Post Content

Beetle Bailey, 10/17/06

I don’t have contact with anyone in the army right now, so I have to assume that Beetle Bailey is an accurate picture of what life is like in the American military today — and a very troubling picture it is, too. I’m not sure what’s worse: Beetle stewing over getting punched in the face by his superior officer, the chaplain urging Beetle to just submit to the abuse, or the idea that a “turn the other cheek” philosophy makes for good soldiering. Beetle pointing to his bruise in the second panel looks like something out of a Lifetime movie about domestic violence starring Judith Light.

One Big Happy, 10/17/06

First pants-wetting jokes, now pants-crapping jokes. Let it never be said that One Big Happy doesn’t push the boundaries of acceptable child-centered family-newspaper comedy.

Judge Parker, 10/17/06

“Hoo hoo, Sam, look, if I put this cigar under my nose, it looks like a mustache! Hee hee! Isn’t that funny? Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re on the phone, you can’t see me.”

By the way, Sam came home from work this evening to find his wife wearing something low cut with a bottle of wine and a lit candle set out, glowing at him with a thousand-watt “let’s get it on” stare, and yet this is how his evening is ending. Maybe Reggie Black is onto something with his “not the marrying kind” smears against the Randy Parker campaign.

Mary Worth, 10/17/06

Oh my God, Mary Worth is the queen of bitch. “I’m sorry, were you still giving a second thought to what’s-his-name, with the mustache, whom we drove to his death? You pathetic, weak-kneed little fool. And now you’ve interrupted my favorite sex fantasy: you know, the one where Dr. Jeff Cory wants to have sex with me and I turn him down.” This heavy-handed shift is presumably meant to indicate that we’re ready for the next storyline, which will involve Dr. Jeff’s triumphant return from the exotic and cleft-palated east, but I’m still hoping that the ghost of Aldo will haunt the proceedings yet. Best case scenario: Jeff, newly awakened to a life of service and kindness to his fellow man by his trip to Cambodia, hears the description of Aldo’s doom and recoils in horror. “Why … you’re all a pack of murderers! Sociopaths!” He flees Charterstone in disgust, while the Fearsome Foursome stares on uncomprehending. “What’s his problem?” huffs Ian.

Gil Thorp, 10/17/06

I … I don’t know what this means, but … it seems kind of gay to me. “Stormy” needs your life-breathing-nipple-based heroism, Sean, whether you like it or not.

By the way, faithful reader/madman jonnya offers this hilarious instigation for you to buy crap from my store:

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 10/16/06

You might have noticed that i haven’t really been paying attention to Gil Thorp lately. That’s because it stopped being about homoerotic love channeled through chainsaw work and more about Sean Pettibone, everybody’s least favorite goody-goody. You may remember Sean from last season, when he scored the winning touchdown in the final game of the season but then negated his team’s victory by admitting unprompted that he had stepped out of bounds on the play; later, he broke cultural barriers by dating one of Milford’s token African-American students and alternately amused and horrified her parents with his well-meaning cracker antics. This year he’s voluntarily dropped out the student body vice-presidential race in order to placate student strife, and today he has single handedly pulled this unconscious fellow from flaming disaster and appears to be supplying the “breath of life” through his left nipple. Presumably soon he will come up with a plan to rescue Social Security, bring peace to the Middle East, and lead the Mudlarks to victory in the football playdowns. Everyone will still hate him.

The question remains: who or what is responsible for reducing this once-mighty light utility vehicle to a pile of flaming wreckage? Maybe these two punks have graduated from cherry bombs to roadside IEDs. “Mail call, SUV-boy!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/16/06

Aw man, see, this is why you gotta have a roommate like Margo. She tells it like it is! And by “tells it like it is,” I mean “puts the spin on things most likely to negate whatever positive emotions you might be experiencing at any given moment.” And by “gotta have a roommate like,” I mean “must change the locks while she’s out.”

For Better Or For Worse, 10/16/06

As noted, it’s been a while since Phil’s appeared in the strip, but I really don’t remember him being so, um, mustachtic. No wonder his own father doesn’t recognize him. Jim probably thinks he’s the dude from the Pringles can. “Did you bring the sour cream and onion kind? I love those!”

Six Chix, 10/16/06

I’m pretty sure that this is about monkey sex somehow, and I’m pretty sure that I don’t approve.

Post Content

So, today was the 75th anniversary of the beginning of Dick Tracy! Many of the strips distributed by the same syndicate offered their tributes today, which were for the most part significantly less wanktastic than Blondie’s endless anniversary hijinks. The awards for the two least seamless nods go to:

Gil Thorp, 10/4/06

Gil Thorp, which features a namecheck by a teenager who never reads the paper and wouldn’t read a 75-year-old comic strip if he did, and who was at most two years old when the most recent movie incarnation of the franchise came out; and…

Shoe, 10/4/06

Shoe, which features Detective Tracy’s severed head in a case behind Roz’s bar, with death’s grim rictus forcing him to feign amusement at this awful joke.

In non-Dick Tracy news:

Mary Worth, 10/4/06

Actually, it seems to me that in a single evening you corrected things quite nicely.

Seriously, I’m really beginning to believe that Mary and her crew are just going to talk themselves into a sense of guiltless satisfaction. If this is the beginning of the all-singing, all-dancing, all-sociopathic Mary Worth, then I’m going to just embrace it and run with it. I can’t wait to see what murderous crimes they’re going to escalate to next! “Yes, perhaps crucifying Mr. Jenkins in the Charterstone courtyard and leaving him to die over a period of days was a bit harsh, but he did tread on the flowerbed, and there is a sign warning against doing just that, so in a real sense, this is all his doing.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/06

Wow. So, it looks like June and Heather are on the verge of a full-on makeout session, with Rex watching from afar and thinking “ME LIKEY!” Could this strip get any more polymorpheously perverse — or divorced from its ostensible narrative content?

June seems pretty upset that Heather’s petty personal problems have ruined her vacation plans. I’m surprised Heather even bothers to bring up her mother’s feelings, which are clearly not as important as June’s, who had already picked out the kilt Rex was going to wear. All this clan stuff sounds promising to me, though; Heather’s English, if I remember right, so maybe we’ll get into some kind of Anglo-Scot hatred storyline that will baffle the vast majority of Americans for whom all “those people over there” are pretty much indistinguishable.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/4/06

YEAH, THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS! ‘CAUSE YOU STILL LOVE HER, BUT SHE LOATHES THE VERY SIGHT OF YOU! WHAT’RE YA GONNA DO? HAW HAW! Ah, whimsy.

UPDATE: So it turns out that “David Tarafa” is actually faithful reader and occasional commentor Lambnesiac, who is the first Curmudgeonite to be successfully TDIETed. And, uh, whose marriage is I’m sure much, much healthier than the Scadutotization would have you believe. Uh. Heh.