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For Better Or For Worse, 3/23/09

Generally speaking, I have chosen to ignore the “new-run” incarnation of For Better Or For Worse, partly to protest the strip’s shameless failure to fade away gracefully, and partly because it turns out that 99 percent of the fun was mocking the twists and turns of the end-game melodrama. I had intended to similarly pass over the current mostly-new storyline, in which Elly has gone off to Vancouver, leaving John alone to go whoring with his caddish co-worker at “The Swig And Swine” (BECAUSE MEN ARE DRUNK PIGS GET IT). But I was driven to briefly return from my self-imposed exile from Foobonia by panel two, in which the strip betrays its most important value: its Canadianosity. Seriously, what self-respecting Canuck would offer a toast with words that rebellious scoundrels used to separate part of His Majesty’s North American possessions from the mother country? This horny dentist’s ancestors were probably driven out of the southerly colonies by anti-royalist mobs with that very phrase on their lips! A real Canadian patriot would have instead raised a mug of Molson Golden to peace, order, and good government, and if that would have made it harder to transition to a terrible pun about trying to fuck the waitress, well, so much the better.

Apartment 3-G, 3/23/09

So the current Tommie storyline will apparently center on Dr. Kelly showing up at Apartment 3-G unannounced and putting her increasingly awkward situations. Since previous Tommie storylines included such gems as “Tommie is repeatedly insulted by her ditzy neighbor” and “Tommie tries and fails to seduce her married friend,” I say bring it on!

Children are kind of a wild card in the Apartment 3-G universe, as I can’t remember them ever appearing before, or any of the characters expressing the slightest interest in their existence. Margo’s reaction upon returning home and finding two short, unruly humans in her apartment ought to be priceless, at any rate. “Tommie, I was just trying to get them to settle down! It’s not my fault they can’t hold their liquor!”

Dick Tracy, 3/23/09

It looks like Dick Tracy, having eliminated all crime through his patented brand of Bill-of-Rights-violating mayhem, is now going to take on distasteful but wholly legal business practices. Next up: AIG executives are forced to pay back their bonuses … with their flesh.

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Mark Trail, 11/15/08

As a special gift to all of us, because we’ve been so good, Mark Trail is extending the Magical Moment of Fisticuffs for us for another day’s worth of punchy bliss. In today’s panel one, we seem to be seeing the same frozen-in-amber post-punch moment depicted in yesterday’s panel three, but from a different angle; however, Mark’s bellowed dialog has gone from passably bad-ass (“DOES THIS CONVINCE YOU?”) to stilted run-through-the-automated-translator-from-who-knows-what (“THIS LITTLE CONTEST OF YOURS IS UNLAWFUL”). The question is: did Mark have time to shout both of these things at Mr. Rabbit (or whatever his name is) as he tumbled slowly back into the murky swamp water? Or did Rabbit pop back up like a Weeble-Wobble sometime between yesterday and today, giving Mark a chance to lay down another punch and get in another awkward little bon mot?

The rest is no less delightful for being par for the course: Mark admonishes the gathered off-camera yokels, who sit by and do nothing, then breaks Sneaky’s chains with his bare hands and carries him off to safety. For the sake of Mark’s ego, I hope that the adorable raccoon waits until they’re out his backwoods tormentors’ sight before launching his entirely unprovoked attack on Mark’s eyes.

(Psst! This is a perfect time for you to pick up some Fist O’ Justice stuff from the Comics Curmudgeon store!)

Herb and Jamaal, 11/15/08

You know, every once in a while I say to myself, “Oh, the Herb-and-Jamaal-is-hilariously-nonspecific bit is getting old,” but then the strip goes and gets even more hilariously nonspecific. In today’s panel one, Jamaal ensures that those reading this strip in an anthology published in the middle of the 21st century will be able to relate the joke to their own experiences during the Great Disco Revival of the 2030s.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/15/08

Considering that this backwoods medico is asking our hero if he’s bothered by the sight of blood and advancing on him with what appears to be a scalpel, Snuffy Smith looks awfully chipper. My first guess was that the doctor assumes (correctly) that Snuffy would not be missed if he were to be sliced up and his organs harvested, but then I realized that nobody would want his moonshine-drenched kidneys or hog-fat-choked heart.

Apartment 3-G, 11/15/08

After a tragic romance with a brooding, no-talent, junkie urbanite, it’s not surprising that Lu Ann wants to hop into the arms of a fresh-faced Dakotan. Soon, though, she’ll learn that rural folk have drug problems too, with Cody addicted to trailer-made meth — or, as the locals call it, “prairie dope.”

For Better Or For Worse, 11/15/08

Yes, who said newspapers would become obsolete? Certainly nobody in the late ’70s, when this strip ostensibly takes place.

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Panels from For Better Or For Worse, 8/31/08

So I was mostly defeated by the FBOFW Wall o’ Text that greeted me on Sunday, but I feel I have to say something, so…

Thank God Deanna gave up on that pharmacist gig to finally get into an acceptable profession for an ovaries-bearing Canadian: sewing, and the sale of sewing accoutrements. Now at last a more qualified man can take her old job advising women on how to “accidentally” not take the pills he prescribes!

The “just for laughs” angle baffles me a little bit. Perhaps now that the Pattersons and their hangers on aren’t being monitored and controlled minutely by their Creator, they won’t be forced to end every interpersonal transaction with a terrible pun; but Deanna, in some form of Stockholm Syndrome, is no longer able to survive without the constant corny jokes.

But April, at least, got out. And got to get it on with a cowboy, whom she’ll presumably drop like a hot potato when she finds out that Gerald is getting divorced.

Anyway, Ces Marciuliano’s Medium Large today pretty much has the definitive statement on the subject.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/31/08

“For $10,000 to the clinic, she can write anything she wants!” Oh, Rex, you’re such a whore for humiliation. And for money.

I’m kind of in love with Rex’s little office-basketball move in panel four. “Check it out, everyone! I may not be a big yachting expert, but I’ve still got the athletic talents of my youth! I’m totally not going to cry like a little baby next week while clinging to the side of the boat and projectile vomiting!”

Slylock Fox, 8/31/08

In today’s puzzle, Slylock has gone back to his “Teach other creatures how to be meddling detectives” gig that we’ve seen before. You’d think that this would just produce competition for his own work as a freelance nosey detective, but maybe he gets the big bucks for these classes — especially in this case, in which he isn’t lecturing to kids but appears to be running some sort of adult education program. But the one who looks really anxious about obsolescence is Max, who is regarding that duck with the notepad suspiciously. “Wait — is a sidekick supposed to write things down? Oh, God, I’m going to be replaced! Please, don’t, Sly! I have no job skills!”

Panel from Marvin, 8/31/08

I kind of love this panel out of context. The joke is about terribly fiery grilling accidents, a trope that (and here’s a sentence I don’t think anyone has ever written before) is done better in Crankshaft; but in this panel on its own, with the parents regarding each other with heavy-lidded hostility and Marvin’s eyes wide with terror, it pretty much reads like a threat.