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Beetle Bailey, 6/11/06

Here’s a strip that manages to completely undermine its own punchline, as near as I can tell. Because we were here to see what went on when Sarge was gone, and trust us, it wasn’t really that interesting.

Still, I am totally charmed by the rather bizarre sentence “We’re playing football with no boundaries!” I’m trying to come up with similar assertions. “We’re playing hockey without caring about what other people think!” “We’re playing baseball with no sense of proportion!” “We’re playing bridge full of contempt for civilization and its works!”

Apartment 3-G, 6/11/06

Here’s a good example of a strip where the throwaway panels in the top row actually have a great deal of impact on the meaning. When I read this strip in my paper today, without those top panels, I assumed that Lu Ann really didn’t care whether Margo came or not, but that sad face in panel two indicates that she knows all to well that Margo loves a party all too much. We readers, of course, can thank our lucky stars that this dark-haired dynamo is going to be crashing this artsy fartsy bash, because it’s gonna be wacky as hell.

I was going to complain that we just spent a week watching Tommie and Lu Ann getting ready for this shindig, and now we have to wait for Margo to primp herself as well. Then I realized that there’s a chance that we might see some Margo-in-sexy-underwear action, so I’m withholding my judgement for now. I don’t know what the hell is going on with her hand in panel four, though. That’s just weird.

Judge Parker, 6/11/06

So we’ve learned that “Raju Mishra” is Bengali for “Brick House”:

I’ve been impressed with the new Judge Parker artist’s work so far, but today he met his ultimate test: Abbey’s hair. Of course, he’s constrained by the fact that his characters have to be recognizable as the people we’ve come to know and love over the years. He’s almost managed to make Abbey look like she’s chosen a hairstyle that a non-insane person would choose to go out in public in … almost. It think that this may be as close as anyone could expect.

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Herb and Jamaal, 6/8/06

Jamaal looks like he’s selecting a volume from one of those fake bookcases full of near-identical tomes that shysters stand in front of in late-night TV commercials for law firms specializing in personal injury cases. Maybe the artist originally intended for Jamaal to be watching TV — an environment where his loungewear would be more apropos — but, like Jamaal himself, decided to do a little last-minute semantic shifting. Not that his internal musing on PC names for his loungewear makes any kind of sense anyway. I guess what I’m trying to say is: kids, don’t start with a punchline and then work your way backwards from there. It isn’t going to work out well for you.

Gil Thorp, 6/8/06

Who says the artists over at Gil Thorp aren’t very good? I have never seen a more harrowing look of sheer horror on any comic character’s face than the one that the Rap Dog is sporting in panel two. If anyone wonders how tough a nut Jolene Raptor’s going to be to crack, all they need to do is look into Brent’s glassy, terrified eyes right there.

Apartment 3-G, 6/8/06

“Things like … my roommates’ sexual orientation!” *sob*

You know, Lu Ann’s statement in the first panel would ring truer if we had even a shred of a sense of what Tommie’s personality was like. As it is, I think I can speak for the entire Apartment 3-G-reading public in saying that I have no idea what kind of party would be Tommie’s kind of party. “Tommie, I know you don’t like leaving the house or talking to people. Thanks for making the sacrifice!”

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Dennis the Menace, 6/7/06

Yeah, your grandpa pretty much sounds like a loser, kid. I’m all for good sportsmanship and everything, but if you go around telling your friends stuff like this, I think you are pretty much permanently banned from referring to yourself as a “menace”.

9 Chickweed Lane and Pluggers, 6/7/06

If you had asked me this morning which two features would be using the same joke today, this is not a pairing I would have come up with.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/7/06

Rex looks increasingly agitated as this strip progresses. “God damn them and their medical mumbo-jumbo! Impersonating a doctor is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought. OK, what am I going to do if one of them asks me a question? There’s got to be a way to change the subject of this conversation to ice cream.”

Gil Thorp, 6/7/06

What’s wrong with him? How much time do you have, exactly, Coach?