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Apartment 3-G, 10/12/07

I’ve got to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed in this week’s Apartment 3-G plot. With the set-up we were given, I was expecting to see either (a) Eric dumping Margo and laughing at her shattered hopes and dreams, (b) Margo berating Eric at great and colorful length for failing to propose to her when ordered to, or (c) angry, angry sex (and to be honest I was hoping for some combination of the three). Instead, we’ve had a lot of blah blah blah about Alan, a character I care about less than just about anyone in this strip — less than Gina, less than Blaze, even less than Tommie.

At least Margo’s face in panel two indicates that she’s also a bit put off by how this conversation is going. “Stretched too thin? But … does that mean you won’t let Mistress Margo put you on the rack tonight?”

Mary Worth, 10/12/07

I am, however, pleased that Vera’s creepy brother Von is back in the picture. Just when I thought that the creepy Flowers in the Attic-style hijinks were over! My guess is that the item of importance that Von has to explain to his sister involves their father’s will, out of which, you will recall, Vera was cruelly and chauvinistically cut. Von will reveal that Vera’s half of the family fortune will be hers, as long as they fulfill their father’s dying wish and marry each other. You can only protect yourself with that tennis racket for so long, Vera!

After watching Wilbur fondle his heartbroken daughter all last week, I’m really looking forward to the incestuous triangle of jealousy that will bear down on Drew with greater and greater force. Will he be able to fight off both millionaire Von of Pacific Cliffs and syndicated columnist “Ask Wendy”? Maybe he’ll need to call his own sister into the fight just to be on the safe side.

Gil Thorp, 10/12/07

OH MY GOD! Cully Vale killed a kid in a backyard wrestling simulation gone horribly wrong! And was tried as an adult for it! It’s ripped from the headlines … of newspapers on microfiche from 1999, which is when the incident this is referring to actually happened. Gil Thorp, always on the cutting edge. Anyway, I think the DA was right to prosecute Cully as an adult. For one thing, he appears to be about 27 years old. And just look at that glassy-eyed dopey smile — clearly that’s the face of a premeditated murderer. You’ve brought shame to the state of Oregon, Vale! You don’t deserve to squat awkwardly behind its flag!

By the way, the kid in the real-life backyard-wrestling murder/manslaughter/what have you case ended up getting paroled, only to be arrested later for armed robbery. I hope very much that a similar incident is integrated into the story of “Cully Vale, gentle giant”.

Herb and Jamaal, 10/12/07

“I can’t believe all of the issues in the church today” now officially joins “Wow, check out the latest on the hotel socialite! The stuff they say about her really makes you think, doesn’t it?” on this list of Things Nobody Would Ever Say At Any Time But Which Have Been Incomprehensibly Used As The Set-Up For A Joke In Herb And Jamaal.

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Gil Thorp, 10/11/07

Oh my God, wait: Oregon? Too big to hide? Need I remind you what I found when I went Google image searching on “Culver Vale”?

“Gah, I’ve got to hide somewhere … I know, I’ll hide behind this Oregon flag! Wait, you can still see me … if only I weren’t so big … too big to hide…”

Comics are submitted to syndicates weeks in advance, so as much as I’d like to believe that the creators of Gil Thorp are stealing ideas from me in some sort of insane feedback loop, I know that’s not the case. But maybe they are generating their plots out of Google image searches and free association, in which case I say: kudos, sirs, kudos.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/11/07

This may well be the most esoteric TDIET ever, moving the strip away from its usual petty domestic gripes and towards a world-theory of aesthetic ethics. “E. Hennenfeld” is obviously a longtime observer of Portland’s fine arts scene, and is a fierce subscriber to the vision of art as a life-encompassing construct. How dare Pistachio offer a minimalist vision in his painting that isn’t reflected in his home? Is his home not as much an artifact — and thus a work of art in a true sense — as the canvases that hang in museums? By refusing to live his artistic philosophy, he reveals himself to be nothing but a hack and a fraud. It’s heady stuff, but hey, bitter waitresses and verbally abusive husbands aren’t the only people with gripes, OK?

Curtis, 10/11/07

I don’t mean to get in the way of a good hairy feet joke, but isn’t Michelle’s whole schtick that she’s snooty and rich? She gets driven around by a chauffeur, sneers at Curtis’s plebian pizza joints, etc., etc. Surely her mother could afford health insurance, yes? Also, doesn’t one usually check into rehab because one can’t stop taking the medication, not because of the medication’s unexpected side-effects? Also … aw, the heck with it. Ha ha! Hairy feet! I know what she’s been doing with those feet.

Pluggers, 10/11/07

Good lord, Rex Morgan is a plugger! I don’t think any of us were expecting that.

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Mary Worth and Judge Parker, 10/8/07

“Sure, why not” vs. “You think?”: The sassy young ladies of the soap opera strips come up with the closest things to snappy comebacks allowed in this genre. Dawn has bizarrely chosen to encapsulate her sass as some kind of bit of quoted wisdom. My question: is this some flip statement that Drew made once, long ago, that Dawn memorized like every other sentence he uttered in her presence? Or is it just another in the long line of Mary Worth things-presented-as-quotes-that-aren’t-actually-quotes? A trip through the archives would answer this question, but I don’t have the spiritual strength for it this afternoon. I will say this, though: Dawn’s tremulous tear in panel one is actually better drawn than the single droplet usually seen on the faces of the various girls in Apartment 3-G.

Meanwhile, Judger Parker’s Sophie has come up with the only appropriate response to Rusty’s increasingly desperate bids to bend Sam to her legal will. Unable or unwilling to recognize her old classmate’s total disinterest in her assets, she’ll be humping the place settings before she’s through. Sophie’s droll reaction indicates that she knows well enough why Sam and Abbey expanded their family by adopting a pair of homeless millionaire adolescents rather than via the more conventional route.

By the way, does anyone know how old exactly Sophie is supposed to be? Is she ten, or forty and suffering from some kind of glandular condition? Her little lilac pantsuit is kind of freaking me out.

Dick Tracy, 10/8/07

Calling the heads in Dick Tracy “enormous and terrifying” isn’t exactly breaking new ground, but — God damn, those heads in panel two are enormous and terrifying. They sort of remind me of characters from video games in the mid-90s — two-dimensional drawings wrapped freakishly around some overly simplistic polyhedron. Anyway, the face on the front of the slightly smaller and less terrifying head in panel two looks glum, and why shouldn’t it? Dopey Dmitri and now-exploded Gretchen get all the credit in Dick’s exposition, but what about him? Doesn’t he at least rate an unimaginative and stereotypical name, like “Ivan” or “Hans”?

Gil Thorp, 10/8/07

Huh, so Cully Vale is a murderer. I’m assuming Gil already knows this — he always seems to be one step ahead of his cretinous students (a talent that sadly doesn’t seem to translate to his coaching, but never mind that for the moment). Since Gil seemed pretty blasé about having his baseball team coached by a fraud, it should come as no surprise that he’s let a cold-blooded killer into his locker room; I would have thought that the strip would have worked up to this with maybe a little light drug dealing first, but heck, why not just go for the gusto right away. I can’t wait for the cops to come question Coach Thorp about all the bodies only to have him reply with a resounding “Eh.”