Post Content

Luann, 8/5/11

As promised (threatened?), Brad’s sexual harassment at the hands of sexy sex predator Anne Eiffel is now underway. This plotline will drive home the fact that sexual harassment is about abuse of power, not eroticism, because honestly, who would think erotic thoughts about Brad, especially in his little bow tie, it’s distasteful.

Also, aren’t Brad and Toni, like, really, officially a couple? Why can’t Brad bring himself to say she’s his girlfriend? Do you get fired for having a girlfriend, when you’re a member of Anne’s harem? KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, BRAD!

Hi and Lois, 8/5/11

Speaking of sexual harassment, I can’t really decide what the significance of this romantically forward fellow’s bizarre hairstyle and mustache is supposed to be. Is he a sleazy disco-era dude? A libidinous ethnic? Either way, it seems that the sexlessness of Hi and Lois’s marriage has not worked out as much in his favor as he might have hoped.

Pluggers, 8/5/11

Ha ha, don’t worry, pluggers, I don’t think there’s much danger of you suffering from a Ph.D.!

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/23/11

So, when I demanded a return to the non-old-people-liver-transplant storyline in Rex Morgan, I was really more hoping for more mother-daughter squabbling and less earnest talk about modern best practices for medical record-keeping. You can tell that Rex is eating this stuff up, though, closing his eyes and letting the jargon just wash right over him. “Oooh, you used an abbreviation! Yeah, that’s the stuff.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/23/11

I’m gonna be honest with you — if I saw a black polo shirt with a red collar in real life in an adult size, I would buy and wear the crap out of it. I don’t think I’d pair it up with red pants, but I think it’s an interesting and striking color combo. I was so taken with it that it took me a moment to realize that Dennis is going for a whole new kind of unsettling menacing: attempting to put the moves on his cousin.

Hi and Lois, 7/23/11

My goodness, look at how happy Lois looks! Dot and Ditto, don’t you dare touch her — she’s obviously in some magical dreamland, one where she doesn’t have any annoying children. Even the most terrible sunburn will be a fair price for just a few more minutes there.

Apartment 3-G, 7/23/11

“Me? How could I be a mother? I don’t even know where babies come from!”

Post Content

Spider-Man, 7/14/11

Oh boy, this bespectacled lady wants to capture Spider-Man, in photographic form! This is delicious, because of course taking pictures of Spider-Man is, as far as I can make out, Peter Parker’s sole source of income. One of Newspaper Spider-Man’s least attractive qualities — and lord knows there are lots to choose from — is his continuing macho panic at the idea that his wife makes more money than he does, despite the fact that his wife is a successful actress and he’s a stringer working in the dying newspaper industry (and also a superhero, a role that you’d think would be enough to boost his fragile ego, until of course you see how he goes about filling it). Anyway, my bet is that this woman will humiliate Peter further by displacing him from his pathetic job; I assume that her pictures of Spider-Man will be better than his, both because it’s tricky to stage photos of yourself and because Peter is an incompetent who’s no good at anything.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/14/11

Haw haw, looks like Jughaid’s startin’ to hallucinate! He’s probably sufferin’ from heat stroke, no doubt because he insists on wearing a fur hat in the middle of summer.

Family Circus, 7/14/11

Dolly, nothing in your current life might match up with the sanitized fairy tales in that book, but surely the Brothers Grimm or Russian folklorists have recorded stories of a quartet of terrifying, stunted gnomish things locked away in a compound by their horrified parents.

Hi and Lois, 7/14/11

This is the first Hi and Lois I can remember laughing at. Ha ha, it’s funny because the innocent little baby is learning about disappointment! Oh, I’m a terrible person.