Post Content

Gil Thorp, 6/15/07

“I got a haircut … from the aliens that abducted me! I don’t think they understand the concept of ‘haircuts,’ actually, but it was free and all.”

I successfully called this one yesterday, not that being able to predict the twists and turns of this simultaneously obvious and moronic storyline ought to garner me anything but shame. Pissy little whiny baby Brynna will still be mad, since Lisa Wyche seems to have scored a wig that looks more or less like her actual hair rather than some cancer turban. This battle won’t end until the upcoming unfortunate mutual decapitation incident.

Family Circus, 6/15/07

“Of course, we made Grandma into jerky! She’ll stay good for months.”

Mark Trail, 6/15/07

There’s something unutterably creepy about panel three, in which Mark is gazing lovingly at the blinded Sam while sexily straddling a chair, and it’s not just because I saw Crazy Love the other night, either. Meanwhile, as usual, the forces of good prove to be less dumb than the forces of evil by only a miniscule amount. Despite the fact the Evil County Commissioners are open about their quest to get a new airport built, Mark will need to go back to the scene of the crime and find some revealing eyehook before his feeble synapses start to fire and the punching begins.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/15/07

Ah, the old “my father never loved me” routine, eh? It’s a bold move, but when you’re trying to bed your lookalike stepmother when they haven’t even fished your father’s cold corpse out of the North Atlantic yet, you’ve got to pull out the big guns.

Pluggers, 6/15/07

So pluggers watch movies to see the non-human mammalian characters? This may be the most reasonable and logical Pluggers ever.

Post Content

For Better Or For Worse, 6/3/07

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, while I don’t find the “Grandpa Jim is horny” strips to be knee-slappingly hilarious or anything, I don’t find them as distasteful as everyone else seems to. Really, no matter who we are, we’re all hopefully going to be old and infirm one day, and will probably be idly ruminating on and/or actively enjoying physical contact with the young and nubile. It’s too bad for Iris that apparently she’s going to have to have a stroke for anyone to touch her. Anyway, it could be a lot worse; we could be subjected to:

• Mike and Dee’s shell-shocked inability to cope with middle-class affluence and terrific dumb luck.
• Liz coming to the insane realization that the Mustache, his hate-spawned daughter, and his basement concentration camp are all she ever wanted in this life.
• April raging at anyone or everyone.

In that light, little interludes like Grandpa’s fantasy life, or Ellie’s sheet-shaving, are positively pleasant.

Zits, 6/3/07

Or, you know, one of Ellie’s kids could be devouring her brain out from the inside. Actually, that might be kind of fun to see.

Family Circus, 6/3/07

Speaking of things that are unpleasant, didya ever know that Big Daddy Keane and his woman used to like to mack on the couch? Betcah didn’t! Betcha didn’t want to in a million, million years! And yet here we are.

In the interest of symmetry, the empty nest version of the couple in the final panel really ought to be making out as well, as we all know that’s what happens when the kids leave the house. Maybe raising four children is so exhausting that they can’t work up the energy. Or maybe they’re thinking, menopause or no, that they’re not taking a chance on another one of those ever happening again.

Hi and Lois, 6/3/07

If after-school specials have taught me anything, it’s that the phrase “He’s cool, right?” in this context means “He will participate in, or at least not inform the relevant authorities about, our illegal drug use/underage drinking, right?” Thus I can’t help but be a little disappointed in the denouement here, and a little disappointed that Ditto isn’t more disappointed.

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 5/27/07

Ah, that sexy Cassandra Cat! With her skin-tight wetsuit and her … pale … pasty fur … totally different from the tawny coloring established in her previous appearances … like a three-day-old corpse … seriously, what the hell happened to her? Is this what a cat looks like after it’s spent some time in the water? It’s creeping me out.

Speaking of things that creep me out, the first iteration of the firefighter in the “how to draw” section at the lower left is missing not only his nose and mouth, but also most of his brainpan. It makes it very difficult to look at the completed drawing without imagining that big hat resting on the flat surface of his impossibly truncated head.

Back to Cassie’s grift: I do appreciate that various genres of news media are here to cover this sexy, sexy story: the big-haired dog from the local TV news, the eager beaver writing up the story for the newspaper’s morning edition, and the pelican, who’ll deliver the tale to an eager audience via half-eaten fish.

Dennis the Menace, 5/27/07

Good lord, just when I think Dennis can’t get any less menacing, he swings into action with his actively anti-menacing “stop smoking!” message. I suppose it’s possible that our young menace is being transformed into such a goody-goody that he becomes a menace through his cloying, annoying crusading, a symbol of the intrusive nanny state, though that doesn’t really match up with his traditional oeuvre of more straightforward menacing, like property destruction and nap disruption. It’s also possible that he wants to keep Mr. Wilson alive as long as possible so as to harass him further. “I’m not going to let the sweet embrace of cancer take you away from my persecution, old man!”

I’ve said it before, but there are few visual conventions in this strip that I find more unsettling than the “single bead of sweat coming down Mr. Wilson’s forehead,” a good example of which can be found in the rightmost panel of the second row. Really, the only thing it says to me is “WARNING! KILLING SPREE IMMINENT!”

Family Circus, 5/27/07

The Family Circus, on the other hand, does have a whiff of menace today. If this strip has an underlying message other than “drugs are awesome,” I’d love to hear it.