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Ahh, a new week stretches before us! And what better way to avoid the degradation and sleaze that’s oozed into every corner of American life than to spend a little time with those good, old-fashioned entertainments: the soap opera comic strips! Let’s check out the narration box in today’s Judge Parker! It certainly won’t be a series of thinly veiled innuendos.

Er. Well, uh, how about Mary Worth? The chances of some seemingly random object in the background being carefully placed so that one of the characters will appear to have an enormous erection are pretty slim, right?

Jesus, for once I’m really glad I read this feature in color.

Well, what about Rex Morgan, that handsome, upright representative of all that is good about American manhood?

Wow. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds … it sounds very, very wrong. OK, screw you, soap opera comic strips!

Dick Tracy, 9/24/07

Boy, this sure is an exciting episode in the adventures of America’s toughest crime fighter! There’s something naggingly familiar about it, though…

Dick Tracy, 9/22/07

See, this is another thing that I have grown sort of fascinated with in Dick Tracy. I wouldn’t say I like it per se, but it also doesn’t anger me as much as you might think it would. I’m pretty sure that continuity strips by mandate must include some repeated information for the benefit of those who only tune in every third day or so. You could take the Gil Thorp hackery route and just use this as an excuse to repeat panels from the previous day. Or you could do what Dick Tracy does, which is to recreate the same basic sequence of events that occurred in the previous strip, with all newly drawn panels featuring slightly different dialog and “camera” angles. It gives the strip a dreamlike quality in which the narrative thread slips backwards and forwards in time, sometimes echoing back at us slightly different versions of the same moment for days or even weeks, and sometimes lurching violently forward into action that seems to violate all laws of logic and continuity. In something of a bravura performance, today’s strip actually manages to leave the plot less advanced than it was at the end of Friday; fortunately, the Baron will probably manage to mention sotto voce that he’s already set the fuse for at least two of the next four days.

Dennis the Menace, 9/24/07

Dennis is actually a being a lot more menacing here than you might think at first: he’s essentially telling the good reverend that he’d make a better savior than Jesus. And since the combination of peanut butter, jelly, and fish would taste vile beyond imagining, we get a good look at the sadistic impulses that underlie his fantasies of omnipotence. Imagine the multitude sitting around on the grass, choking down the weird combination of fish and jam and peanut butter, while Dennis the Messiah glares down at them saying, “Whassamatter, you don’t like the feast I’ve prepared for you? Are you a bunch of ingrates?” They’d have no choice but to avoid his gaze and say “It’s good that you did that, Dennis.”

For Better Or For Worse, 9/24/07

Today’s Foob flashback reveals the most harrowing aspect of Grandpa Jim’s stroke-induced aphasia: it renders him incapable of bending his grandchildren to his will with threats of violence, as is his wont.

Pluggers, 9/24/07

Thanks to their court-mandated rehab program, pluggers have had their one pleasure in life taken away from them. Also, they’re badly constipated.

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Momma, 9/13/07

OK, Momma, you’ve finally succeeded in convincing me of one of your central theses: that I would not, in fact, want to have Francis as a son. This is not because of the litany of abuse heaped upon him in roughly half of the feature’s strips; rather, it’s because the boy has no filter whatsoever on his sexual ruminations. You might remember that Francis likes to look at Internet porn with his mother in the same room. Today, in panel three, the smart thing to say would have clearly been, “Ah, I’ve also heard nice things about this young woman! Yes, I’d love for you to arrange a date for us.” Then there could be at least a few hot and heavy interludes without Momma’s constant, suffocating interference. Instead, he leapt up into the air and shouted “Woo-hoo! If Freda’s reputation is correct, I’ll soon be having consequence- and commitment-free sex with her, possibly in a kinky fashion!” (or, in bowdlerized Momma-speak, “Yes!! I will! I hear she’s a real swinger!”). Warning to overbearing mothers everywhere: this is what happens when you don’t allow proper boundaries to be established between you and your children. They just say this stuff right in front of you.

Judge Parker, 9/13/07

“Knock it off … I’m not in the mood!” Don’t feel bad, Trudi: this isn’t the first time Sam’s said those very words when faced with boobs like those.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 9/13/07

Here’s my suggestion for a sponge-bath-based TDIET:

Alf Ragweed’s images of nursing care have been heavily influenced by pornographic movies…

(In his thought balloon: “Hello Mr. Ragweed … I need to clean you up … I hear you’re so dirty … are there any particular parts you want me to focus on? Mmmmm … oh yeah …”)

But when he actually needs a sponge bath in a real hospital, how does it go? Need I tell you, dear reader?

(“All right, turn over, and — AWK-K-K-K! What the hell is this? Honestly, I’m not paid enough to deal with you … do you think wiping your crusty ass is a turn-on for me? … and it’s so small … wait till I tell the other nurses on the floor … etc., etc.”)

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/13/07

“Yes, I expect that’s a reunion Hugh isn’t looking forward to! Also, from panel two on, I’ll be played by Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton!”

Mark Trail, 9/13/07

Holy crap, is Homer going to start sitting on the duck eggs himself? O great Lord of Comics, we are not worthy of such joys.

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Herb and Jamaal, 9/11/07

Pretty much any Herb and Jamaal could stand in for any other Herb and Jamaal, but today’s strip strikes me as a particularly archetypical Herb and Jamaal. We can strip it down to its essentials to reveal the skeleton that supports roughly 40 to 60 percent of Herb and Jamaal strips. Observe:

Panel one, character one: “More or less reasonable but somewhat oddly constructed question?”

Panel two, character two: “Extremely vaguely worded answer containing virtually no specifics related to the original interrogative, which no human being at any time would come up with as a response to said question, but which could potentially set up a variety of humorous interpretations.”

Panel three, character one: “Semantically empty phrase that helps pad the strip out to four panels…”

Panel four, character one: “…innuendo that could barely be reasonably derived even from the vague answer in panel two, and that uses ‘dating’ as a code word for a sexual relationship so as to pass muster in family newspapers.”

Mark Trail, 9/11/07

Is it possible that Clubby McSideburns is a more complex character than your usual run-of-the-mill facial-hair-sporting bludgeon-wielding Mark Trail baddie? It’s not like he bashes ducks’ heads in as a hobby or anything; he’s just a working man whose livelihood depends on the smooth operation of this mall project, and, what’s more, he cares about Homer’s financial well-being, too — maybe even more than Homer does. Meanwhile, panel two — in which we learn that Shirley the Duck is so slow and/or dumb that a human being can sneak up on her and get a hand around her throat before she goes all quacky-quacky — suggests that perhaps we should allow Darwinism, and the county construction permit process, to run their course.

Judge Parker, 9/11/07

Sam isn’t wearing his fancy three-piece goin’-to-the-courthouse lawyerin’ duds, so it’s kind of puzzling why Rusty asks him to change before they stroll around the grounds of this presumably well-manicured winery. Presumably she’d just be humiliated being seen outdoors within thirty feet of a man wearing that … weirdly fronted … chest-hair exposing … robin’s egg blue … shirt … thing.