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Family Circus, 7/5/09

Like all right-thinking Americans, I have often allowed myself to spend idle moments imagining the death of the Keane clan. However, I see now that most of the scenarios I’ve conjured up — terrorist attack, murder-suicide pact, what have you — have been sadly pedestrian. Never, for instance, have I visualized them being killed by giant mutant ants! If we use grinning, doomed Jeffy as a reference point, the monsters in the lowermost chambers have to be at least the size of a terrier. I’m sure all four of the children will make tasty treats for the Queen of this awful colony.

Judge Parker, 7/5/09

Dear creators of the syndicated comic strip Judge Parker:

If you were working on a sitcom, or other long-form narrative acted out by live performers, you might find yourself in a situation where you had written out storylines that your actors were physically unable to perform. For instance, you might have an episode in which your nerdy heroine wows her school with her heretofore unmentioned prowess at jumping, aerial spinning, and other talents necessary for successful cheerleading, only to discover that the young actress tasked with playing the role wasn’t up the challenges laid out in the script. In that case, it would be acceptable, though rather transparent, to have all the action take place off camera.

However, in the comic strip form, your characters have no such limitations, and thus your decision to not show us any of the triumphant cheerleading routine that this entire ludicrous storyline has been leading up to is deeply puzzling.

Sincerely,
The Comics Curmudgeon

P.S. On the other hand, it is enjoyable to interpret the dialogue in the first throwaway panel — “I didn’t know Sophie could do those things!” “Yeah … the cheerleader moms know they’re finished!” — as meaning that Sophie neutralized the cheerleader moms’ dozens of henchmen with her superhuman martial arts skills, and is now preparing to eliminate her chief adversaries once and for all.

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Family Circus, 6/30/09

Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that Billy is too young to have a job and, assuming the real-life and Family Circus calendars line up, is on summer vacation, and therefore has every right in the world to lounge about lazily. Ignore too the fact that “nothing” is surely preferable to other things Billy could be doing — rotting his mind with TV, bullying his siblings, breaking things, or, God forbid, making adorable malapropisms. I think we should actually be impressed by Billy’s total commitment to doing nothing. He’s so intent on non-action that he’s gone into a room with no furniture and unadorned walls, and is just leaning there, his hands tucked behind him that so he doesn’t do something even accidentally. If he does any less, he’ll transcend to a higher plane of existence, which all of us should be hoping for, as then we won’t have to deal with him.

Gasoline Alley, 6/30/09

The current Gasoline Alley plot is stupid and irritating, so I’ll only waste four words on it — “improvised fake clergyman grift” — but today’s strip is noteworthy for what may be the most gratuitous drawing of a young lady’s rear end in short shorts that the comics page has ever seen. If this and this are any indication, beneath the family-friendly surface of this ancient legacy strip is a cauldron of randiness on the verge of boiling over.

Marvin, 6/30/09

Can Marvin not go 48 hours without updating us on the titular hell-infant’s habit of letting loose the contents of his bowels and/or bladder? Anyway, here’s today’s strip, in which Marvin urinates all over his mother, again. If there’s any integrity to this strip’s use of dialogue balloons, Jenny can’t hear her son’s little mental quip, so that look of horror must be a result of the piss she feels pooling on her back.

B.C., 6/30/09

I’m not sure why, but the revelation that the turtle half of B.C.’s turtle-bird pairing is named “John” is even more disconcerting to me than the discovery that the bird is named “Dookey.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/28/09

I find it kind of strange that Loweezy doesn’t specify what the “big, round number” in question is. Given the poor state of health care in this isolated, rural hamlet, I’m guessing it’s 15, which is approximately middle age for the average denizen of Hootin’ Holler.

Dennis the Menace, 6/28/09

Usually saying his prayers is among the least threatening things Dennis does, but in today’s strip he appears for the most part to be praying for evil things. Presumably he’s beseeching not our loving God but his Dark Lord, Satan himself.

Family Circus, 6/28/09

Fun fact! According to the never-wrong Wikipedia, “if a film uses ‘one of the harsher sexually derived words’ (such as ‘fuck’) one to four times, it is routine today for the film to receive a PG-13 rating, provided that the word is used as an expletive and not with a sexual meaning.” In other words, Dolly, you can go ahead and drop that F-bomb on your little brother, as long as you only want to use it three more times over the remainder of your life.

Marvin, 6/28/09

We all knew that Marvin was a repugnant fountain of excrement, but who knew that he was a record-breaking fountain of excrement? I don’t usually praise the art in Marvin, but I do think Jenny’s expression has been skillfully done here. It wordlessly conveys the sense of “Huh, so it’s come to this. I thought I’d feel more pain at reaching this point, but it seems that I’m not feeling … anything at all. Probably for the best, really.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/28/09

I’m not really sure what June means by “more than try” here, nor am I sure that I want to know. “I HAVE DETERMINED THAT I HAVE REACHED THE FERTILITY OPTIMUM FOR BOY-CHILD CREATION! GIVE ME YOUR SEED AT ONCE, DR. MORGAN!”

Spider-Man, 6/28/09

Despite the implication in this week’s NEXT box, I’m hoping we follow Spidey’s path in this branching storyline, and get to see the relative money-returning skills … of a spider! “Wow, who knew there’d be so much paperwork involved?” (NEXT! Black or blue ink only!)