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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/4/11

Some of my comics obsessions — like Margo Magee’s smoldering, angry sexuality, for instance, or Mark Trail’s cheerful, violent autism — are amusing. (I assume you agree because you are after all reading this site.) However, I’m the first to admit that some of my other obsessions are just weird and sad. For instance, I’m kind of fixated on how the economy of Hootin’ Holler, the setting for Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, operates. We see very little by way of economically productive activity; the women engage in some subsistence agriculture, while the men mostly laze about and occasionally steal things. Yet the characters are shown to be at least dimly aware of money as a medium of exchange, and have some access to manufactured goods. How exactly do the inhabitants gain access to this money? Do they export things? If so, what? Chickens? Moonshine? Labor? Do the more industrious Hootin’ Hollerians head down to the flatlands to work in mines or factories for a pittance, saving money by living together in dilapidated shacks and sending cash back home to keep women and layabouts alive?

Today’s strip is particularly interesting from this perspective, as we are shown an intriguing phenomenon that can happen at the fringes of a developed economy. Loweezy is planning on engaging in barter to gain access to medical services, as is traditional in her community; however, instead of trading livestock she raised herself, she uses processed foodstuff that comes from outside the zone of local production, foodstuff that can only be produced by cultures with a much higher level of economic activity than Hootin’ Holler itself can sustain. This demonstrates that a strictly linear model of economic development rarely applies in reality, as not even the poorest and least developed communities exist in total isolation from the outside world.

That having been said, I think we can all agree that this comic would have been better if Loweezy had been offering the doctor butchered pig parts, possibly still dripping gore, especially if the medico’s grin and “gimmie gimmie” gesture remained in place.

Shoe, 1/4/11

Another thing I spend too much time thinking about is the configuration of characters required to set up the jokes in Shoe. I’m assuming that the strip began with the joke, and then two characters were sought out who might plausibly offer each half of it — notorious vice addict Shoe and naive child Skyler, in this case, never mind that generally the two of them have no real reason to interact within the strip. Is Skyler doing a report for school on comparative mammalian locomotion? Does Treetops lack a public library, forcing him to head down to the local newspaper, the one source of knowledge in the town? Don’t these birds have access to the Internet? If not, the Treetops Tattler’s decision to acquire the TreetopsTattler.com domain was extremely ill-conceived.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/4/11

Yes, there’s very little more embarrassing than your mother seeing you naked, and then dragging out the photo albums to show your best friend all the naked pictures of you she still has on hand.

Apartment 3-G, 1/4/11

I’m less surprised that Margo is watching the ball drop alone than I am surprised that she’s watching it on January 4. I guess she recorded it on the TiVo that she’s got hooked up to her 13-inch black-and-white TV.

Curtis, 1/4/11

Not satisfied with ruining Kwanzaa with a depressing tale about unemployment, Curtis has upped its game: our saintly hero asked a magic mouse for world peace, and the mouse responded by wiping out all human life. Ironic genocide is, of course, the best kind of genocide.

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Ziggy, 12/20/10

Today Ziggy has gone to see Santa for what’s at least the third year in a row, and we really have to start asking ourselves why he’s doing it. The easy answer is that he’s there for unspeakable reasons involving children, but if there were easy answers to anything involving Ziggy, the strip would have been purged from newspapers, and our collective pop-cultural consciousness, years ago. Here’s my theory: do you notice that the children in all these panels are particularly loathsome and cruel? I think Ziggy has sought out the worst children he can find — perhaps he’s managed to find out when Santa is going to visit the Home For Very Young Delinquents And Sass-Talkers — just to see them insult the jolly old elf. This is Ziggy’s way of pulling himself out of his bottomless pit of low self-esteem. “At least I’m better than these brats,” he thinks to himself. “At least I’m not calling poor Santa fat. I mean, I’m thinking it, but I’m not saying it aloud. That’s the difference between me and them. That counts for something, right?”

Herb and Jamaal, 12/20/10

Note that Herb is drinking out of his “Herb” coffee mug, while Jamaal is drinking out of a mug featuring the elaborate monogram logo of the soul food restaurant he and Herb co-own, which combines an H and a J. In other words, Jamaal is honoring their friendship and business partnership, while Herb thinks only of himself. This has much more troubling long-term implications for the duo than the personnel changes at the local high school.

Pluggers, 12/20/10

It sure is hard for pluggers to deny the same-sex attractions that shame them so, but somehow the compulsive eating helps them push it all deep down inside, where it can’t get out.

Update: Uh, as faithful reader Ned Ryerson pointed out, I made basically the inverse of this joke the first time this panel ran this year. In my defense, it’s actually a sign of good mental health that I don’t keep an infinite mental file of all the Pluggers panels I mock. I’m still working on the infinite mental file of Mary Worth strips with a team of trained psychiatrists.

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Luann, 12/2/10

When it comes to Brad/Toni slash fiction — oh, sorry, I mean, when it comes to the actual Brad/Toni comic strips that appear in newspapers across America — I’ve gone through some kind of abbreviated Kübler-Ross cycle of grief. First game the visceral disgust, of course. Then came the anger. So much anger! But now I’ve settled into just a sort of bafflement. Is there an audience out there who finds these characters compelling, and, more specifically, who finds their glacial trajectory towards physical intimacy arousing, or at least interesting? Is today’s strip blatantly pandering to America’s small but intense calf-massage-fetish community, possibly as a result of a bribe or a lost bet? Has anyone read Luann this week with a feeling more positive than mild distaste? I honestly want to know the answers to these questions, for real!

Mark Trail, 12/2/10

However, I feel confident that the comics-reading public is regarding this week’s Mark Trail with excitement and anticipation. Just as Kelly Welly is leaning back in that chair, gripping the armrests and waiting eagerly to see Mark naked, so too are we sitting back in our respective sitting-oriented-pieces of furniture, waiting eagerly to see Kelly see Mark naked.

Apartment 3-G, 12/2/10

Comics readers are also intrigued to see how this beret-wearing cab driver’s honest masculine advice will help Aunt Iris bed the bicyclist that she, in some way that I never properly understood, caused to be hit by a car. Under the cabbie’s tutelage, she’ll show up at the cyclist’s apartment with something that’s still alive, like a puppy or a stripper.

Gil Thorp, 12/2/10

Comics readers are somewhat uncomfortable with the notion of people being loaded onto buses and interned in camps far from their homes, but for the Milford football team, they’ll allow it.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/2/10

Ha ha, Jamaal, that chat room is full of other people trying to live out their fantasies! You’re just there to, uh, find out how to get away from there. Due to this strip’s trademark nonspecificity, we have no way of knowing exactly what perverse text-based lusts are being expressed in this online sin den. It’s probably a hot Brad/Toni calf-massage slash fiction site.