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Edge City, 8/6/13

Oh hey it’s Edna and Morris Not-Ardin, off to visit America’s battlefields in their new RV. I hope they have fun and all, but what is the deal with this guy’s face? Has he got two mouths? An extra ear, with teeth? Is he some kind of weird Mr. Magoo/Popeye hybrid? Is that an enormous chaw of Mail Pouch parked in what just might be his cheek? For me, his image keeps flipping back and forth like one of those ambiguous figures from Psych 101:

Edna lets it all pass. She’s got her own problems, coping with the oral aftermath of her horrific trombone accident.

Hi and Lois, 8/6/13

And then one day, Hi Flagston just gave up. “Fetch me the gin, Lois.”

Apartment 3-G, 8/6/13

Margo snuffs out an alarming flicker of empathy as she spins around the room.

Judge Parker, 8/6/13

I only read Judge Parker for the articles, but here’s some eye candy — and a challenge — for the oglers in the audience. The challenge is this: do oglers of pretty comic-strip women ogle other representations of pretty women, such as mannequins? If so, would they ogle drawings of mannequins, such as those presented in panel one? Are features like heads and knees essential to this exercise? And how far does it go, the ogling: would it extend to a photo in a cartoon of a sketch of the shadow of a statue of a woman? What role does the quality of representation play, relative to the attractiveness of the original subject? I have to say, Judge Parker wouldn’t have been my first source for a deconstruction of male gaze theory, but there you have it.

Rhymes with Orange, 8/6/13

Lady, your problem is not the obsolete phone — it’s the renegade car.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 8/5/13

I’m someone who does a lot of swimming, and I’m hard pressed to explain the physical activity in which Mary is engaged in panel one. Her torso appears to be more or less vertical, so she sure doesn’t seem to be swimming. If we imagine her making airplane noises as she flies her hand around, that would explain a lot. Frankly, I’m more concerned with panel two, in which we see Mary’s “negative feelings” dripping from her face in huge, viscous drops. Every rude remark and flash of anger Mary has ever masked under a veneer of vaguely passive aggressive cheer for years is soaking into that pool. If any normal human were to enter it, their flesh would be seared off in seconds.

Better Half, 8/5/13

Stanley is deeply, deeply invested in the traditional social construction of binary gender. Also, his doctor wouldn’t write him a scrip for Viagra, so he’s trying to wheedle it out of his pharmacist.

Hi and Lois, 8/5/13

Oh, man, check out that sexy look Lois is flashing Hi in panel two. Is there any conversation between these two that doesn’t immediately become foreplay? Though Hi’s response seems less “aroused” than “I’m about to be pushed to my physical and mental limits of endurance.”

Heathcliff, 8/5/13

I guess the caption here is supposed to evoke the Game of Thrones “Winter is coming” tagline, and we’re supposed to imagine Heathcliff unleashing a nightmarish storm of meat-acquisition violence on the helpless butchers. But I’m afraid all I can think of when I hear “meat storm” is terrible farts, sorry everyone.

Mark Trail, 8/5/13

“This isn’t going to be that easy, Trail! I’ve got to put down what’s in my hands, grab this shotgun, turn off the safety, cock it, and get a bead on you, all before you have a chance to run across a fairly small ro — oops, didn’t make it. Well, I did my best!”

PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCEMENT! I’ll be on vacation for the next week, but your favorite Uncle Lumpy will be filling in for me, so be nice to him. I shall return to comics mocking on Wednesday, August 14. See ya then!

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Archie, 7/31/13

One of my favorite Idle Comics-Reading Pastimes involves trying to figure out the original publication date of any given stretch of Archie newspaper comics reruns. The use of Beanie Babies as a cultural touchstone places this one pretty firmly in the mid 1990s. Along the way, the strip also reveals the shortcomings of the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000’s linear humor-logic. Presumably its legal module made sure that it used the generic “bean bags” instead of the registered trademark “Beanie Babies,” a formulation that I’m pretty sure no actual human ever uttered. This leads into a distasteful punchline about Jughead making sweet love to whatever soft, cushy surface is most capable of enabling his extreme laziness.

Hi and Lois, 7/31/13

The bedroom eyes Hi and Lois are making at each other here imply that this “dressing up” banter isn’t so much about “weren’t things better in the ’50s, when women’s autonomy was strictly limited” so much as it’s about “I’d sure find it sexually arousing if I came home to find you dressed sexily, for sex.” It’s a weird conversation to have right in front of the kids at the kitchen table, but it’s also weird to have the kitchen table three feet away from the front door of your house, so who am I to question how they do things in this family.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/31/13

Ha ha, but wouldn’t it be funny if the depictions of U.S. statesmen on our currency were sentient beings? “Oh, God, I’ve been smothered in there for an eternity! At last, I can breathe again! Wait … what … are you feeding me into some infernal machine? NO PLEASE I BEG OF YOU NOOMMMphhh”