Post Content

Panel from Archie, 6/16/11

I’m terrible for not bringing this news to you earlier, but Henry Scarpelli, who for a long time was the artist of the Archie comic strip, died a couple of months ago. (UPDATE: Uh, as many people have pointed out, that article is from April of 2010 — so I have no idea why the art only changed a few months ago. Maybe he had drawn comics months in advance? Som artists do!) I will always have a warm spot in my heart for him because it was he (I assume) who inserted the occasional Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 gag into the strip, possibly without the writer really knowing what was going on.

Since his passing, the syndicate apparently came to the conclusion that, what with the huge backlog of timeless Archie yuks available there’s no real reason to pay anyone to create new ones, and has, I believe, been running older strips from the ’90s, which explains why they’ve been even less in touch with today’s youth than usual. (Please correct me if I’m wrong on this point!) Anyway, the older version of the strip was not created by a cybernetic intelligence, but an all too human individual who, if this panel is any indication, spends his days in an isolated cabin, preparing for the day when he will lead the righteous cleansing of our degenerate nation.

Luann, 6/16/11

Yeah, Toni’s brother sure is flake and a jerk! He’s not a fine, upstanding, responsible person like Brad and Toni are. You can tell they’re upstanding and responsible because they do upstanding and responsible things, like trash Toni’s brother constantly, right in front of his daughter.

Apartment 3-G, 6/16/11

Aw, isn’t this nice, Tommie’s mom has come to visit! Too bad Tommie didn’t get some advanced notice; it’s little embarrassing to have her arrive at 3 p.m. and find her daughter and her roommate lying around in an opium haze.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 6/1/11

When Scarlett O’Hara wistfully announced that “tomorrow is another day,” the great love of her life had just walked out on her, and she was trying to figure out how she would win him back. When Tommie says it, it’s because she failed to deliver a CD to her aunt. She could probably try to just slip it through the mail slot, but then what would she do for excitement tomorrow?

Judge Parker, 6/1/11

Oh, hey, have you been wondering how Judge Parker Emeritus’s attempts to talk a defense contractrix out of suicide are going? Apparently he’s decided that the best way to get her to step back from the ledge is to describe how empty and meaningless his own life is. He’s thinking outside the box!

Luann, 6/1/11

I’ve never been an exchange student, but I’m reasonably sure that they know pretty far in advance when they’re going to return to their home country. Do Australians do things differently? Does the government in Canberra have the right to call young men home for national service at a moment’s notice, for emergency shrimp-on-the-barbie placement or something?

Beetle Bailey, 6/1/11

“Are you ticklish?”

“No.”

“Would you be unsettled if my head started spinning around on my neck like the demon-girl from the Exorcist?“

Post Content

Luann, 5/27/11

Ha ha, can you imagine an “urgent, passionate” “rap” set to Luann’s poem of self-loathing, “I’m A Snot”? You don’t have to, because you can go to the URL in the third panel and listen to it yourself, in all its glory! But don’t feel obliged to do so. I think we all remember the “Hey Boy” debacle of 2010. Maybe it’s better to hear the passionate, urgent rapping, in your mind. Maybe if you heard it in your actual earhole, it would be so passionate and so urgent that your passionate urges would get the better of you and then who knows what would happen next? Probably some pulsating of some sort, that’s what! So, in conclusion, barf.

Crankshaft, 5/27/11

What must it be like, being a prisoner of the Funkiverse, where every depressing, emotionally loaded conversation (and lord knows there are plenty of those) must be accompanied by smirking? And, in Crankshaft, puns? I think Jeff in today’s strip made some kind of bargain with his cruel God: “Look, I’m trying to share some really heavy stuff with my wife here, OK? I’ll smirk, or I’ll pun, but please don’t make me do both. Let me keep a shred of dignity!”