Post Content

Marvin, 12/16/09

I’m a bit confused as to the relevance of the first panel of today’s Marvin. Roy does not seem to have done anything to get into character as he stomps through the living room; rather than going into a festive “Ho ho ho, you don’t want to end up on my naughty list!”, he merely snaps at his grandson for casually spreading filth all over the house. It’s possible that Marvin is fooled because only the jolly old St. Nick would have the superhuman reserves of love and forgiveness necessary to resist throttling the little monster right there; on the other hand, the real Santa would know that Marvin is being good, for Marvin: instead of just dumping out easy-to-pick-up trash, he could be shitting everywhere.

Crankshaft, 12/16/09

Crankshaft, meanwhile, is doing exactly what you’d think he’d do as Santa: providing unnecessarily convoluted and awkward set-ups for jokes, and terrifying little children until they’re on the brink of tears.

Dennis the Menace, 12/16/09

I do believe that Dennis is getting some of his menace back! The image of an unruly mob of children looting Santa’s workshop is a delightful one, as is the thought of the desperate elves vs. tots battle that would be the logical prelude.

Dick Tracy, 12/16/09

Oh, sneaky long-haired son of the long-haired conductor of long-hair music, this is Dick Tracy! The phrase “If you can stop beating me…” will not compute for anyone. It will just earn you more beatings!

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 12/10/09

People like to complain about Gil Thorp’s fractured narrative, with the action typically jumping to three different times and places over three panels. I admit that following along can sometimes be an expert-level skill, but I think it’s well worth the effort. How else could we get the triptych of awesome that we’re treated to today? In panel one, shadowy, faraway figures discuss the comeuppance Jamaar’s hubris has earned him, as we are encouraged to contemplate somebody’s capri pants and hindquarters; in panel two, we get the second glimpse this week of Gil radiating pure smugness at poor Goshen coach “Beardy” Fazio, as he offers a manly handshake that says “Ha ha, our best players are suspended or moping and we still kicked your ass”; and, finally, in panel three we can enjoy a glimpse of the boozy lead-in to Gil and Mimi and Coach Kaz and Kelly’s twice-monthly orgy, with the roaring fireplace set into the Thorp’s all-formstone wall setting the mood nicely.

Spider-Man, 12/10/09

You know, newspaper Spider-Man, the main pleasure I derive from reading you generally comes from cruelly deriding your inept storytelling; thus, when you decide to give up and fully embrace camp, as you seem to have done today, it kind of ruins it for me. At least I can snicker at the fact that your freakishly out-of-proportion stand-up vacuum cleaner appears to be roughly eight feet tall.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/10/09

The most interesting thing about today’s strip … no, not those, you cartoon-masturbating-to pervert, get your mind out of the gutter. Ahem. The other interesting thing about today’s strip is Rex’s silent, plaintive face in the background of panels one and two. It’s like he knows that this is June’s cousin so she’s in charge at the moment, but he’s still all “Hello! I have something dickish and self-righteous to say about this situation! Anyone want to hear it? Anyone?”

Dick Tracy, 12/10/09

“Step one: Buy a rare and expensive objet d’art! Step two: Wait for it to appreciate in value, which it will hopefully do more quickly than the equivalent amount of money would have if put into a more typical investment portfolio! Step three: Sell at a profit! It can’t fail! MU HA HA HA HA!”

The place where the Jumble should be, 12/10/09

This is the third day in the row on which the Jumble has failed to appear on the Houston Chronicle’s online comics page. What are they hiding from us? This is an outrage! NO JUMBLE NO PEACE!

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 12/2/09

So it turns out that one of my earlier assumptions — that Dick’s reference to “long hair stuff” meant that he and his wife would be attending one of those subversive rock and roll shows, put on by some damn hippie band — was off by several centuries. It turns out, intriguingly enough, that up until the 1960s “long-hair music” denoted classical music. You can find the etymology here, but the gist is that 19th century artists and intellectuals (the damn hippies of their day, like this shaggy-haired punk here) tended to wear their hair long; by the 20th century, the term came to denote intellectuals generally, most of whom by now had gotten respectable haircuts, and by the 1930s it was being used by jazz musicians and journalists to refer to classical musicians, who apparently appealed to a more high-falutin’ educated audience.

Obviously this whole association between classical music and long hair in American vernacular English was abruptly and definitively ended by the advent of the aforementioned long-haired hippies and their rock and roll music. Thus, Dick’s persistent use of it is revealing. Like all right-thinking American law enforcement officials, he hates hippies with every particle of his being; in his fight against what they and their dope-smoking have done to this nation’s moral fiber, he simply refuses to even acknowledge their existence, and will speak as if the 1960s never happened and everyone associates long hair with tempestuous 19th century German artists.

Almost as interesting as all this social etymology is how depressed Dick looks in panel two. “Am I ready for long-hair music?” he asks himself, as if this was the last stage in a man’s life before death. “Normally the only music I listen to is made up of perps begging for mercy as their bones are shattered. Has it really come to this?”

Mary Worth, 12/2/09

AAAUUUGGGGGHHHH WILBUR CLOSE-UP TOO CLOSE ABORT ABORT ABORT