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The Lockhorns, 8/15/06

Today’s Lockhorns is evidence of the feature’s unrelenting commitment to total authenticity. It’s not that one of them is right and the other cartoonishly wrong, you see; it’s that they are fundamentally incompatible, and yet married to one another. I’m not sure that this comic contains a joke per se; rather, Leroy and Loretta in a larger sense illustrate the basic reality that our lives and our interactions with others are fundamentally absurd. They seem preternaturally inured to the hollowness of it all, but it’s often a wonder to me how their marriage counselor keeps from slitting his wrists.

Herb and Jamaal, 8/15/06

Today’s Herb and Jamaal is like a magpie fascinated by a shiny object and unable to divert its attention from it. In this case, clearly the polysemous nature of the word “cell” — you see, it could refer to a cellular phone, or a prison cell! — provided an irony too delicious to pass up, no matter the fundamental problems of narrative that this gag presents. For instance, last I checked, you can’t actually call someone in his cell, because prisoners aren’t allowed to have personal phones. Of course, sometimes corrupt guards smuggle phones in to the inmates, but these are generally — you guessed it — cell phones. There’s a potential joke here about calling someone both in and on his cell, but clearly Herb and Jamaal doesn’t have the stomach for an exploration of the deficiencies of the American incarceration industry.

Anyway, despite the fact that the strip is totally unable to string 50 words in a row without creating a major plot hole, the whole thing is made worthwhile by Herb’s hilarious reaction shot in the final panel, right? Oh, wait a minute, no it isn’t.

Kudzu, 8/15/06

Don’t feel too bad, though, Herb and Jamaal: for all your failings today, at least you didn’t do a can’t-program-the-VCR joke.

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Dennis the Menace, 7/27/06

I’m not sure if that’s Mr. the Menace in the background with the surfboard, but Dennis clearly is learning at the beach that his dad’s no paragon of hunkery. In this twisted act of marital warfare, he shows that he’s taking his menacing out of the world of mere mischief and into the dark realm of psychological destruction.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/27/06

Yeah, because it was so much more naughty back when it was up … on her … thigh? My guess is that in the original joke, the tattoo was somewhere a bit below something a lot naughtier (on her stomach?) and then the powers at be forced the poor strip back into the Herb and Jamaal Prison of Blandness and Inoffensiveness. (It’s not the first time it’s happened, either.)

Pluggers, 7/27/06

OK, even when I hate Pluggers, I generally get Pluggers, but this is just baffling. Do non-Pluggers hold their dogs in such contempt that they just say things that excite them, not caring about the emotional roller-coaster ride it puts them on? Do non-Pluggers just have extremely stupid dogs? Or maybe it’s that Pluggers are themselves quasi-beasts, and so their language is close enough to that of the true dogs that interspecies communication is almost possible? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s stupid and doesn’t make any sense and DAMN YOU PLUGGERS FOR MAKING ME THINK ABOUT THIS DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL.

Anyway, if you’d like a little Pluggers spoofery from the fellow who brought you that TDIET takeoff the other day, click here.

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Herb and Jamaal, 6/24/06

I’ve often wondered to just which flavor of Christian congregation the good Rev. Croom ministers. The collar narrows it down a bit, but he could still be Catholic or Episcopalian, and I while he’s definitely not a Baptist or Pentecostal, I think collars like that adorn the clergy of a number of Protestant denominations. After this strip, though, I think it’s pretty obvious that he’s the head of some sort of sick suicide cult. I’m just sorry we missed his hour-long lecture about how great it is to be dead.

Apartment 3-G, 6/24/06

You know, I respect Margo a lot, honestly, so I hope — hope! — that her interests in “catching” Captain Combover here are purely mercenary. I mean, just look at that hair in panel three! The thought of Margo running her sexy quotin’ fingers through that greasy, overextended hairflap just burns me up inside.