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Mary Worth and Judge Parker, 10/8/07

“Sure, why not” vs. “You think?”: The sassy young ladies of the soap opera strips come up with the closest things to snappy comebacks allowed in this genre. Dawn has bizarrely chosen to encapsulate her sass as some kind of bit of quoted wisdom. My question: is this some flip statement that Drew made once, long ago, that Dawn memorized like every other sentence he uttered in her presence? Or is it just another in the long line of Mary Worth things-presented-as-quotes-that-aren’t-actually-quotes? A trip through the archives would answer this question, but I don’t have the spiritual strength for it this afternoon. I will say this, though: Dawn’s tremulous tear in panel one is actually better drawn than the single droplet usually seen on the faces of the various girls in Apartment 3-G.

Meanwhile, Judger Parker’s Sophie has come up with the only appropriate response to Rusty’s increasingly desperate bids to bend Sam to her legal will. Unable or unwilling to recognize her old classmate’s total disinterest in her assets, she’ll be humping the place settings before she’s through. Sophie’s droll reaction indicates that she knows well enough why Sam and Abbey expanded their family by adopting a pair of homeless millionaire adolescents rather than via the more conventional route.

By the way, does anyone know how old exactly Sophie is supposed to be? Is she ten, or forty and suffering from some kind of glandular condition? Her little lilac pantsuit is kind of freaking me out.

Dick Tracy, 10/8/07

Calling the heads in Dick Tracy “enormous and terrifying” isn’t exactly breaking new ground, but — God damn, those heads in panel two are enormous and terrifying. They sort of remind me of characters from video games in the mid-90s — two-dimensional drawings wrapped freakishly around some overly simplistic polyhedron. Anyway, the face on the front of the slightly smaller and less terrifying head in panel two looks glum, and why shouldn’t it? Dopey Dmitri and now-exploded Gretchen get all the credit in Dick’s exposition, but what about him? Doesn’t he at least rate an unimaginative and stereotypical name, like “Ivan” or “Hans”?

Gil Thorp, 10/8/07

Huh, so Cully Vale is a murderer. I’m assuming Gil already knows this — he always seems to be one step ahead of his cretinous students (a talent that sadly doesn’t seem to translate to his coaching, but never mind that for the moment). Since Gil seemed pretty blasé about having his baseball team coached by a fraud, it should come as no surprise that he’s let a cold-blooded killer into his locker room; I would have thought that the strip would have worked up to this with maybe a little light drug dealing first, but heck, why not just go for the gusto right away. I can’t wait for the cops to come question Coach Thorp about all the bodies only to have him reply with a resounding “Eh.”

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Crankshaft, 10/6/07

Wow, most comics characters at least make some sort of pretense of respecting religion and some vague concept of a Supreme Being, but Ed Crankshaft has officially added to his Most Cantankerous Comics Character Ever cred by sneering at the notion that any sort of just deity might respond to our pleas. Since he lives in a universe shared with Funky Winkerbean, in which characters are visited by afflictions both arbitrary (cancer, alcoholism) and ironic (hearing loss, limb loss) at a much higher than average rate, he’s obviously decided that begging his Creator for some droplet of mercy will only intensify the punishment to come. Still, the fact that he’s doling out his atheistic opinions to his fellow oldster, reading a book about prayer in a doctor’s waiting room and desperately trying to hold on to some thread of possibility for continued survival, reinforces the ’Shaft’s hardcore crank status.

Hi and Lois, 10/6/07

Of course, Crankshaft’s religious impulses may have been cynically flattened by cartoons like this. Remember, kids, if your congregation is large and wealthy enough to build an enormous, Medieval Times-inspired faux-castle for its church, its members must be one step closer to salvation! It just stands to reason!

Apartment 3-G, 10/6/07

Oh man, oh man, I am so looking forward to Lu Ann’s Adventures In Unrealistically Specific Memory Loss! Does she even remember that she’s an artist? Doesn’t she wonder why she’s an elementary school art teacher if not? Wait a minute — did she somehow manage to hold on to her art teacher job despite the fact the she presumably didn’t come to work in the weeks and weeks she spent barricaded in her carbon monoxide-filled art studio? Does she even remember what a “job” is? Is that why in the first panel she looks so baffled when Alan claims to have one?

