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Funky Winkerbean, 3/26/09

You know, I’ve gotten into a nice little groove here on this blog, but sometimes I have a crisis of faith. I wonder if my analysis gets more repetitive than the material warrants. Are the running jokes (which have their own section in this site’s Wikipedia entry!) getting overdone? Should I stop pointing out that Herb and Jamaal is ludicrously non-specific, that Marmaduke is a terrifying, all-devouring demon-thing, and that Funky Winkerbean is a black hole of bleakness and depression and cancer from which no joy or laughter can escape?

Then along come strips like this to reaffirm my central mission. For those of you not in the know, elevated PSA levels could indicate prostate cancer, and that biopsy will probably involve a scalpel in close proximity to Funky’s junk. This, naturally, is the only result that you can reasonably expect when you dare to beg God for relief from your ceaseless troubles. If there’s any consolation, it’s that Funky is a much less likable character than the last one who died of cancer here, and the strip’s admirable commitment to authenticity means that he’ll just get angrier and less pleasant as his slow march to death continues.

The dude sitting in a wheelchair a foot away from a TV blaring out grim economic news is really the strip’s pièce de résistance. Because there was a chance that you might read this and think “Hey, I don’t have cancer”; obviously you need to be reminded that you’ll soon be warming your hands over a trash-can fire and eating beans out of a can, probably after having become wheelchair-bound in an unrelated incident.

Dick Tracy, 3/26/09

It’s a sad day when America’s greatest comic-strip detective starts borrowing plot themes from Mary Worth, but the difference in how the two strips handle these identity theft storylines ought to be instructive. When Mary tackled it, we saw a lot of weeping and panic and forgiveness and easy-to-follow instructions from helpful experts. Dick Tracy’s take will no doubt involve weeping and panic as well, but a lot more broken bones and flayed skin, and definitely no forgiveness.

Mary Worth, 3/26/09

“Yes, the donation will be the last thing he’ll be thinking of … ever, once my plan to poison him is completed! MOO HA HA HA! Oh, wait, did I just say that part aloud?”

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For Better Or For Worse, 3/23/09

Generally speaking, I have chosen to ignore the “new-run” incarnation of For Better Or For Worse, partly to protest the strip’s shameless failure to fade away gracefully, and partly because it turns out that 99 percent of the fun was mocking the twists and turns of the end-game melodrama. I had intended to similarly pass over the current mostly-new storyline, in which Elly has gone off to Vancouver, leaving John alone to go whoring with his caddish co-worker at “The Swig And Swine” (BECAUSE MEN ARE DRUNK PIGS GET IT). But I was driven to briefly return from my self-imposed exile from Foobonia by panel two, in which the strip betrays its most important value: its Canadianosity. Seriously, what self-respecting Canuck would offer a toast with words that rebellious scoundrels used to separate part of His Majesty’s North American possessions from the mother country? This horny dentist’s ancestors were probably driven out of the southerly colonies by anti-royalist mobs with that very phrase on their lips! A real Canadian patriot would have instead raised a mug of Molson Golden to peace, order, and good government, and if that would have made it harder to transition to a terrible pun about trying to fuck the waitress, well, so much the better.

Apartment 3-G, 3/23/09

So the current Tommie storyline will apparently center on Dr. Kelly showing up at Apartment 3-G unannounced and putting her increasingly awkward situations. Since previous Tommie storylines included such gems as “Tommie is repeatedly insulted by her ditzy neighbor” and “Tommie tries and fails to seduce her married friend,” I say bring it on!

Children are kind of a wild card in the Apartment 3-G universe, as I can’t remember them ever appearing before, or any of the characters expressing the slightest interest in their existence. Margo’s reaction upon returning home and finding two short, unruly humans in her apartment ought to be priceless, at any rate. “Tommie, I was just trying to get them to settle down! It’s not my fault they can’t hold their liquor!”

Dick Tracy, 3/23/09

It looks like Dick Tracy, having eliminated all crime through his patented brand of Bill-of-Rights-violating mayhem, is now going to take on distasteful but wholly legal business practices. Next up: AIG executives are forced to pay back their bonuses … with their flesh.

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Dick Tracy, 3/12/09

The just-started Dick Tracy storyline involves not hideous villains embarking on a difficult-to-follow crime spree, but rather Dick intervening with one of his loser friends who has a gambling problem. I’m not certain exactly how this will lead to a graphically violent denouement, but surely our hero will find a way. In the meantime, for everyone who feels the comics should be more educational, I submit for your approval panel three, which shows us what would have happened if famed abolitionist John Brown had lived long enough to join Devo, then star as Scrooge in a community theater version of A Christmas Carol.

Luann, 3/12/09

Oh, look, it’s more tales of ribaldry in Luann! For most of this week TJ has been impressing (and arousing?) Luann with his pointless trivia knowledge about Argentine and Italian exports. (No, really.) Yet today’s oops-I-“accidentally”-walked-in-you-in-the-bath-Mrs.-D. might lead to our boy’s fancy settling on the older Ms. Degroot, setting up a possible mother-daughter-boarder romantic triangle! And wouldn’t that be delightfully ribald? And by “delightfully ribald” I mean “repulsive.”

Mary Worth, 3/12/09

WRONG MOVE, CONFEY! You probably thought that “identity theft” was a good sob story that would cover your inability to pick up a restaurant check until you and your Queenie were legally wed and what’s hers was yours. But upon hearing the very phrase, Adrian no doubt is thinking, “Oh my God, he’s no smarter than that idiot blonde Tobey that Mary’s always palling around with, and mocking behind her back! I can’t be tied to such an obvious dimwit! MUST … ESCAPE …”

I like Ted’s rust-colored suit jacket/black turtleneck combo, but I love the dude in the background’s black-and-white checked pullover/baby blue cardigan outfit.