Post Content

Family Circus and Marvin, 2/27/08

Marvin and the Family Circus have apparently decided to keep hammering home these appalling running gags until we beg for mercy. Well, I’m officially begging. Please stop. Please?

Of today’s entries, I find the Family Circus more baffling and disturbing. It seems fairly unlikely that any normal child — or even a Keane Kid — would have the slightest interest in CNN’s resident deranged, babbling 97-year-old talk show host, or even the vaguest idea as to who he is. There’s also something unsettling about the sight of anyone — even a snowman — wearing suspenders but no pants; in particular, the fact that they seem to be affixed to his naked hips implies some kind of kinky piercing situation that believe me, you don’t want to contemplate really at all but especially in terms of Larry King.

Meanwhile, Marvin’s ongoing “Belly Laffs” horror has made the subtle shift from “You know you’re pregnant when you occupy more volume than usual” to “You know you’re pregnant when your mass increases.”

Funky Winkerbean, 2/27/08

“You know what else is expanding rather aggressively? The angle of my legs! Check out Funky’s Winkerbean, baby. You know you want it.”

Apartment 3-G, 2/27/08

By coincidence, Margo’s dialog in panel three is also pretty much the sum total of her foreplay techniques.

Post Content

For Better or For Worse, 2/26/08

AT LONG LAST, THE COUNTDOWN HAS STARTED! Yes, the discovery of this priceless family heirloom starts the clock ticking towards the inevitable merging of Liz and Anthony into a single pasty, spineless entity in the eyes of Canadian law. Since the whole story of Liz’s young adulthood has been the systematic quashing of any and all attitudes that come from outside The Family, obviously whatever she wanted to wear will be cast aside and replaced with this dress — which, if every crawlspace I’ve ever encountered is any indication, is yellowed, mildewy, covered with mouse feces, and smells awful. Oh, she’ll look so beautiful walking down the aisle oh-so-carefully to make sure the ancient, moth-eaten thing doesn’t disintegrate!

Dick Tracy, 2/26/08

OK, Dick Tracy, we all know you get some kind of grandfather-clause pass on gruesome violence, but do you really expect us to just sit back and laugh at your artist villain who basically has a set of testicles for a chin? You know, it’s all fun and games to call Grandpa Jim “Grandpa Chin-nuts” or make fun of poor Clambake, but at least with those characters you don’t get the feeling that the artist actually has some scrotum photos out to use as a model.

Dick went through some bizarre and wholly unrealistic process of tracking down art supply sales to figure out that Dab Stract was behind whatever incomprehensible skullduggery is afoot here. But if he didn’t find the artistic representation of human beings to be a sinful arrogation of God’s exclusive power of creation, he could have probably just, you know, looked at the “gross” paintings and recognized the style.

Family Circus, 2/26/08

Those “cool friends” snowman “joke” cartoons are apparently going to continue for as long as there’s snow on the ground, or until our wills are broken, whichever comes first. Today’s kneeling, praying snowman illustrates a bit too much the limits to the traditional three-sphere school of snowman construction. When you’ve got essentially three giant balls of decreasing size, it looks fine. But when you sketch in leglines like this, it just looks like you’ve got a devout snowman with an enormous ass.

Post Content

Family Circus, 2/24/08

O Sunday Family Circus, why do you insist on the being baffling and totally insane? These snowman scenarios grow increasingly deranged and disturbing as you move clockwise through the strip. “Snowy’s Kindergarden” is forgettable treacle; one might be tempted to gloss over the Symphony Hall entry with equal speed, except that upon closer inspection it appears that our be-headphoned conductor snowbeing may actually be inside the symphony hall? And if so, would there by any more disturbing moment for a professional concert musician than coming into work one day and finding a pile of snow on the floor and a ghastly simulacrum of your conductor grinning dumbly and listening to headphones?

From there, it gets worse. Obviously the melting snowman at the global warming talk is a horrifying nightmare; the way it’s cradling its head, desperately trying to keep it from falling off its rapidly shrinking neck and rolling across the floor, would be poignant if it weren’t so terrifying. And finally, we arrive at … OK, where is that? Does that building in the background have bars on the window? Is that snowman in prison? My God, it’s in prison, isn’t it? And that rolling ball in front of it is … what, exactly? The severed head of a prison snitch? The mind boggles?

If we want good, old-fashioned fun, we need to turn to people who know how to have a good time … pirates!

Panel from the Phantom, 2/24/08

WOO! PIRATE PARTY! Even when it’s about over, you can see they’re having a good time, because they’re still laughing it up! With their pirate antics! WOO! HA HA! Sunday’s strip got all Phantom-fisty and skull-marky after this point, but I just wanted to linger on the moment when the pirates were allowed to have their fun.