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For Better Or For Worse, 8/8/07

I guess I’m supposed to be saying something about FBOFOW’s mini-flashback this week, huh? Uhhhh … well, I support the strip’s bold decision to use a Pulp Fiction-style fractured, nonlinear narrative. Really, when we heard about the “flashbacks,” we had no idea that they’d be jumping willy-nilly through time, enriching our understanding of the themes with foreshadowing of future events and filling in the details later on. I’m really looking forward to seeing how avant-garde the Foobs can get! Maybe it’ll even surpass Gil Thorp.

I also like the fact that Thérèse is now responsible for everything that is evil and wrong and dark in the world. Global warming? Thérèse’s fault. Cancer? Thérèse’s fault! The mustache? THÉRÈSE’S FAULT! Soon we’ll find out that Kortney and Howard were both Thérèse wearing very clever disguises, and that Thérèse was lurking beneath the stream back behind the Patterson house wearing SCUBA gear, just waiting to drag Farley to his death.

Apartment 3-G, 8/8/07

There are lots of reasons to love Blaze, but the top one, as far as I’m concerned, is that he’s the only young adult male in the strip who’s actually easy to identify on sight. Almost everyone else in the strip with a Y chromosome between the ages of 20 and 45 falls into one of two templates: the blandly attractive dark-haired guy (e.g., FBI Pete, millionaire janitor Scott Gaines) or the blandly attractive sandy-haired guy (e.g., Eric Mills, Alan). Blaze has his own style going on. Admittedly, this style involves a slightly shaggy haircut and a khaki shirt and black cravat that he puts on every morning before he sits down to eat his off-brand corn flakes. I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to signify. I’d say “gay” but that doesn’t seem right; perhaps it’s “gay, as drawn by someone who doesn’t actually know any gay people but who sometimes reads about them.”

The Lockhorns, 8/8/07

Usually the Lockhorns is about as subtle as a restraining order, but I have to admit that I’m puzzled by this one. Does Leroy have a heretofore unexplored love of modern art? Does Loretta have a heretofore unexplored hatred of modern art, and Leroy spent good money on this portrait just to spite her? Is the fact that the portrait isn’t strictly representational supposed to be some kind of visual shorthand for “bad”? Is it creepy that the hair in the painting appears to be an exactly cut-and-paste version of the hair on Loretta’s head, flipped 180 degrees? I know the answer to the last question, anyway (it’s “yes”).

They’ll Do It Every Time, 8/8/07

Hey, everybody! GH is none other than faithful Comics Curmudgeon reader … gh! It’s fun to imagine him in his impeccable suit surrounded by shlubby shlubmeisters in four-inch ties, but you should always remember that dress-down Friday doesn’t mean don’t-shave Friday. gh was also one of only two Curmudgeon readers to have an entry accepted by Pluggers, making him a potent double-threat. Can anyone else go for the bifecta?

Blondie, 8/8/07

Tune in next week for another exciting adventure of Dagwood Bumstead: World’s Shittiest Union Organizer!

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The Lockhorns, 7/20/07

Normally, when the Lockhorns turns away from its wonderfully refined set of canonical jokes and attempts to inject an (almost always lame) reference to some aspect of contemporary pop culture, I’m strongly opposed. However, today’s gag has so many layers of perversion that I have to admit to being kind of charmed by it. I suppose it’s possible that Leroy simply sees adoption by a wealthy movie star as his ticket out of his failed marriage and soul-crushing job, and an opportunity to live in a huge mansion without having to work for it; it is a long shot, as Loretta notes, but he does appear to be about three feet tall, so maybe there’s a chance that he’ll be mistaken for a impoverished Belarusan orphan boy whose freakish, hairless appearance is a result of his parents living downwind from Chernobyl.

But since Angelina Jolie is generally summoned up in conventional discourse as a totemic sex goddess, and Leroy is sporting that crinkly smile that he usually gets when drunkenly flirting with statuesque blondes twice his height at parties, one has to assume there’s something more going on here. Does Leroy believe that Jolie’s “adoptions” are mere covers for her sexual appetites? Does he harbor some sort of infantilism fetish? More disturbing that the potential answers to either of these questions is the affectless way Loretta conveys this information to her dumbfounded friend. She’s so used to the bottomless well of numbness that is her marriage that it never occurs to her to leave or anything; the prospect that Leroy might take off for better prospects seems to fill her with neither joy nor despair. It’s just another thing that might happen.

Anyway, no other comics came close to this level of depraviy today, but a few tried.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/20/07

Dear God, please let “bedbugs” not be code for some intimate part of the human anatomy.

Mary Worth, 7/20/07

In a desperate attempt to avoid thinking about this dialog as anything other than a transparent but incredibly awkward lead-in to a proposition, I’m focusing on Dawn’s fork. Her tiny, tiny fork. Maybe she’s on a new diet plan that works on the theory that if you eat with miniscule utensils, you won’t be able to shovel as much food in your mouth. Dawn’s determined to look good naked when she “tries something new.” Damn it, that didn’t work.

Marmaduke, 7/20/07

He’s not so much “listening” as “figuring out the most efficient way to kill and eat you.” But whatever makes you feel better, lady.

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Dennis the Menace, 5/24/07

Dennis’ black, shriveled heart does not understand this feeling you call “love.”

Gil Thorp, 5/24/07

The Lady Mudlark softball team ought to forget about breast cancer and get Brynna Antenna to a reconstructive surgeon who can do something about her leathery mask of a face.

Family Circus, 5/24/07

Billy will go far.

For Better Or For Worse, 5/24/07

April can destroy things with her mind.

The Lockhorns, 5/24/07

The Lockhorns’ marriage is so depressing that it defies all human understanding.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/24/07

Child labor is alive and well in Appalachia, or the Ozarks, or wherever the hell this strip is supposed to be set.

Pluggers, 5/24/07

Or died. He may well be dead.