringing insane amounts of black-market oxycodone into the county will never suspect the simple, down-home chicken lady!

Dennis the Menace, 11/12/09

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” –Matthew 5:38-44

So, apparently Dennis has been sent to Earth by his Father to teach us about peace, and then die for our sins. This … this is not very menacing at all.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/5/09

Oh, man, apparently Tommie really isn’t familiar with I Dressed In The Dark, or with the reality TV genre in general, or with the sort of thing that normal humans enjoy as entertainment. If she were, she’d know that she should be jerking about spasmodically for the camera here, clowning it up for the people at home; if she must express negative feelings, they should be big negative feelings, with ostentatious, theatrical bawling. Instead, she’s just looking directly into the camera, and, with a flat expression and eerily affectless voice, describing the terrible emotional desert through which a cruel God has cursed her to wander, like the Israelites, but not as well dressed. I’m assuming that the cameraman is only managing to hold that microphone up through sheer professionalism, and will soon be quietly weeping. Tommie should very much not be allowed on television.

Mary Worth, 11/5/09

Ha ha, look, Adrian is already trying to squirm out of the drunken promises she made to Scott when she thought he was in a coma and couldn’t hear her. Now they’re getting married when he’s “better.” “Adrian, I’m back on my feet and back on the job, and the doctor says that these scars from the bullet wounds are pretty much permanent, so…” “Scott, please! You know I can’t marry a man with any sort of disfigurement! You’ll make sure they heal, if you really love me.”

Gil Thorp, 11/5/09

Congrats to Gil Thorp for depicting what most scientists agree to be the douchiest high-five possible there in panel two. Meanwhile, the parallelism of the two cafeteria scenes leaves one to contemplate the question: where’s a worse place to eat lunch, high school or prison? Your fellow inmates are more likely to shiv you, but at least they won’t stoop to lying about going to your volleyball game.

Dennis the Menace, 11/5/09

I’m sorry, Dennis, this is a game attempt to work within this strip’s restricted ambit of bad behavior, but good manners are never menacing.

B.C., 11/5/09

Ha ha, you see, because one of them wants to kill her, and one of them wants to have sex with her! Women, am I right? They’re like prey animals!

Beetle Bailey, 11/5/09

Honest to God, anyone who opens a gay bar named “McGooey’s” on the outskirts of a US Army base will get free advertising on this site for a year.

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Judge Parker, 10/25/09

I know I’ve been kind of missing in action over the past several Judge Parker storylines, as they just haven’t had that classic mixture of ludicrous and emotionally detached that first drew me to this strip. But I have high hopes for the noir-ish plot brewing now. “D’Vito” is a transparent Bernie Madoff stand-in who was gunned down hours after making bail, and “Henry” is one of his victims, an apparent patsy set up for the murder — oh, and also dying of colon cancer.

Anyway, coming events promise to offer lots of opportunities my favorite Judge Parker recurring theme: that the privileged main characters can just barrel ahead and do whatever the hell they want because rules don’t apply to them. Sam, smelling a rat in this case, visited Henry in jail and essentially told him (Henry) to that he (Sam) would be serving as his (Henry’s) defense attorney, a proposition to which Henry never actually agreed pre se. Nevertheless, I’m sure that the police will allow Sam’s law partner to poke around all the potential evidence in Henry’s house. Also, in those first two panels: lying to get evidence from someone who may be a potential witness or co-conspirator? Sure, why not? All that, and soothing a troubled millionaire whose feeling are apparently tender after he assaulted a photographer are all in a day’s work for Sam Driver: Smug Dick at Law! Oh, and as panel three assures us, there will also be breasts.

Slylock Fox, 10/25/09

Is this the cruelest Slylock Fox Sunday mystery ever? One must picture Max Mouse, finally allowed to go work on a case on his own for once, carefully counting off the paces in some rural backwater, digging enormous holes with a shovel three times as long as he his tall, desperately looking for Slick Smitty’s ill-gotten gain — all while the perp himself is just standing there with his girlfriend, laughing. You have to imagine the level of anxiety he must have reached before he finally pulled out his itty-bitty cell phone to call his boss, who will of course never allow him out of the house alone again now that he’s shown his incompetence at basic ratiocination. It’s a sad, sad day for tiny prey mammals.

Dennis the Menace, 10/25/09

I have to kind of admit that I kind of like this Dennis the Menace for the glimpse it offers us into Henry and Alice’s bucolic pre-Dennis lives. I imagine them in college, both of them tall, gangly young people recruited for their skills on the volleyball court. I like the thought of a pair of mirror-image crushes from afar — Henry attending games played by the women’s team, Alice going to the men’s games, each pair of eyes settling on a player that strikes their fancy, with a long physique that looked good in those short volleyball shorts. Then, at a party thrown by members of one or the other team, the two finally work up the nerve to talk to one another, and, over a few cheap keg beers, begin to see the dim but hopeful outlines of a future together. It will be a future dominated by their awful, hated son, of course, but it would be impossible for them to know that, so let’s leave them for the moment in their youthful happiness.

On that note, I also appreciate the fact that the strip has left to our imagination exactly how Dennis has managed to turn a game of volleyball played in an apparently dry yard into some kind of mud-soaked nightmare.

Beetle Bailey, 10/25/09

In light of the many Beetle Bailey strips that depict man-on-tree sex, I find at least one form of camouflage depicted here particularly troubling.