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Blondie, 10/8/08

I’m intrigued by Julius Dithers’ latest attempt to achieve Big Brother-like omnipresence in his workforce. It’s kind of surprising that his employees must spend the day staring not at his sneering face, but at his clenched fist. At first glance this would seem to be the ultimate expression of the unabashed threats of violence that underpin his thuggish regime, the identity of the Leader reduced merely to the instrument that he uses to deal out pain. But note that the fist isn’t advancing knuckle-first at the viewer in the style of a righteous fist o’ justice; rather it appears to be waving in the air in impotent rage. In this sense, what’s meant to be a symbol of tyranny in fact exposes the regime’s weakness and plants the seeds of its eventual overthrow.

It’s also possible, but unlikely, that this is a close-up of Dithers flashing a proud Black Power salute.

Family Circus, 10/8/08

This may look like yet another “freakishly large-headed kids say the stupidest things” installment of the Family Circus, but I actually think Billy is using the live NASA feed (the only thing Daddy will let the kids watch, other than Veggie Tales and Davey and Goliath) as an opportunity to broach the subject of his father’s fanatical refusal to stop at rest areas during long car trips. “OK, dad, they’re in the terrible vacuum of space and need to stick to a tight schedule or they’ll run out of oxygen, so that makes sense, but why is it so important to ‘reach our mission objective within the established time parameters’ that I have to pee in an empty coffee cup?”

Pluggers, 10/8/08

Pluggers are too lazy and ignorant to spend thirty seconds looking things up on the Internet so as to spell people’s name correctly or determine whether something is the name of a person or of a television show.

Hi and Lois, 10/8/08

Hi is looking stunned in the second panel here because his teenage son’s act of disrespectful rebellion: rocking out to a song released in 1975.

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Apartment 3-G, 9/19/08

I suppose that eventually the Apartment 3-G Terrible Downward Spiral Of Clean-Cut Middle-Class People Into Addiction storyline will cease to be transcendently awesome — presumably, right around the time that Ray’s squirrelly histrionics cause Alan to take a hard look at his life and straighten up and fly right and earn the love of a good woman and blah blah blah — but let’s enjoy the ride to its fullest while we can, OK? It’s actually sort of like drug abuse in that way: deep down, you know that you can’t sit in your room giggling over phrases like “Please! I hurt so bad!!” forever, but that doesn’t stop you from being taken up by the highs in the here and now. Perhaps even better than Ray’s sincere yet laughable description of the pangs of withdrawal in panel two is his expression in panel three: he seems to be thinking, “Hey! I know! I could reduce Alan to a powdered form and then smoke and/or snort him! All my problems would be solved!”

Hi and Lois, 9/19/08

The idea that innocent baby Trixie might look out the window and learn about the emotional pain and verbal abuse that lurks behind her suburb’s cheery facade is actually rather poignant; her look of wide-eyed horror in the final panel says volumes about what it’s like to discover that people who love each other can wound one another far more deeply than any strangers could. But bringing in the brother-sister metaphor just makes the whole thing creepy and weird. I like my domestic degradation without the unsettling incest overtones, thank you very much.

Sally Forth, 9/19/08

Watch out, Sally! She can quote the Last Starfighter, and she rests her fingers delicately on her collarbone, Ted-style! Also, it may be an optical illusion, but it appears that she might kind of have breasts? HOW CAN YOU COMPETE WITH THAT?

Beetle Bailey, 9/19/08

Oh, Freud would have a field day with this.

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Hi and Lois, 9/14/08

Here’s a rare case of a Sunday strip being radically altered by the presence or absence of the throwaway panels in the top row of the comic. If, like me as I read my physical dead-tree comic section, you saw the strip beginning with Dot asking Ditto “What do you want to do today?” you get a fairly pedestrian parable about young boredom. But with those first two panels, the strip suddenly stands at one step removed, with Dot setting her Dale Carnegie-like powers of persuasion against Ditto’s persistent and chronic ennui. Dot isn’t trying to have fun with her brother; she’s set herself up in mortal combat with his own shapeless self, trying — and, as you can see by Ditto’s state at the end of the strip, supine and refusing even to move, failing — to mold her brother into a man of some semblance of action.

Crankshaft, 9/14/08

Much as I enjoy the thought of Crankshaft spending a week alone stewing in his own old-man filth, I must object to his barber’s use of the neologism “batching it” in the third panel. I’m assuming the terms derives from the word “bachelor,” but I fear that it may also somehow involve Crankshaft’s batch.

And here’s a couple of amusing out-of-context-panels for you:

Panel from Beetle Bailey, 9/14/08

This is a charming and whimsical scene, as Corporal Yo regresses into nonsense child-talk as he drifts aimlessly through the sky.

Blondie, 9/14/08

This is funny because it makes it look like Dagwood is paying for sex.