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Apartment 3-G, 2/26/09

While this week’s Apartment 3-G has been mostly a nonstop stream of exposition, it has me almost embarrassingly excited. A few years back, a faithful reader who had been following the Apartment 3-G girls much longer than I had filled me in on Margo’s origin story: her mother Gabriella was a young immigrant maid who got knocked up during an affair with her rich boss, and gave the baby up to said boss and his horrified wife to raise as their own; when Margo found out (as an adult), she cut off contact with her father and his wife and started building a relationship with Gabriella (who may or may not have been the family maid growing up — I hope we find out). I love this story because its details — the icy mother who harbored a grudge against little Margo nobody could explain; the father who insisted on bending others to his plans but exercised no control over his own appetites; the girl raised in wealth who now must navigate a world without it — explains so much about Margo’s personality, and I’m glad to see it actually confirmed in in-strip dialogue. Even more exciting is the prospect of Margo’s father actually appearing in the strip. No doubt he’ll look exactly like Eric, which in other contexts would be FULL OF SYMBOLISM but in Apartment 3-G will just indicate that he is male and not related to Lu Ann.

Luann, 2/26/09

Things it’s fun to imagine TJ doing while masturbating: shouting “Whoa! Luann’s nailin’ it! 98%!!”

Things it’s disturbing to imagine TJ doing while masturbating: shouting “Whoa! Luann’s nailin’ it! 98%!!” while making that horrifying face.

Oh, and hey, remember how I said that I am egocentric enough to mention your comic if you mention me by name in it? Well, check out the installment from a few days ago from Rabbits Against Magic!

Rabbits Against Magic, 2/24/09

Sorry that I’m, uh, a little late.

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Hi and Lois, 2/23/09

Internal rivalry is apparently bursting through to the surface over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC! It’s as if the project leader over in the Hi and Lois division got a sneak peak at the Beetle Bailey that ran Saturday and said, “Why, that’s not how do a cartoon about a woman irritating her husband by damaging the family car! Team, by the end of this three-hour creative meeting, we’ll have figured out how to both make the strip’s basic plot more comprehensible, and manage to convey the husband’s anger about the car without making the characters’ marriage seem like a soul-crushing prison!” True, it’s not like the final joke is “funny” per se, but that maybe seems like asking a lot.

Wizard of Id, 2/23/09

Though I’m not enough of a cryptozoological enthusiast to be up on the psychology of dragons, I am a bit confused about why one would, when informed of the untimely death or injury of its mother, respond with fire-breathing rage rather than, say, weeping. Theory: the strip originally implied that the dragon’s mother was involved in sexual congress with a phallically shaped jumbo jet (with Sir Rodney’s jab including the phrase “hit it”), but was censored at the last minute by the prudes at the syndicate.

Mark Trail, 2/23/09

“Yeah, I know it’s rough! It’s a good thing I’m all set for money, what with those three stories I write a year for that wildlife magazine! Seriously, remember that time I gave that little girl a puppy? I made more doing that than most doctors make in a year, plus a sweet per diem!”

The mystery of how Ken could be this storyline’s villain without facial hair has been solved. Obviously Patty is being slapped around and terrorized by the economy, not her put-upon husband. All will be well in that marriage once again once Ken gets a six-figure government check as a result of a provision of the stimulus package that timber industry lobbyists managed to sneak in at the last minute.

Luann, 2/23/09

Thing I will see in my nightmares for weeks and weeks: TJ’s perpetual death-rictus of a face looking even more skull-like than usual as he waggles his fingers in mid-air and cackles “Then shred, dude!” “THEN SHRED, DUDE!” [shudder shudder shudder]

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Shoe, 1/20/09

“No … but my luggage has! Ha ha ha! Do you get it? Because sometimes airlines will put your luggage on the wrong plane, and it will ‘visit’ cities and countries that you’ve never been to! It’s an ironic little indignity of modern life, that many people can relate to! Ha ha ha! Oh, mercy! … wait, what do you mean there’s a second panel? Um. Twice. It happened twice. The luggage thing, I mean.”

Luann, 1/20/09

The current Luann story has been painfully stupid, as in so stupid that it’s been causing me real physical pain. This sexy fundraising event has been necessitated by a chain of events that ceases to make sense if you think about it for more than fifteen seconds … but since this is Luann, Ground Zero For Queasy, Awkward Sexuality, the plotline has obviously been elaborately constructed to lead to this moment. Because remember, it’s OK to include a lovingly detailed drawing of a teenage girl in a bikini in the comics, as long as you call her a tramp.

Marmaduke, 1/20/09

Ha ha, foolish Cave-Man! Marmaduke can never have enough mangled, dismembered bodies in his backyard. Hand over the meat or you’re next.