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Pearls Before Swine, 8/12/09

Hello, anonymous rude denizens of the Internet! You have driven Stephan Pastis into his Internet Happy Box, so I hope you’re satisfied with yourselves. Actually, when people started emailing me about this strip this morning, I had a weird moment of déjà vu, as I thought this had run months ago. In fact, Stephan e-mailed it to me when he drew it, but that was back in April thanks to the high-tech distribution system that underlies the newspaper comics industry. Anyway, at the time I promised to rip him a new one when this came out, except he hasn’t been doing any of the terrible pun strips lately. SO UNTIL NEXT TIME PASTIS. You stay in that box just to be safe, though.

Baldo, 8/12/09

I went to college at Cornell, which is in the absolutely lovely (some might even say “gorges” HA IT’S A PUN GET IT) city of Ithaca, New York, which, despite being lovely, does not have much going for it in the way of malls. When you grow up going to Cheektowaga’s fabulous Walden Galleria, it’s a bit of a letdown doing all your enclosed chain-store shopping and food-court dining at the Pyramid Mall. This establishment appears to have since changed its name to “The Shops At Ithaca Mall,” which I find extremely amusing — oh, there are shops at the mall, you say? Anyway, I always used to mock the Pyramid Mall’s smallness by referring to it as the “Petite Mall”; I thought this was hilarious and everyone else was either more or less indifferent about it or thought it was actively offensive to people who have seizures. This is a roundabout way of saying that, why yes, I do feel validated by having essentially the same joke used in a Baldo strip 15 years later, thanks for asking!

I originally felt like there might be only about fifty-fifty chance that my terrible seizure joke was in fact the intended reading of this strip, but then I realized that there was no other obvious humor content here, so I figure that has to be what’s happening.

Hi and Lois, 8/12/09

It has not escaped my notice that quite a few of the recent Trixie-centered Hi and Lois strips have featured the pre-verbal infant girl wandering around outside apparently unattended. Maybe her parents are hoping that she’ll be adopted by a local wolfpack or some other band of animals and they’ll be relieved of responsibility for her; unfortunately, they hadn’t counted on the effectiveness with which the builders of their suburban subdivision cleared it of most wildlife. Trixie’s only option is to take up with a colony of frogs, which will go fine until she hits puberty and heads to the culvert under the arterial road with amplexus on her mind, only to be bitterly disappointed.

Hagar the Horrible, 8/12/09

Ha ha! He finds his wife’s mother so irritating that he’s going to hand her over to savages who will use her as a slave or a sacrifice to their pagan gods! MOTHERS IN LAW, am I right, people?

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Blondie, 8/2/09

Like many victims of abuse, this dedicated civil servant seems to take the horrible injuries dished out by Dagwood to be merely his lot in life. Blondie slips easily into her role as enabler, assuring poor Mr. Beasley that her monstrous husband “doesn’t mean it” and “it’s not his fault, he’s just late,” and “he won’t do it again” — platitudes that neither of them believe.

Hi and Lois, 8/2/09

Never have the Flagstons done so well at their appointed task of representing the typical middle American family: their insatiable appetite for entertainment — entertainment that can only be achieved through conspicuous consumption — leads them to go on vacations that they simply cannot afford, leading inevitably to financial ruin.

Hagar the Horrible, 8/2/09

“Oh … that Paris! My band of Viking warriors burned it to the ground, slaughtering the inhabitants who resisted us and enslaving the survivors! Why do you ask?”

Marvin, 8/2/09

Cementing his place as the most hated character on the comics page, Marvin attempts to have the municipal animal control service impound and euthanize the family pets. Fortunately, he’s only able to thought-balloon into the phone, leaving him to stew in his own impotent rage (and, since this is Marvin, presumably in his own excrement).

Mary Worth, 8/2/09

And that was the day that Charley removed the last non-porn DVD from his collection, as it apparently scares the ladies off. Delilah, meanwhile, hearing the lyrics “never let her go,” returns to her true love: Mary Worth.

The Phantom, 8/2/09

The Sunday Phantom plotline for the last God knows how long has focused on the royal love triangle summed up with admirable economy in the throwaway panels above; the “other woman” is in fact Captain Lara, Rex’s personal bodyguard, and Rex King is in fact a monarch (thus the name — get it? Is it obvious enough?). Anyway, I haven’t been covering this plot, because it’s been pretty dull, so you can imagine my surprise to see it resolved by Lara simply gunning down her rival in a lover’s rage.

Judge Parker, 8/2/09

Oh, and Judge Parker is still about horse-fucking, FYI.

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Hagar the Horrible, 5/7/09

Ha ha, that Hagar! Always with the desperate need to pump his body full of as much alcohol as humanly possible! It’s probably legitimate to blame Hagar’s woes on “the economy,” as it’s much easier for a lightly armed and highly mobile group of Vikings to plunder a trading ship than it is for them to besiege a fortified castle; a decline in trade means slimmer pickings for pirates and raiders. Of course, raids from Scandinavian war-bands like Hagar’s, along with similar attacks from Arab raiders from North Africa and Magyar horsemen from Hungary, are exactly what helped nip the modest Carolingian economic revival in 9th century Western Europe in the bud, so it’s hard to feel sorry for him as he sees his economically parasitic life’s work becoming more difficult.

Oh, wait, this is supposed to be about the modern-day economy? Never mind.

Call me obsessed with minute changes in comic strip fonts if you must, but I swear that “this economy” in that final panel is slightly less bold than the rest of the dialogue in that word balloon. This of course brings my mind to conspiracy theories about the original wording, which told us what really Hagar needs to learn to “get used to” without the sweet, mind-killing taste of booze. I hope it was “that creeping feeling of existential dread, that realization that nothing you do in this life matters in any meaningful way.”

Also, does this joke perhaps seem familiar to you? Well, of course it does.

Mary Worth, 5/7/09

Hey, dads out there! When your daughter has just been completely devastated — when she’s just found out that the man who made her feel emotionally complete, the one who she was ready to spend her life with, was a liar and a fraud — do you know what will make her feel better? Cupcakes! Cupcakes with pretty pink frosting! Cupcakes and your assurance that you’ll be running her love life from here on in, so she doesn’t have to worry about exercising that pesky autonomy anymore.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/7/09

“Uh, yeah, that’s right, I’m my mother’s daughter! I’m totally not some 45-year-old male dwarf she’s hired to play the part, for some reason. Now if you excuse me, I have to take care of this five o’ clock shadow.”