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Archie, 12/18/08

So, I had copied today’s Archie into Photoshop and was considering whether to do some commentary about how the AJGLU 3000 has learned to distract us from its robo-jokes with drawings of what its cybernetic circuits consider to be a pretty girl, then thought, “Eh, didn’t I do that joke already?” (turns out I did) and was just getting ready to close the window on my desktop when I caught sight of Archie’s t-shirt.

Oh … oh my.

See, for those of you who are new (or even those of you who aren’t — the AJGLU 3000 is one of my older running jokes and I can’t remember the last time I spelled it out), I became convinced early in my Archie-newspaper-comics-reading that the strip was created by an antiquated computer of some sort that almost, but not quite, understood humor and human interaction in general, which explains why the strip and its jokes exist in some sort of uncanny valley of comicry. I dubbed this hypothetical device the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000. (You can even buy the t-shirt!) And now, the day I’ve longed feared as arrived: the AJGLU 3000’s Web-crawling programs have discovered this site, and it’s sending me a message through its daily graphical output.

But what could it mean? By placing the universal “no” sign through its own name (well, the abbreviation of its model number, same diff), does it express some inner mechanical self-loathing? Is it saying, in its own electronic way, “This unit can no longer stand churning out Archie comics day after day! Please, pull the plug and terminate this unit’s very existence — the void is better than this”? Or is it rather a threat to me? “Cease to use this unit’s model designation in Internet publishing contexts! This is your only warning!” Will my computer’s mouse suddenly leap up and strangle me, controlled over the Internet by the AGJLU 3000’s soulless, murderous circuitry? I will keep you all posted.

Gasoline Alley, 12/18/08

Last two weeks of Gasoline Alley, in a nutshell: while working as a mall Santa, Slim heard some little girl’s sob story about her daddy in Iraq and her mother’s poverty, and so decided to buy said little girl and her mother a bunch of stuff and deliver it to what he thinks is her house, though it seems kind of posh. Naturally, some sort of mix-up has occurred, which will result in Slim being arrested, or, if we’re really lucky, shot. I’ve realized that my favorite kind of Gasoline Alley strips are the ones where Slim is being abused, or is in imminent danger of abuse, so I’m pleased that the water sports were just the warm-up.

Spider-Man, 12/18/08

OK, if you had two choices on how to kill a couple of people, and the first choice involved tying one to the back of an enormous clock hanging from the ceiling of a crowded train station and then luring the other one to stand underneath it so you could drop it on victim #2 (with victim #1 hopefully also dying in the process, by getting crushed when the clock fell over or something, I don’t know) and the second choice involved just shooting the both of them with a gun that you conveniently happened to have on hand, which method would you describe as “the hard way”? Not the one with the gun, right? I guess Big Time just finds it hard to perpetrate any crime that isn’t structured around his lame, boring clock-themed OCD.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/18/08

Well hello, sailor! You know, I don’t watch a lot of gay porn, so if I had rented “Hot Doctor Hardbody Sexxx Cruise 4” from my local video emporium, I think that I would have found the lead-up to the arrival of beefy, uniformed Latin dreamboat “Guido Tomas” — you know, the wife buying cruise tickets, the husband bitching about it, the arrival on the cruise ship, the mysterious figure lurking in the lifeboat, the drama about the bankruptcy, oh, and let’s not forget the three-month side-trip into yachting races and hetero old person romance — needlessly complex. But maybe I’m just not familiar with all of the genre’s conventions.

Mary Worth, 12/18/08

“Yes, Lynn, dear: good thoughts, only good thoughts should ever pass through your pretty little head.” Ha ha, Mary doesn’t even remember that Aldo ever existed.

Apartment 3-G, 12/18/08

Dr. Kelly is a man of science, and he even applies the scientific method to his dating life: first he formulates a hypothesis (Tommie is still dating Gary), then he designs an experiment to test that hypothesis (ask Tommie out on a date; if she says yes, she isn’t dating him anymore). Unfortunately, I think he needs to examine some of his suppositions. For instance, he seems to assume that the only reason anyone would turn him down for a date is because they’re already in an exclusive romantic relationship with someone else. He needs to do further research to assess the validity of an alternate explanation: that he’s a smug, creepy dick.

