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Archie, 10/2/07

Huh, the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 seems to have put the wrong dialogue into today’s cartoon. Here, let me fix that:

Panel one, Miss Gundy: You feel that our school has singularly failed to inculcate any sort of moral sense into our student body? That we are training an army of sociopaths?

Panel one, Mr. Weatherbee: Indeed! What is it that has hollowed out their spirits from the inside, leaving them only fit to be alternately victims and tormentors in life’s theater of cruelty?

Panel two: [A sickening crunch as Archie’s kneecap fractures, leaving him with a limp that will linger the rest of his life.]

Panel three, Mr. Weatherbee: Perhaps we shouldn’t have painted every wall in the school a blindingly bright white. We sought to inculcate spiritual purity, but instead we created the illusion of a yawning void that reflects the emptiness of the students’ souls!

Gasoline Alley, 10/2/07

When last we left this feature, Slim’s insane meteor plot had landed him in an actual mental hospital. Soon afterwards, his clinician choose to follow an unorthodox treatment regime — sending him and Clovia to the beach — and Skeezix, who is the father of one (possibly both? who knows?) of them, had to take over at the garage and deal with their surly employee, who went out on a call and then vanished. In this strip’s newly found rhythm of veering from dull to insane as the plot develops, Skeezix has tracked the missing mechanic to this creepy old house, which is probably inhabited by a family of inbred murderers wearing human skin suits, or a passageway to the plane of damned souls, or something similarly bizarre. The harrowing adventures in this hell-house will of course cut back and forth to and from the dialect-heavy hillbilly antics of Rufus and Joel, who Skeezix left in charge of the garage.

Spider-Man, 10/2/07

Oh, Spider-Man! Is there any hero in the pantheon of American comics tougher and more noble than you? Spidey and his wife have decided to flee Los Angeles for the safer climes of Manhattan; they’ve been driven out of the city of angels by the twin scourges of the Shocker (a “super” villain whose “super” powers mainly consist of a crippling inferiority complex and vibrating gloves he built in his basement metal shop) and an army of amateur paparazzi. But now he faces his greatest challenge yet: heavy traffic on the 405! Obviously it’s worth Peter Parker betraying his secret identity if that’s what it takes to get to the airport on time; after all, air travel between LA and New York is incredibly sporadic, and if Peter and Mary Jane don’t make their flight, clinging to the landing gear like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon if need be, they could be trapped in Los Angeles indefinitely.

Gil Thorp, 10/2/07

Uh-oh, Howard looks like he’s about to prove that wearing Buddy Holly glasses and being named “Howard” doesn’t automatically make you smart. It’s well known that the Internet primarily exists as a vehicle for anonymous personal abuse. Googling the name of a crappy high school quarterback who plays in a town unnaturally obsessed with high school sports will mainly serve to demonstrate how many ways there are to misspell “YOU FUCKING SUCK.”

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Curtis, 9/29/07

I’ve perversely pleased that Curtis has chosen to take on a topic so very rarely tackled in the comics: that moment in a young man’s life when his raging hormones completely overwhelm his capacity to act in a socially appropriate fashion. In Curtis’ case, he’s taken to “watching” (just watching, sure) degrading reality quasiporn right before dinner time. It’s nothing to be proud of, but we’ve all been there, right fellas? (And probably the ladies too, though I’ll let them speak for themselves.) Anyway, part of every person’s self-pleasuring education involves learning the whens and wheres, and Curtis is quickly finding out that where should probably not be “in the bedroom that you share with your brother in what is probably a none-too-large apartment” and when should definitely not be “in the early evening, when your family is in the next room and could wander in at any moment.” Patience and cunning are required while you still live at home, Curtis. You don’t want to be too obvious about it in such close proximity to your mom, lest you enter Francis territory.

If “family matters” is my new favorite euphemism for sex, then “the ‘times’” is clearly my new favorite euphemism for puberty. And I do wonder if Curtis has finally gotten his hands on the fabled “syrup chapter.”

