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Herb and Jamaal and Crankshaft, 6/5/09

I admit to regularly being irritated at or contemptuous towards Herb and Jamaal, but until today I don’t think I’ve ever been just outright puzzled. The stumbling point to me is that the strip appears to actually have two jokes in it — and this is not a feature that can spare the punchlines, if you get my drift. The first bit of ostensibly humorous material is that our Heart and Soul patron needs a “drink,” and so he orders … root beer, haw haw, it’s because, I don’t know, it’s unexpected? He’s young and/or a teetotaler? Anyway, once that bombshell’s been delivered, we still have two panels left to go, so we’ll wrap up with a “two heads are better than one” joke, which must only be conveyed via thought balloon, because it would be unrealistic for such a mind-blowingly hilarious bit to be actually spoken aloud. (Ordering a beverage with lots of foam on top is, of course, totally realistic.) All I can figure is that the root beer was originally supposed to be actual beer, but the fuddy-duddies at the syndicate balked at the notion of an adult attempting to relieve stress by consuming a wholly legal mild intoxicant. Won’t somebody think of the children?

Crankshaft, meanwhile, delivers the old lady laughs, as Grandma Rose attempts to use another wholly legal mild intoxicant to while away the time until the blessed release of death (and perhaps even speed up the process). Everyone else in the cast will love this, because it allows them to express judgmental horror, which is pretty much their entire reason for existence. I look forward to coming months when, already bored with smoking, Rose makes Ed drive her downtown to score some smack.

Marvin, 6/5/09

Let me tell you something: if this becomes some sort of Belly Laffs– or CrySpace-style multi-day epic, there will be consequences. At least we’ll be able to look forward to whatever cutesy name they come up with for it. My suggestion: “Poopin’ in a bowl!”

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Gil Thorp, 5/27/09

One of the (many, I swear!) things I like about Gil Thorp is its tendency to keep once-starring players around as background characters for as long as their fictional high school careers last. So, during basketball and baseball season of 2008, Andrew “The A-Train” Gregory (whose name was meant to taunt one of the strip’s younger readers) was an obnoxious, egomaniacal superjerk who dominated the plotlines with his self-aggrandizing antics. Now, though, he looks positively cuddly when compared to prank-happy megadouche Shep Trumbo. Presumably all of the strip’s readers will forgive Andrew’s past irritations if he makes good on his promise to choke the life out of Shep with that disturbingly realistic toy snake.

Marvin, 5/27/09

What is Marvin’s greatest affront to human dignity? This is a complex question that can probably only be fully answered by a duly constituted war crimes tribunal, but here’s my take. One of the things that make babies so enchanting is their innocence, their complete unfamiliarity with the world; everything is fascinating and delightful to them, even something as mundane as a household toaster, because it’s so new. But Marvin completely lacks this quality; instead, he’s a paradoxically cynical baby, viewing the world with heavy-lidded ironic distance. He’s a monstrous adult-infant hybrid: the worst aspects of grown-ups (emotional numbness, sarcasm) and babies (squalling, pants-shitting). He should be left on a hillside to be eaten by coyotes.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/27/09

This cartoon does a pretty good job of illustrating how difficult it must be to manufacture clothing in Herb and Jamaal-world, where individuals that are notionally of the same species can exhibit radically different physical characteristics. For instance, a baseball cap that fits snugly on the tip of Jamaal’s oblong skull can only balance precariously atop Herb’s spherical cranium.

Mary Worth, 5/27/09

Say, do you know what sort of people would be easy to snare in some sort of con? People who place their absolute trust in someone based on one ten-minute meeting and a relationship with his family that ended decades ago, that’s who!

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Blondie and Archie, 5/19/09

Let us take a moment to appreciate some particularly hard-working comics characters: those that refuse to deny us the pleasures of a hilarious reaction shot even when they don’t appear in our field of view! For instance, in today’s Archie, the final panel chooses to linger in a loving close-up on Jughead’s face; the title character is forced to express his disgust with his friend’s aggressive ignorance by emitting Cathy-style sweatballs into the panel from the left. Meanwhile, Dagwood’s rage at being duped on pepperoni-related matters is so palpable that it radiates right through his front door; presumably he or the mailman closed said front door to avoid devastating the entire neighborhood with his terrible wrath.

Cathy, 5/19/09

Speaking of Cathy-style sweatballs, with “Your dog just puked in there” we add another shameful entry to the List Of Cathy Installments At Which Josh Has Laughed Non-Ironically.

Gil Thorp, 5/19/09

Oh, God, this Gil Thorp storyline won’t just be about Gil discovering YouTube; it will be about Gil discovering the Internet, in general, with the help of Coach Kaz, who’s long been using MySpace to lure 16-year-old girls into his custom-airbrushed Kaz-van. Anyway, this plot might be worth it if we get more close-up horrified reaction shots from Gil like the one in the final panel (I’m assuming that he’s stumbled upon the “For the ladies” album on Andrew Gregory’s Facebook account), but I will be very disappointed if Marty Moon’s Twitter account isn’t involved somehow (though I’ll be unsettled if it involves mine).

Mark Trail, 5/19/09

If you had to pick a member of the Trail household to feel sorry for, you’d probably pick Rusty (neglected, funny-looking, kind of dim), Cherry (neglected, sexually frustrated, only allowed to wear pink shirts), or maybe Andy (not neglected, especially when someone is needed to serve as bait). But what about Cherry’s father Doc? Being trapped in a remote forest compound with only Mark, Rusty, and someone dumb enough to marry Mark and adopt Rusty for company, you can see why he’d start to disengage from his environment and retreat into his private world. In today’s first panel, it’s obvious that he knows it would be socially inappropriate to just continue his dinner in silence, but he really hasn’t been following any of the last hour’s worth of conversation; since everyone seems generally pleased, he plays it safe. “Yes, it’s great that things happened … you know, the way they happened! Probably at least two of you here were responsible for that outcome!”

Soon, however, we learn why Doc is emerging from his shell: he needs Mark’s help with something! What could it be? Veterinarian Doc seems to be what passes for a health-care professional in rustic Lost Forest, but I dearly hope it isn’t medically related. “Mark, it’s about time for my colonoscopy! Doing it myself like I did last year was trickier than I thought, so I’d like you to hold the mirror this time around.”

Mary Worth, 5/19/09

A lot of commentors thought it was strange that Adrian is only thought-ballooning her intention to answer the doorbell, but is it really any stranger than her father talking loudly about her delicate emotional state right in front of her? A lot of commentors also thought that Adrian’s dress was hideous, but is it any worse than Dr. Jeff’s snappy one-orange-shoulder shirt? What I’m trying to say is that Mary Worth is a maelstrom of insanity, and there’s no point in trying to focus on individual elements and make them work in some sort of real-world context.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/19/09

Silly Herb! You can’t vacuum a mass grave!