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Archie, 10/22/07

Dear Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000: I realize that placing a character’s name in apposition with a role that character plays or a task he fulfills is a quick and efficient means to provide information needed to set up a joke. However, this grammatical structure is almost never used in actual conversation between humans, and it comes across as incredibly stilted. I don’t blame you for the mistake, as you do not actually communicate verbally with biological life-forms, but I would like you to file this away in your humor-generation ruleset.

Also, jokes about text messaging are not funny, and haven’t been since the end of a relatively brief window in the late 1990s. I can understand why the notion that transmitting data electronically could cause physical pain might seem incongruous and amusing to you, but trust me on this one.

Beetle Bailey, 10/22/07

Oh, this is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Don’t you believe it, Beetle! Every blow from Sarge’s fists is really a kiss that he can’t allow himself to give you.

Dennis the Menace, 10/22/07

“Especially since we put all those cameras in the basement and then locked him down there. Ha ha, look! He’s clawing at the door again!”

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Shoe, 10/21/07

As the funnies have repeatedly taught us, there’s nothing better for tickling your funny bone as you read the paper over a leisurely Sunday breakfast like a lonely, depressed bird trying to deal with his empty life by drinking alone. Usually it’s the Perfesser whose ruined, emotionally dead existence gets put on display for our amusement, but today’s it’s Shoe, because, hey, why the hell not. He wants to drink whiskey until his vision is impaired! His psychic wounds are so deep that no amount of substance use can put an end to the pain! Normally this is the stuff of depressing black-and-white European cinema, but there’s a cute pun here and a reference to a classic movie star that 75 percent of the strip’s readers have never heard of — plus, as mentioned, the poor depressed alcoholic and his enabler are birds — so in this case it’s a God-damned laugh riot.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/21/07

I have to admit that I found this strip both sweet in and of itself and a decent way to frame the Great Funky Winkerbean Leap Forward. However, I do wonder exactly what dialog preceded “…and so that’s what happens to people when they die.” If this were the Family Circus, there probably would have been some treacly description of God taking you up to a beautiful shiny white paradise where you get to look down from above on a cloud, but in this strip I’m guessing Les provided a detailed description of the typical sequence of organ failure, followed by a chemistry-heavy discourse on the decay of organic matter. Similarly, in a cutesier strip, little Summer’s heartwarming gesture in the first panel of the second row would indicate that Lisa will live forever in her heart, but it’s more likely that Les brought her to Central Park so she could dig up some of her ashes and eat them.

Judge Parker, 10/21/07

Yeah, Red, wait! Stick around! I can’t imagine why you’d want to leave. Is it just because one of your hosts got drunk and tried to shank you with a steak knife because you pointed out that he got himself into his own mess? Nice little egging on there from Sam — “Wish you hadn’t sad that, counselor! Don’t make Mullety Flatop angry — you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry!” Why, if you storm out now, you won’t get to see Trudi break that wine bottle on the edge of the table and go after her knife-wielding brother. Should be a hoot!

Oh, and note to Keith: Don’t all shysters have law degrees by definition? Also, I know it’s your house and all, but you really shouldn’t try to stab people with the flatware.

Dennis the Menace, 10/21/07

Ha ha, look at Dennis’s pissy face in the last panel! I know what he’s going to be when grows up: sullen and unemployed!

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Apartment 3-G, 10/18/07

On days when I don’t get to do a post until very late, I usually don’t even read the comics until I sit down to write my commentary. I do, however, read my readers’ comments, as they’re e-mailed to me as I’m sitting at my computer trying to do real work. Thus if something really wacky is happening somewhere in comics land, I’m forewarned. But no mere description could have prepared me for the awesomeness of today’s Apartment 3-G. I mean, sure, Lu Ann’s look of pleasant vapidity in panel one, Margo’s superciliousness, her vaguely sexual dig at Lu Ann (“Your boyfriend will be working under me … which I’m sure will be a new experience for him, right Blondie McChaste?”) — that’s all easy to envision. But panel three, in which Margo gets her little snide remark in while grabbing her Georgia O’Keefe-brand toaster pastry out of the air without even looking at it — that has to be seen to be believed.

Hey, shouldn’t Ruby be here to defend her poor, brain-damaged cousin with her Texas-sized sass? I guess she’s too busy working under the Professor to notice that she’s needed! Ha ha! Ah, I amuse myself with my ribaldry.

Archie, 10/18/07

oh my god don’t look at the ceiling don’t look at the ceiling DON’T LOOK AT THE CEILING AAAGGGGGHHH

Dennis the Menace, 10/18/07

Technically, Dennis, the only “guy” you hang out with is Joey. I don’t think you have to worry about him out-butching you.

For Better Or For Worse, 10/18/07

A writer and an author? That’s … quite an achievement!

Garfield, 10/18/07

Tomorrow: Garfield and Jon finally put their suicide pact into motion.

Judge Parker, 10/18/07

I haven’t really been able to follow the business and legal implications of the current Judge Parker, since I didn’t get an MBA with a concentration in crazy, plus whenever I try to think about it too hard I keep get distracted by boobs. But I’m pretty sure that when Sam says “steal this land,” he means “offer cash to the land’s owner in an attempt to purchase it.” But hey, what do I know? I’m not a smooth-talking asexual lawyer with a big thatch of exposed chest hair, now am I?

Mary Worth, 10/18/07

Speaking of things that have to be seen to be believed … that is the most bizarre t-shirt ever to appear in Mary Worth — no, in any comic strip, ever. It’s up there with the pinball-playing fish in terms of weirdness. Because they don’t want to offend the bluehairs, it’s impossible for Mary Worth to really tell us how far Drew and Vera’s relationship went, but I’m guessing a sensible gal like Vera would have broken things off if Drew had taken her back to his condo, closed the mauve curtains, and told her to relax as he changed into something more comfortable, and then, just as her eyes settled on the framed picture of a Conestoga wagon and she began to wonder what the hell the deal was with that, he emerged wearing that … thing. Yes, this relationship was doomed from the start.