Speaking of carbon monoxide poisoning — did anyone ever have words with the kindly studio landlord about the incredibly unsafe status of his building? I’m not up on New York landlord-tenant law, but surely the right to not be suffocated is at least implied in most commercial leases, yes?

Dick Tracy, 10/6/07

Good lord, I was really hoping that we wouldn’t have to look at the hideous visage of Dick’s commie nemesis anymore. But then I saw his weird, weird ass. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Dennis the Menace, 10/6/07

Dennis reducing his only friend to a urine-soaked lump of fear is pretty much par for the course for this strip, but I’m kind of intrigued by Henry’s little smile at the psychological hold his son has over his playmate. Presumably the Mitchells will spend this camping trip gaslighting Joey until he’s only fit for a locked mental ward. The only question: is there some financial gain spurring their cruelty on, or is it mere sadistic sport?

Mark Trail, 10/6/07

I haven’t been discussing Mark Trail much because it’s been so painfully moronic, but here’s the gist: Shirley the duck and her chicks, who have been saved first from bulldozers and then from (no, really) rain by Homer the construction foreman, Mark Trail, and some other chumps I refuse to go into the archive to identify, are now about to be eaten by this rather awesomely rendered fish. What lesson will we learn in the end?

• Sometimes nature itself can be crueler than the most rapacious developer.
• There’s no point in trying to protect the weak or care about anything; might as well give up and start drinking!
• Ducks are delicious, and baby ducks are especially delicious.
• Not even fish are safe from Mark’s patented Right Hook O’ Justice!

Discuss.

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Gil Thorp, 10/5/07

My God, what kind of Google search results for “Culver Vale” would be so shocking to Howard Gourwitz that we would be treated to the vision of each and every one of his upper teeth? Obviously mere text couldn’t elicit a reaction of such visceral horror; no, Howard has clearly plugged “Culver Vale” into Google image search. In my unrelenting quest for the truth, and with total disregard for my personal safety, I bravely chose to do the same, and received one and only one result:

“Look at this, Tony! Cully allowed himself to be photographed wearing a conservative suit, and squatting and presumably defecating behind the flag of Oregon! And to think we’ve shared a locker room with this sicko!”

Tony’s search results may have been skewed by the addition of the word “stud”, as the dialog in panel one implies. And no, I’m not searching on that. Bravery has its limits.

Dick Tracy, 10/5/07

OK, now that this Dick Tracy plot appears to be wrapping up, I can say officially that none of it makes any sense. The East German Soviet Sympathizers (EGSSes) kidnapped the Gretchen to exchange for the Baron … why? Once the Baron wandered off, Dick and the CIA guys started treating the EGSSes as sympathetic … why? Gretchen claimed to be giving the CIA guys the frequency to the chip in the Baron’s head, but actually gave the frequency to the chip in her head … WHY? Gretchen had a chip in her head … WHY??

But most of all, what the hell does “trying to revive to Cold War and blame it on Mideastern terrorists” even mean? I’m sure the EGSSes don’t actually want the Cold War back; they just want a different ending for it. Were their ex-Soviet puppet masters going to look at the smoldering wreckage of the Rotunda on the TVs in their underground bunker and chortle “Ha ha, the Americans soon will be invading another Middle Eastern country, but we and we alone secretly know that the Cold War is back on! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!”

Spider-Man, 10/5/07

Yes, you … you forgot about airport security. And because you’ve put your spider-suit in your suitcase, and it could easily be written off as a Halloween costume (which I believe is what happened when you flew to LA), the only hitch this puts in your plans is that it might cause you to miss your plane … which … has … nothing to do with superheroics whatsoever argh argh ARGH! Honestly, this strip constantly manages to defy my ability to parody its lameness.

Pluggers, 10/5/07

A plugger’s face is a mass of lacerations and barely-scabbed-over wounds. But at least he’s getting his money’s worth out of that 60 cent disposable razor!

Archie, 10/5/07

I’m sure your beverage choices are very interesting, Betty, but let me offer you some advice, one blogger to another: I think your readers will be more interested if you skip to the part where you explain why you aren’t wearing pants.