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Spider-Man, 9/11/09

Just how spectacularly irritating is Spider-Man? Consider this. Over the past few days, Spidey’s been trying to come up with some vaguely plausible story that would explain why Mary Jane barged in on the sexy three-way he and Wolverine had going with Doc Ock but not reveal the shocking truth: that Spider-Man was some schlubby reporter nobody cared about. Since Spidey is not what you’d call “quick-witted,” or even “posted-speed-limit-witted,” the only thing he could think of was to suggest that MJ had actually burst onto the scene because she was following Wolverine. Wolverine is also not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you could at least see the gears beginning to turn, which promised some kind of tedious, irritating love triangle, which is the exactly the sort of thing that I bitch about in Spider-Man all the time.

And yet I found myself being actively disappointed in today’s strip, in which our studly mutant sweeps aside all thoughts of any such plot points with a meaty paw and barges his way out of the newspaper Spider-Man strip, presumably forever. This is not because I’m secretly a fan of superpowered romantic intrigue; rather, I’m a fan of the basic constraints of traditional narrative, which, postmodernism be damned, are there for a reason. The only thing worse than unlikeable characters beginning the machinations of an unbearably lame plot are unlikeable characters beginning the machinations of an unbearably lame plot before deciding not to proceed with said plot, because eh, why bother. And yet that very failure in storytelling is newspaper Spider-Man’s major contribution to the world of literature. At least this plotting feint lasted a whole three days; the legendary “intercom fake-out” incident got it done in two.

Luann, 9/11/09

And with that single word, Mrs. DeGroot has provided the most sensible idea anyone has had in the entire 5+ years of the Brad-Toni arc. So can it be over now, please?

SPECIAL JOSH ABUSE OPPORTUNITY! Hey Baltimore-area kids! Would you like to hurl balls at a target and cause me to drop into a large bucket of water? You can, this coming Sunday, September 13, between (UPDATED) 3:30 and 4 pm, at the Abell Avenue Street Fair! The fair is on Abell Avenue (duh) and proceeds from my dunking will benefit our community association. There will be many other fun activities, though obviously my ritual humiliation will be the highlight. (Note that I had originally said I’d be there from 12 to 1, but have just been disabused of that notion.)

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Luann, 7/14/09

You might think that being a big-shot semi-professional comics-mocking blogger is all fun and games, but I suffer for my art, and for you, my faithful audience. If you doubt the extent to my suffering, consider this: while most of you probably read today’s Luann and allowed an icy shiver to travel the length of your spine for a moment before moving on to something that didn’t make you doubt the existence of a loving God, I’ve spent most of today trying to figure out something to say about it, because, despite my previous declaration of disgust on this point, I sort of feel obliged to do so. Here’s the best I could come up with: I dearly hope that Brad and Toni are unable to back away from the implications of their cut-rate ham-handed “suggestive” dialogue and end up screwing right there on the sidewalk, at which point they’ll be arrested for public lewdness, thrown in jail, and murdered by revenge-minded but dimwitted criminals who can’t distinguish between firefighters and police officers. Next, a similar sequence of events polishes off Luann and Gunther, Tiffany and Quill, and most of the rest of the cast, with the strip being refocused on the adventures of Puddles the dog and, oh, let’s say Knute.

Beetle Bailey, 7/14/09

By comparison with the above, it’s been a joy to contemplate the pink tubelike form of naked General Halftrack. Ha ha, the general doesn’t like it when the doctor puts skin cream on his anus!

Judge Parker, 7/14/09

Long-time faithful readers of Judge Parker and this blog will remember that Randy’s ascendence to the position of Judge-Dictator of Parkerville, USA, began three years ago with an election race against the sleazy Reggie Black, whose main campaign strategy was to imply that Randy was gay. Randy emerged victorious, of course, by focusing on the issues, specifically on the issues that Reggie’s wife Celeste had with alcohol and rage. Anyway, poor Reggie, wherever he is, would probably love to have heard Randy admit that he doesn’t have any lady friends. Presumably, having learned well from his sensei Sam Driver, Randy has taken April to this romantic spot so that he can gaze wistfully out over the vista, with April eventually attempting to force his nose into her cleavage, to no avail.

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Family Circus, 6/16/09

The Family Circus isn’t just a beloved refrigerator decoration for old people everywhere; it’s also an elaborate long-running narrative experiment, challenging our notions of hard and fast divisions between “reality” and “fiction.” The Family Circus family has a very strong resemblance to the real-life family of Bil and Thelma Keane; the parents are modeled very closely on them, and the kids are as well, though not as closely as you might think — there are actually five real-life Keane kids, and the only daughter, whose childhood nickname was Dolly, is in real life older than the Billy analogue, whose real name is Glen. The strip father’s job is also supposed to be a cartoonist; you do see him sometimes working in a home studio, but he also appears to leave for some kind of office job during the day. Then there’s strips like this one, where pretend-Billy takes over for pretend-Daddy in the comics drawing business, which implies that the comic is actually produced by one of its own characters, like a snake vomiting up its own tail, even though the actual end result has traditionally been drawn by real Bil and not real Glen. Add into the madness the fact that for some time the real artist of the strip has been the real Jeff, though there is the fiction (see what I did there?) that Bil is still doing it; real Jeff looks remarkably like pretend-Jeffy and yet seems determined to portray pretend-jeffy as a moron whenever possible.

Try to keep all this in mind and you’ll be left with a serious headache when trying to figure out who might be responsible for today’s panel on the several different layers of fiction, metafiction, and reality that it simultaneously occupies. And that’s too bad, because, when you cut through all that, the content of today’s panel is pretty delightful, containing at is does the pretend-Keane parents (or the pretend-pretened-Keane parents) getting into a screaming fight because LOOK AT ALL THESE FUCKING BILLS and WHY DON’T YOU GET A REAL JOB and MY MOTHER SAID NOT TO MARRY YOU and so on. Of course, the real Keanes never had arguments like this, because of those aforementioned old people and their insatiable lust for Family Circus-branded merchandise. But nobody wants to put a crudely drawn panel of Mommy and Daddy lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills on their refrigerator.

Luann, 6/16/09

The punchline of this strip would be kind of cute if Brad did in fact have any other friends, but as it is it’s just kind of depressing.