Gil Thorp, 9/30/07

The Mudlarks have started the season 0-2 behind quarterback Tony Casey’s consistently dismal play. Some might say that he just doesn’t have the talent, but I think he’s a bit distracted … distracted by left guard Howard Gourwitz and his wholesome, aw-shucks good looks! While Tony’s the quarterback, in the aftermath of Milford’s defeat it’s Howard who’s making passes. Tony might be disappointed to “forget the Bucket”, at least this week, but I’ll be he’s looking forward to finding out exactly what act of delightful perversity “empty your mom’s fridge” might be code for.

While this romantic drama is going on the foreground, I have to wonder about football player number three in the second panel, who can’t seem to get his helmet off. Did a particularly powerful hit jam it onto his skull so tightly that he’ll be forced to wear it around school indefinitely? Meanwhile, after the inevitable disorienting jump cut, we get the promise of more vandalism-based hijinks to come. Backwards black hat dude is a master of the school-rivalry prank; he’s had a long time to acquire that mastery, since he appears to be 35 or so.

Momma, 9/29/07

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Momma plans to go out like a monarch from ancient Egypt or Sumer. When she dies, her faithful servants will kill and entomb her children with her in her enormous ziggurat so they can wait on her hand and foot in the afterlife. Good God, that smile on her sleeping face creeps the hell out of me.

Archie, 9/29/07

You can when you spend as much time huffing paint as you do, Archie!

Man, the nameless guy at the bottom center of the second panel is the saddest dude in the world. There’s someone who actually cares about his test scores and his academic future. Archie is just idly musing on his incipient dementia to pass the time until he sees something shiny.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/29/07

Yeah, and the younger one kind of looks like he’s on fire. That could explain the odor.

Pluggers, 9/29/07

A plugger’s erectile dysfunction is kind of besides the point, since the rest of his body is in such an advanced state of decay that attempting any kind of sexual encounter would be excruciatingly painful. Plus nobody really wants to have sex with him anyway.

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Apartment 3-G, 9/27/07

“Here, Margo, you might want to ‘amuse yourself’ over here by my desk. Right in front of this Webcam, which is totally not at all turned on and connected to the Internet. Have fun! Heh heh, ‘twiddle my thumbs’…”

Dick Tracy, 9/27/07

So as far as I know, in a D.C. context “the Rotunda” is the space under the big dome thingie in the middle of the Capitol building, which means that Gretchen just suicide-bombed (is there an active verb form of “suicide bomber?”) Congress, eliminating the legislative branch, throwing the U.S. government into chaos, and presumably ushering in an “emergency regime” that will last indefinitely and be fronted by Dick Tracy, a well-known authoritarian sadist. This will definitely be more interesting than the last few weeks of this strip, which mostly consisted of aimless driving around.

Gil Thorp, 9/27/07

Marty Moon’s days of drunken debauchery must have been a lot wilder than I thought, because it looks like he lost an eye when someone attacked him in a bar fight with a broken bottle. He’s so excited by the Mudlarks’ late-game collapse, he hasn’t even noticed that his glass eye is veering wildly to the right.

Luann, 9/27/07

Never mind the little spat over who gets to be TJ’s “partner”; doesn’t it smell kind of fishy that Brad, an employee of the Fire Department, will be helping secure a no-bid, taxpayer-underwritten contract with said Fire Department for the catering business that he’s secretly moonlighting for? The whole sordid deal will climax with eight weeks of hearings before the city council’s Ethics Subcommittee, at the end of which you will be begging for a return to the “Luann and Bernice fight about Ben” storyline.

Marmaduke, 9/27/07

Is anyone else as creeped out by the name of this butcher’s shop as I am? It’s like, instead of a storeroom or walk-in freezer at the back of the store, there’s just an entrance to a cave. A cave full of meat.

One Big Happy, 9/27/07

It’s been well established that One Big Happy’s Joe is ignorant, and willfully so. Today he’s covering his face in a desperate attempt to block out new knowledge of any sort. This must be heartbreaking to his father, who loves learning so much that he’s chosen to subscribe to the premium digital cable package just so he can get the Algebra Channel.