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Slylock Fox, 11/27/06

Today Slylock Fox takes a break from its usual kid-friendly fare to take us on a voyage into a shadowy demimonde of sleaze and degradation. Pretty much every aspect of this drawing is magnificent, from the scantily clad nightclub ladies, to the enormous purple-suited dog-thing (presumably their pimp) boogying down behind them, to the impassive bull bouncer standing outside, to Max Mouse’s decision to wear earmuffs and a scarf but no shirt.

My question is: Is this the same beaver who got his luggage stolen at LAX a couple of weeks ago? Why is he such a frequent victim of crime? I’m guessing it’s because he looks so hilarious when he’s indignant.

Mark Trail, 11/27/06

Yeah, Mark, I’m sure he’ll be very excited to learn that Molly’s safe, especially considering that he had no reason to believe that she wouldn’t be safe, since he left her in the hands of an experienced outdoorsman and all. It’s like the time I took care of a friend’s cat when she was out of the country, and the cat had some pretty disgusting gastrointestinal problems, but I didn’t tell her about it until after I took the cat to the vet and got it all worked out. Except I sought medical attention for the cat as soon as I realized he was sick instead of leaving him in the back of an open jeep so that he could be kidnapped by morons with stupid hair. So, my point, Trail, is good luck casually playing this bearnapping incident off when you go see Buck in the hospital.

Yes, that moose is talking out of its butt in the second panel. No, I don’t know why that’s happening or how to make it stop.

Luann, 11/27/06

You know, many months ago, I completely in jest accused Sally Forth of taking payola from Target and/or Rush. I wish I could say that I have no actual suspicions about today’s Luann, but the floating little ® bug after “Home Depot” gives me the uncomfortable feeling that we’re witnessing some kind of horrifying corporate synergy in the making. The only shred of hope I have to cling to is that the ® is subscripted, not superscripted as it should be, so it practically looks like somebody’s trademarked the word “fix” (which, frankly, I wouldn’t put past Home Depot®).

Anyway, all this speculation about artistic whoredom has at least blessedly distracted me from the joke in this strip, which is the always hilarious MEN ARE FROM MARS AND WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS HAW HAW WHAT’RE YA GONNA DO? Because I’m feeling generous, though, I will say that Momma DeGroot’s facial expression in the second panel is pretty funny.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/27/06

Like Troy Gainer, I’m not actually a doctor, but I’m still pretty sure that nobody’s eyes look like June’s in panel two unless they’ve already consumed copious amounts of meth. I’m beginning to see why she’s so eager to hook up with Niki’s mom.

By the way, I defy anyone to come up with a good explanation for a sock lying on top of a lampshade that doesn’t involve a set dresser presented with instructions that contain the phrase “cartoonishly squalid.”

Garfield, 11/27/06

Today’s Garfield appears to contain a reference to Jon’s penis.

Apartment 3-G, 11/27/06

Today’s Apartment 3-G appears to contain a reference to one of two slang terms for Eric Mills’s penis.

Actually, it took Mrs. C., romantic that she is, to point out to me that the four-letter word to which Tommie is referring is probably “love.” In my defense, I have a hard time conceiving of “Margo” and “love” in the same sentence. Margo requires worship, and servicing. Love doesn’t really enter into the equation.

Bizarre Apartment 3-G fashion update: Tommie’s weird white-sweatshirt-over-dusty-pink-polo-shirt combo seems to be slowly morphing into a slightly kickier futuristic two-tone zip-up jumpsuit. And while Margo’s decision to wear a white micro-miniskirt to Thanksgiving dinner was ultimately successful in the rich-guy-seducing department, it was also an embarrassing gravy stain disaster waiting to happen.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/27/06

Attention, comics writers who are thinking of ending a strip with a gentle bit of punny wordplay and depicting the characters engaged in said wordplay demonstrating through their facial expressions their mild appreciation for same: we already have one For Better Or For Worse and do not require another. Thank you.

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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.