Archive: Hagar the Horrible

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Dick Tracy, 11/13/07

This week’s award for worst punctuated sentence containing unnecessary exposition: “But why Tracy? Why, me, the mayor?”

Hagar the Horrible, 11/13/07

Straightforward responses to honest questions: Not funny. Straightforward responses to honest questions on a desert island: Funny!

No, wait, I meant not funny. My mistake.

Mark Trail, 11/13/07

“I’ll fix him with my bare hands … which I’ll use to remove my pants!

Spider-Man, 11/13/07

All future Spider-Man strips will consist entirely of the title character aimlessly web-slinging around New York as he explains what has already happened and what’s about to happen in the current plot. This change will represent a marked improvement.

Family Circus, 11/13/07

Ha ha! Jeffy thinks he’s going to college!

Wizard of Id, 11/13/07

Ha ha! This peasant is so terrified at the prospect of being strangled to death that he fainted!

Mary Worth, 11/13/07

HOLY CRAP THAT DOG’S FACE IS THE SCARIEST THING I’VE SEEN ALL DAY

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Funky Winkerbean and For Better Or For Worse, 10/3/07

OK, so how would you rather go out?

  • In your favorite chair, looking out at the beautiful day, with your beloved wife nearby?
  • Being lead through some vast, empty void by some dude with a deeply cheesy tails/Phantom of the Opera get-up?

This may not quite a fair comparison — after all, with Grandpa Jim, we’re lingering on this side of the veil. Perhaps after reaping Lisa, Masky McDeath is going to stop by Millborough to pick up Jim’s soul as well. Lisa’s attempts to make conversation as they travel to the next plane of existence will be met only with inappropriate curse words and bellows of “BOXCAR!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/3/07

Wow, it’s Tommie time again! I can’t believe we’re spending time with America’s dullest redhead when we could be watching Margo screw and/or eviscerate Eric or Lu Ann … do … whatever it is … holy cats, I’m more up on Tommie’s storyline than Lu Ann’s! That’s real bad news for Ms. Powers right there.

Anyhoo, hep cat Gary seems to have taken the object of his affection to the hottest, swingingest, tie-and-jacket-requiredest, whitest big band club in all of Manhattan! Or, more succinctly, he’s seems to have taken her to 1955.

Blondie, 10/3/07

I have to admit that I really enjoyed this Blondie. Leaving aside the question of where exactly Dagwood and Herb are walking in this sprawling, car-oriented exurban landscape (in their work clothes, no less), you have to at least assume that they’re going to the same place. So Herb must have suddenly and angrily taken an alternate route between panels two and three, possibly dashing across the neighbors’ lawns, his shoes and pants cuffs quickly muddying. It’s all worth it to teach that damn Bumstead a lesson via pneumonia. Even his freaky hair antennae are drooping.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/3/07

“Or, since he’s a Viking chief, he sometimes kills them, enslaves their wives and children, seizes all of their valuable, and then burns their villages to the ground! Say, brother, you probably have some nice stuff in that monastery of yours, don’t you?”

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Pluggers, 6/11/07

Plugger moms are going to kill themselves within the hour … but only after they have the satisfaction of killing their kids first.

OK, that’s horrible, but you tell me what else that facial expression could possibly lead to. This officially is the most horrifyingly depressing Pluggers ever, outpacing even the “Rhino-man plugger hocks his decades-old TV to keep the bill collectors at bay for another week” installment.

Speaking of horrible, I don’t want to take this in a direction that will lead to anyone, anywhere producing Pluggers porn (and if you do produce it I will not link to it you cannot make me) but I’m a bit confused by this plugger mom’s bustline, since I’m reasonably sure she’s supposed to be a kangaroo. Shouldn’t she have a single nipple in her pouch? And shouldn’t her kid actually be a tiny, salamander-like embryo, nestled safely in said pouch leaving both of her arms free? It sure would be a lot easier on her if that’s how it worked, I’ll tell you that.

Gil Thorp, 6/11/07

I’m sorry, I simply cannot abide the hideous claw-hands in Gil Thorp (see also here (where my prediction was totally borne out, by the way, not that it was very difficult) and here). Other than the fact that Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp looks like she’s about the scratch off her Joker-like face in panel three, though, this is pretty nifty. I particularly like the fact that Ponytailed Girl Whose Name I Forget (I Think She Works For The School Newspaper Maybe?) appears to be holding back her friends in panel one, as if they’re so enraged by their coach’s cancer-free state that they’re planning to hold her down and beat some cancer into her.

Thanks to a faithful reader (Uncle Lumpy?) for the new nickname “Yul Brynna” for the newly shaven-headed former Brynna Antenna. Unfortunately, I’m probably never going to get a chance to use it, as she appears to have fled the softball diamond, and, presumably, the greater Milford area, due to her shame.

Mark Trail, 6/11/07

The fact that Sam Hill has been blinded by a high-speed blast of shattered glass and shredded duck viscera flying right into her eyes is awfully convenient — not for her, obviously, but for Mark. This way, he’ll be able to take his new lover back to Lost Forest; because she can’t see, she won’t even notice that Mark already has a wife and adopted son. Cherry won’t notice the new order of things either, of course, because she’ll be ’luded to the gills, as always. Rusty’s electronic ankle bracelet will ensure that he never leaves the backyard pen.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/11/07

Somebody help me out here. The “joke” in this strip is supposed to be that Hagar’s supposedly fierce company of Viking warriors have fled in terror at the mere mention of Attila’s name, right? So, what’s the deal with the tall grass? Have they been killed and laid low in the grass by Attila’s short and stealthy warriors? Does the grass merely serve to evoke the limitless steppe, home to nomadic peoples like the Huns? Is it meant to make an otherwise dull panel interesting, or, conversely, to save the trouble of drawing Hagar’s disturbingly potato-like feet? What? What?

Slylock Fox, 6/11/07

You might think that being a fox detective is glamorous, that it’s all high-profile media events and fancy tea parties and exclusive nightclubs. But be warned: you will occasionally be called down to the trailer park to figure out just who is throwing rocks at whom. It’s probably a good thing that Slylock’s there to keep the peace, as Rachel Rabbit looks pissed, and I have a feeling that her screams of “You’re lucky my bunnydaddy ain’t here!”, echoing throughout the park as she kicks the thin metal side of Chez Rat, would soon be immortalized in a heavy-rotation episode of COPS.

This strip deserves kudos for not going with the classist but all-too-obvious “Reeky Rat obviously lives in filth, and thus would not under any circumstances be engaged in ‘housecleaning'” solution.