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Apartment 3-G, 2/13/08

Yes, what must he think of you, Lu Ann? Since last we saw your art opening was actually in progress, and “meanwhile” you’re moping around Apartment 3-G, I’d imagine that he’s thinking something like this:

“God damn it, where is that moron? It’s not like these profoundly mediocre fern paintings are going to fly off the walls by themselves; since Margo has gone out of her way to make the show all about Lu Ann and her ghostly inspiration, the least she can do is come down here and sell this crap. She’d better be wearing something low-cut, too, that can only help. I swear to God, I — hey, there’s my connection! Gotta run!”

For Better Or For Worse, 2/13/08

Amusing as it is to see toddler Elizabeth wandering around with a toilet on her head (all the better to prepare for a life of being crapped on by Anthony! Har har!), I’m even more tickled by Ellie’s opening sentence, which sort of implies that her mother worries that she in fact does not plan to potty-train her daughter, but will rather allow her to go through life urinating and defecating in her pants whenever the mood strikes. “We were going to train Lizzie, mom, but you saw what a jerk Michael turned into after we did it. I swear, it’s too bad Freud isn’t alive; he’d have a field day with what learning to poop in a bowl did to that kid’s personality. We figure a lifetime of changing diapers will be a small price to pay.”

Gil Thorp, 2/13/08

“…starts muscling Andrew Gregory…”

“A slick back-door cut…”

“…shakes loose underneath…”

You know, some days this stuff pretty much just writes itself.

Family Circus, 2/13/08

“There’s only one way to figure this out — I’m going to pee on his head!”

OK, that … that was probably unforgivable. But why did they draw Billy fumbling with his fly if they didn’t want me to make this joke, huh? Why? Why do you tempt me, O Family Circus?

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Apartment 3-G, 2/4/08

For the uninitiated, panels two and three are a good introduction to our gal Magee, revealing her to be a lovely and charming combination of Hermann Göring and P.T. Barnum. I wasn’t even aware that Lu Ann had shared her deranged oxygen-deprived series of hallucinations (or were they hallucinations? DUN DUN DUNNNHHHH) with her roommates, but assuming she did, it’s not at all surprising that Margo would chose to use that knowledge to publicly humiliate her for financial gain. The great thing about exploiting Lu Ann is that she was already kind of dumb even before the carbon monoxide poisoning played hell with her memory, so Margo can just claim that she’d already signed off on this publicity campaign months ago and she’ll probably buy it.

For Better Or For Worse, 2/4/08

THE FACE, MEREDITH, GO FOR THE FACE! I love how quickly Mike has given up hope of stopping his progeny from battling it out with razor-sharp kitchen utensils; now he seeks merely to level the playing field. I’ll give this to him, though: just one afternoon where one of his kids blinds the other one and he’ll never be left in charge of them by himself again.

Marmaduke, 2/4/08

I have to admit that I had always assumed that, when Marmaduke finally mastered the English language, he’d be a lot more threatening in his use of it. For instance, I’d have imagined that what he’d have written in the snow here would have been more along the lines of “YOU HAVE TO COME OUT SOMETIME AND WHEN YOU DO YOU’RE MINE.”

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Blondie, 1/21/08

I don’t want to come across as some kind of elitist food snob (and anyone who’s ever seen me cook and/or eat is no doubt enjoying a hearty laugh that I would ever have to preface anything I write with that sentence). But I have to say that Dagwood’s armful of foodstuffs doesn’t strike me as all that unhealthy. It’s hard to see at this resolution, but most of it appears to be the kind of fresh ingredients (including actual vegetables) of the sort that you’re really supposed to be eating, and not the boxed and/or frozen heavily processed and low-grade-corn-based stuff that most of us (myself included) actually eat. Who would have guessed that Dagwood’s love of food ran to quality, not just quantity?

Dagwood’s rejection of the modern industrial food chain might be a sign of a broader Luddism that has extended to more troubling dimensions, though. For instance, his insistence on carrying his bounty rather than putting it in a more convenient cart points to his rejection of that devil’s tool, the so-called “wheel.” Unrelated but also unsettling is the coloring error that rendered the word balloons in this strip an icy blue. As if today’s weather didn’t leave me cold enough!

Apartment 3-G, 1/21/08

Real-life chances that, in New York, a city of 8 million or so souls, a lonely, horny Margo would show up at the same bar where a lonely, horny Alan has decided to fall off the wagon with gusto, and the two would end up drunkenly making out: practically zero. Chances in Apartment 3-G’s New York, population approximately 50: very high, especially when you consider that Alan and Eric look essentially identical. If Alan’s hair settles into whatever color Eric’s was when Margo last saw him, all bets are off.

For Better Or For Worse, 1/21/08

As several faithful readers wrote me to point out, Grandpa Jim’s hand gesture in panel three is essentially the British version of giving someone the finger. While I’m not sure if the Brits left their rude hand signs in the Canadian psyche as a legacy of their Empire, it’s true that Grandpa spent most of WWII fixing up planes in the UK — plenty of time to learn how to flip off folks like a local. Once again, this poor man, trapped both in the half-responsive shell of his body and in the floundering final days of this comic strip, expresses what we’re all really feeling.

Mary Worth, 1/21/08

Dr. Drew manages to neatly combine surprise and smugness into one facial expression in panel two. “Ah, to be young and Drew Corey!” he seems to be thinking. “To be so gosh-darn irresistible that the ladies can’t even wait for you to sit down together before their need for your sweet young body becomes irresistible!” His narcissistic glow should last another five or ten seconds, until Vera starts eating his face.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/21/08

If my record-keeping is right, “Bob Bennett” is none other than faithful reader benro, and truly by now we should have come to expect that any TDIET that features newfangled advances like cell phones or e-mail would be from a Comics Curmudgeon reader. Cell phone glued to his ear or no, Hossbutt may have some problems hearing his wife when he calls her, considering that he and the nameless URGEd individual are apparently riding in a tiny, roofless go-cart in the middle of a multilane highway.

Pluggers, 1/21/08

You’re a plugger if your intimate life becomes a terrifying Oedipal nightmare by the time you hit 45.