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Mary Worth, 9/19/06

While we can’t really tell that Aldo’s car is in motion here as he chugs down his bargain-basement booze, I think you and I both know that it is. And while some square lame-os will tell you all that this makes him a bad person, I think you and I both know that it actually makes him totally awesome. If there’s one thing that can make up for the bowl haircut, the late-70s ‘stache, and the dorky polo shirts all in one deft move, it’s tipping back a bottle of hooch with one hand as you try to navigate Santa Royale traffic with the other. Aldo’s willing to smear himself along the side of a school bus for our amusement, which is more than any of those so-called “responsible drinking” advocates can say. It certainly trumps Gil Thorp’s Marty Moon, who just drank himself into a stupor in a parked car like a little wussy.

Garfield, 9/19/06

I haven’t really changed my opinion about the slightly retooled Garfield of recent weeks: yes, it suddenly has other characters, and yes, it’s slightly funnier, but it still pretty much blows. Today’s strip actually supplies something of a metaphor for this, visually. When you first look at it, it looks like, in typical hack fashion, the same drawing has been photocopied and reused three times. But if you look at the final panel more closely, you can see that Jon’s upper lip is protruding out a bit more than in the previous two, so obviously some redrawing work has gone into it. So, I can appreciate that effort on a theoretical level, but in a larger sense, why bother putting in the work in the service of this gag, which manages to hint at something unspeakably perverted and yet actually just be dull and lame? The difference is noticeable, but ultimately not important. Which is in the end how I feel about the changes to the strip.

Pluggers, 9/19/06

You’re a plugger if nobody in the world would rather be you.

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Garfield and For Better Or For Worse, 7/28/06

I know I haven’t really said anything about it, but Garfield has had a real actual storyline going on for, like, two weeks or something now, and there are non-Garfield/Jon/Odie characters, and backgrounds other than the featureless void of Jon’s house, and dynamic tension and Jon even kisses a girl! The reason I haven’t said anything about this is that despite what appears to be some sort of real effort to inject some energy into the strip, it’s still excruciatingly lame and not funny. There, I said it. Sorry, Paws, Inc., toilers, but my reaction to this plotline has been a sort of tepid “Huh, that’s weird,” for about three seconds each day, promptly forgotten until the next day’s strip persists with the weirdness.

Meanwhile, much as so many of us love to hate For Better Or For Worse, it still undeniably drives passions. I have to admit rather shamefully that I’ve been totally involved in this week’s horrifying Liz-Anthony meet-cute at the car dealership, and I said a little cheer at Lizardbreath’s thought balloon which I hope — oh dear God of Canada PLEASE — means that she’s afraid of leading him on because she doesn’t want to break his heart again. Let him down easy now, Liz! For his good! For your good! FOR OUR GOOD!

Apartment 3-G, 7/28/06

“Hello! I’m Eric Mills. You know, I’m not the most attractive man in the world, I’m not really much of a dresser, and, let’s be honest, I frankly don’t have a personality that makes up for either of those factors. And yet I get more action than Don Juan and Casanova put together. I bet you’re wondering how I do it! Well, to find out all my secrets, you’ll need to subscribe to my once-a-month series of cassette tapes, Eric Mills Tells You How To Succeed With The Ladies. But let me give you an example of one of my sure-fire techniques now. Let’s say you’re at a party. What you do is, you find a halfway good-looking girl at the bar, and you check out how much she drinks. Does she drink a lot? Is she by herself? You’re in like flynn! The next thing you do is invite her out for lunch — an early lunch, if you can swing it — and get her good and drunk on whatever second-rate hard liquor she seems to like. I’ll tell you, gents, boozy floozies love it when you can remember their drug of choice; if you have to choose between keeping track of their mother’s name or whether they prefer Smirnoff or Absolut, go with the vodka. Anyway, by the end of the lunch, she’ll be way too drunk to go back to work, and as a gentleman you’ll have to walk her back to her apartment, and so … well, if you can’t take it from there, you need more help than I can give you!

“Oh, one more thing. Did I ever mention I’m a hat man? I love me a drunk girl in a hat. Yowza!”

Marvin, 7/28/06

So is this supposed to mean that Ming Ming has taken such a profoundly satisfying dump that she briefly transcended her individual consciousness and glimpsed a higher plane of reality? Or just that she’s pushed a certain amount of excrement “out” of her “body”? Either way, Marvin makes us long for last week, when it was just being racist.

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Garfield, 6/29/06

Step 1: Garfield contracts avian flu.

Step 2: Avian flu passes from Garfield to Jon.

Step 3: Garfield dies.

Step 4: Humanity wiped out.

Frankly, I would say Step 4 is a small price to pay for Step 3.

Judge Parker, 6/29/06

Who knew Judge Parker was so lousy with weird alien cults? Randy has only just extracted himself from the clutches of Mimi — High Priestess CEO of the suspiciously Scientology-esque “Eon” — but now we find out that Horace’s wife has the freakishly robotic name “Alpha.” Presumably Horace himself will soon change his name to “Beta,” with children named “Gamma” and “Delta” to follow. Beware, Randy, beware!

As for Judge Parker himself, with his unnaturally stripey hair, I’m not sure he’s to be fully trusted by Earth-based humans either.

I’m quite looking forward to Horace making an appearance on the new JP artist’s watch. For those of you who don’t remember, this freak is Horace:

Yeah, try drawin’ that guy looking halfway normal, Mr. Skilled Artist Man!