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Blondie, 12/23/09

As is sadly typical, the actual punchline in today’s Blondie is so gentle as to be essentially undetectable, but I confess that I like the visual gag. Generally, when the Bumsteads’ shop, they end up with packages ludicrously stacked in their arms in structurally improbable configurations. Today’s strip takes this to its logical conclusion, with a series of boxes just sort of floating in a cloud around Blondie, without any visible means of support.

Mark Trail, 12/23/09

OH YEAH MARK TRAIL JUST PUNCHED A COP RIGHT IN THE FUCKIN’ FACE! This is the greatest Christmas gift you or I or anyone else will receive this year. Note that the mighty blow has miraculously dislodged the car keys that Mark and the lawmen were discussing in the previous panel; Mark’s fists are unerring plot-device-seeking projectiles.

Hi and Lois, 12/23/09

Add another entry to the “call social services on the Flagstons” file: the apparently unsupervised Trixie is just eating garbage she finds under the furniture now.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/23/09

I’ve been reading this strip for going on five years now, and more or less against my will I’ve actually accumulated some knowledge about the title characters. For instance, here’s what I know about Jamaal: He’s a firefighter, he’s in love with his fellow firefighter Yolanda, his name is “Jamaal J. Jamaal,” and — a relevant detail about today’s installment — he’s a former professional basketball player. Since today he’s challenging his gnomish best friend to a game of one on one, I’m guessing I’m going to have to add “he’s a cruel bastard who needs to boost his fragile ego by demolishing poor Herb on the court” to that list.

Apartment 3-G, 12/23/09

“To be more specific: I hope you like them enough that you’ll let me trade these poinsettias I stole from the Macy’s window display for more sleeping pills!”

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Luann, 10/27/09

I spent more time than I’d care to admit trying, really trying, to make sense of the final panel in this strip in terms of fiber’s well-known effects on the human digestive system. Do the bran muffins separate people because said people need to scurry away from each other to take a dump? Or is there farting involved, which also can reduce people’s tolerance for proximity? Or … but then I realized that I was expending valuable brain energy on figuring out a damn Luann joke that wasn’t ultimately going to be very rewarding, and dwelling on tasteless ass jokes to boot, so I stopped.

I blame Marvin for the poop joke fixation.

Anyway, I’d like to point out that anybody who actually implements Papa DeGroot’s community-building idea will find his house pelted with eggs, toilet paper, and puzzle pieces in short order.

Herb and Jamaal, 10/27/09

Fortunately, today’s Herb and Jamaal has required no such overthinking process. Ha ha, Herb’s mother-in-law has dumped an entire pot of scalding chili on his genitals! Oh, how it must burn! Ha ha! Note that, thanks to Herb’s total commitment to awkwardly setting up lame jokes over multiple panels, he’s heroically cagey enough to leave the payoff for the end, even as his flesh sizzles.

Crankshaft, 10/27/09

The worst thing … wait, no, that’s not something I think that can really be quantified. Let me start again: One of the terrible things about living with Crankshaft is his unapologetic racism. Pam can’t have any of her friends of Celtic extraction over to visit, because she knows her father will lurk about, muttering audibly about “filthy potato-eaters.”

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Herb and Jamaal, 10/3/09

So Herb and Jamaal spent the entire last week engaged in a wholly unaccustomed but not actively offensive behavior: a multi-day storyline. Herb and Jamaal went hiking and Herb was supposed to be guiding them but he got lost but didn’t tell Jamaal for a while, ha ha, and then on Friday he indicated that he did pack one bit of wayfinding gear: his comically oversized cell phone! WOKKA WOKKA WOKKA!

But here’s the thing about doing a multi-day storyline, Herb and Jamaal: If you’re going to do one that lasts for five days, you really ought to just add one more installment, because otherwise the Saturday strip feels out of place. And if you’re going to do Saturday as a standalone, you really shouldn’t include just enough elements from the Monday through Friday story (Herb is lost, Herb is talking on a brick-sized cell phone from 1991) to make it seem like it’s sort of part of the work week’s story, because otherwise your readership will think that, say, Herb lured Jamaal deep into the woods to kill and eat him, before driving back home and engaging in hilarious banter with his mother-in-law on his enormous mobile phone.

Judge Parker, 10/3/09

It’s true that my love affair with Judge Parker has cooled a bit of late, as I’ve found myself unable to work up much enthusiasm to analyze either the abuse-of-power-tastic celebrity vs. paparazzi plot just completed, and the return to the thinly veiled Bernie Madoff revenge fantasy isn’t looking that much more exciting. But I will say this for today’s strip: it features Sam Driver wearing a tie that, somehow, is actually narrower than its own stripes.