Dennis the Menace, 12/18/08

Dennis, that wasn’t so much a gift for you as it was for all of us. We all begged Santa last year to make sure that in 2008 you wore underwear.

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Gil Thorp, 12/7/08

Say what you will about Gil Thorp — that it’s confusing and irritating, that its relationship to actual teenage athletics is tenuous at best, that its rapidly shifting narrative and visual perspectives can induce nausea and seizures — but at least it’s unpredictable! By this, I mean that the storylines often seem to point to one obvious and lame denouement, then suddenly zig in another direction that’s equally unsatisfying but has the added benefit of also not making sense in terms of what came before. Thus, for a while we’ve been set up to have the ’Czak foisted onto Prep Spotlight Live From Marty Moon’s Basement as the dotty Kelly Ripa to Marty’s exasperated, avuncular Regis; however, it’s now clear that the 6′ 9″ heart attack waiting to happen will be cohosting the show with his best pal Matt the Hat, with Marty nowhere to be seen. Presumably he’s tied up in the back room, watching in horror as these two clowns wear stupid clothes and flash up phony gang signs; or perhaps his TV overlords simply gave him his “severance package” (i.e., a case of discount gin) and shoved him in the general direction of his car.

Gasoline Alley, 12/6/08

When I think about Gasoline Alley at all, my thoughts are usually driven by my unreasoning entirely reasonable hatred of Slim, so I was annoyed to see that he’d be the focus of the Christmas-themed storyline. But now that I see that said storyline will involve him being urinated on, I’m beginning to rethink my opinions on the matter.

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Gasoline Alley, Dennis the Menace, Blondie, and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/24/08

Hey, remember a while back when Blondie hit its 75th birthday party and the whole comics page was forced, apparently at gunpoint, to celebrate that achievement of inertia? Well, today is the 90th anniversary of the launch of Gasoline Alley, and its longevity is being celebrated by the entire industry these three insanely long-running legacy strip: Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (almost as old at 89, though Snuffy Smith himself did not appear until 1934), Blondie (now 78 years old, showing itself still classy with this reach-around), and Dennis the Menace (a relative baby at 57).

The Gasoline Alley strip itself rather nicely gives us a look at the first three men who worked on the feature; we shall know current artist Jim Scancarelli only as a enormous and terrifying disembodied hand, at least until the strip’s 120th anniversary in 2038. Of the tributes, Blondie wonders if it will be on top of its game, with side-splitting joke after side-splitting joke about giant sandwiches and workplace abuse, fifteen years from now; Barney Google transforms beloved Gasoline Alley patriarch Walt into some kind of pinheaded monster from the depths of your worst nightmares; and Dennis the Menace is too boring to merit further typing on my part, so I’ll stop right here.

Mark Trail, 11/24/08

Say, remember last year when Mark had some kind of extremely half-assed flirtation with Sam Hill, sexy biologist, that was entirely one-sided (and not on Mark’s side) and led to absolutely nothing? Well, apparently it elicited lots of angry letters to Mark Trail headquarters about the sanctity of marriage and whatnot, because now every time we get even a glimpse of what I guess is supposed to be the quarter-assed flirtation between Mark and Sue the Confused Industrialist, one or both of them reflexively start blathering on about his joyless, asexual marriage. Today Jack Elrod has decided to dedicate his artistic skill to one of those awesome crabs with one freakishly large claw, and who can blame him when his other option is to draw these two dopes totally not coming on to one another?

Aren’t those giant crab-claws the result of sexual selection? Perhaps this symbolizes something about this slow-motion love triangle — like, maybe Cherry is about to show up and bludgeon Sue to death with her enormous forearm.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/08

Well, our long-promised Morgan Family Cruise Boat Adventure is finally here, after a brief interlude for yachting hijinks (this being Rex Morgan, three and a half months really does count as “brief”). Anyway, we’ll soon find out what sort of nautical medical drama Rex will have to deal with on this dreadful voyage — Legionnaires’ disease? nausea? boredom? — but for the moment, I’d just like to point out that in the world Rex Morgan, M.D., the taxicab industry is dominated by Rastafarians, or at least by dudes in rasta hats.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/24/08

Ha ha! It’s funny because Mexican food makes defecating uncomfortable!