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Gasoline Alley, 5/26/08

Can I confide to you that I actually find the concept of a heavily-accented, curly-mustachioed French pitchcat named “Chef Meowrice” pretty funny, if deranged? I’m guessing the name is supposed to be a pun on famous French-accent-haver Maurice Chevalier. However, I am firmly, firmly opposed to “Tabby Wynette,” mostly because she should be be belting out country tunes full of hard-earned sadness and loss, rather than just standing around in some kind of creepy cat S&M get-up and cozying up to some Frenchie for pulverized mouse bits.

Popeye, 5/26/08

In other news, Popeye has come ’round again to Olive Oyl’s suicide, as is its wont.

Apartment 3-G, 5/26/08

Meanwhile, across the world in Tibet, we’ve been given a respite from Alan’s zany drug antics. Eric and Tenzin have been making the long trudge to Lhasa on foot, apparently unaware that you can actually take the train there now. You can tell that they’ve been on a long journey because Eric has grown a neatly trimmed beard, while Tenzin has become a blond-haired Caucasian. Seeing the fabled city in the distance, Eric muses that it would have been better for the place to have been destroyed and all its people killed than to have any contact with modernity.

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Phantom, 5/3/08

Could the JUNGLE PATROL’s longstanding no-yucky-girls-allowed policy have been based on sound policy, not mere prejudice? The men of the Jungle Patrol have for centuries cheerfully taken orders without question from a mysterious figure that they never see and who may not even exist; but these two dames have been Jungle Patrolpersons for less than a week and they’re already determined to suss out his identity — not because they find the idea of a faceless, nameless superior officer creepy and weird, of course, but because they want to have sex with him. Kay and Hawa have been yammering on in this vein for several days now, and I’ve been wondering how their tight-knit friendship would survive when the Unknown Commander has to choose only one of them to be his Unknown Commandress, but today we learn that obviously the choice will be based on racial grounds. It’s too bad the real U.C. isn’t Chinese or something, just because it would be fun to watch that blow their minds.

Apartment 3-G, 5/3/08

Thanks to the glory and pageantry of NetFlix, my wife and I tore through all five seasons of The Wire a few months ago, but this Apartment 3-G makes me realize that I still don’t fully understand the economics of the drug trade. Will Jones be pleased when he realizes that Alan is redistributing his dope, happy to move up the ladder from street-level dealer to wholesaler? Or will he conclude that the profits Alan is reaping by selling smack to desperate floozies are rightfully his own, and decide to shoot the hapless artist in the back of the head and leave his body to rot in a vacant somewhere?

The stakes would be much higher if everyone involved weren’t morons. I love Jones’s rapt expression in panel two. “Whoah — that’ll buy a lotta dope! Now where I could I find some … oh, wait, I have some right here! Turns out I don’t need your money after all, Alan.”

Dick Tracy, 5/3/08

Dick Tracy’s contempt for Deformed-Americans has never been more obvious. Hey, Liz, your “knight in shining armor” lost his gun, then stood around aimlessly in that shining armor until somebody else shot the bad guy. Your real savior was Dab Stract, who has the added bonus of not being married (I’m assuming). Go on, plant a wet one his lumpy, malformed cheek. He’s earned it!

Gasoline Alley, 5/3/08

His two-timing having been revealed to the congregation, Sturdivant is about to be dragged out of the church by the bride’s hobo relatives and stabbed to death, or possibly sodomized. Score another one for good ol’ fashioned frontier justice!

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Mark Trail, 4/25/08

Here, let me recap for you everything that’s happened in this strip since I last mentioned it a month ago: little Madeline started letting her dog Bill just roam around the neighborhood, because she is a moron, and the evil dognappers dognapped him, leaving Madeline sad, which she deserves. Some might say that I’m being too hard on a little girl, and that her mother bears some of the blame for not letting her know that people don’t just let their dogs roam free through neat suburban neighborhoods because they tend to urinate and/or defecate on your (or the neighbors’) lawn, or run away, or get hit by cars, or, on planet Mark Trail, get stolen by dognappers and held for ransom, what the heck. But shouldn’t Madeline have noticed that when Mommy let Daddy roam free at night, eventually he never came back? C’mon, kid, you’ve got to learn from your family’s past mistakes.

Anyway, the reason I’m even bothering with this strip is that Mark Trail apparently now has a cell phone. The thought of him using any technology developed after 1955 confuses and terrifies me, which means that I’m glad to see that the actual illustration involves him talking on his motel’s black rotary phone, as God intended.

Gasoline Alley, 4/25/08

I’m not even going to pretend that I understand exactly what’s going on in Gasoline Alley — that’s what Going Antisane is for. All I can tell you is that it involves the dude with glasses, who is an over-the-top parody of some kind of wealthy college boy from the 1930s, marrying into a clan of sassy hillbillies — except that his fiancée is actually a blonde, not the brunette he’s smooching here mere moments before the ceremony begins; the kissee is actually his fiancée’s sister, or cousin, or … well, given the rustic setting of the action, I think we can safely file her under the category of “kin.” None of this is really important for my main point, though, which is SWEET JESUS THOSE SOULLESS BLACK CHITINOUS EYES ARE STARING DEEP INTO MY VERY SOUL ARGH ARGH ARGH.

Curtis, 4/25/08

I’d like to give a nod to faithful reader commodorejohn, who predicted this plot development a week and a half ago; watch him break down the signs with admirable precision. I’d also like to point out that young Randy Wagstaff from season four of The Wire was depicted with a similar in-school candy-selling operation; later, his story ended (SPOILERS!) with fire-bombing and group homes and brutalization, so this Curtis bit should be good.