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Archie, 4/29/11

So, the Archie newspaper strip got a new artist this week! Despite having written a blog about comic strips for like the past six years, I actually don’t have a very good vocabulary to describe what I like and dislike about art, so I’ll just say that the new style looks more … cramped? All the features have seemed smaller, less detailed, seen from farther away — until today, that is, when we’re treated to the horrifying closeup of Professor Flutesnoot in panel two, with the bags under his eyes and the terrifyingly realistic shading on the huge fleshy proboscis jutting out at us from the middle of his face. From now on, I want the viewpoint of the strip to stay as far away from the characters as possible to spare us such horrors.

Also, isn’t Professor Flutesnoot a chemistry teacher? I distinctly remember people fiddling with test tubes in his class. Damn it, do I have to keep track of continuity for the Archie universe? Because I don’t think I’m ready for that.

Mark Trail, 4/29/11

Of course, Professor Flutesnoot isn’t one tenth as terrifying as Nightmare Sherriff there in panel three of Mark Trail. What’s the most disturbing thing about him, do you think? The fact that the distance from his eyes to his upper lip seems disproportionately long when compared to the distance from his upper lip to his chin? His “hair,” which looks like someone else’s scalp that he’s wearing as a hat? His soulless orange eyes? The unexplained figure standing behind him, whose anxious expression seems to be saying “Watch out! I can’t control him when he’s like this! Oh … oh God!”

Gil Thorp, 4/29/11

At last, someone has the guts to cut down Milford’s bloated budget! I can see two directions where this story might be going. Hobart McMustache could demand cuts to the athletic department, particularly to sports that are boring and/or involve girls; on the other hand, he might hold the Thorps up as examples of good fiscal stewards of public money, since they tend to get assistant coaching duties for no charge from the janitorial staff or from cantankerous old weirdos who just show up at practice one day.

Mary Worth, 4/29/11

Oh look, Liza got a taste of Drew’s love and now has instantly become a psycho stalker, what a surprising development. Frankly, I’m much more intrigued by Drew’s hideous phone, which appears to be a cheap Vietnamese knock-off of a Dell PocketPC from 2004 or so. Still, you have to be impressed that it auto-hyphenated “tonight” to keep the lines of text formatted properly, unless we’re meant to understand that Liza did that to interject a charming faux-Victorianism into the midst of her awful txt-speak.

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Mark Trail, 4/19/11

Oh my God, John Thrasher’s been driven mad by the horrors he’s seen on the battlefields of Iraq Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam Korea (yeah, that seems about right) and has retreated into the deep woods, ready to unleash hell on whoever tries to talk him back to civilization. Seriously, is there a more badass name than “John Thrasher”? Mark might actually have a moment or two of difficulty in attempting to subdue this wayward PTSD case, though I’m less worried about his chances now that I know that he can just shake off a bullet to the head.

Beetle Bailey 4/19/11

Speaking of war-related trauma, Beetle Bailey seems to have taken a rather abrupt turn. After 50 years of living in some kind of peacetime paradise, the soldiers of Camp Swampy have suddenly been thrust into an apocalyptic worldwide war, in which they’ll be forced to fight until they qualify for old age benefits … if they live that long.

Gil Thorp, 4/19/11

Speaking of abrupt turns, two-thirds of the way through today’s Gil Thorp the creative team apparently decided that nobody would be able to follow the confusing softball drama and decided to switch to confusing corporate drama instead.

Ziggy, 4/19/11

At last, Ziggy has found someone he can look down on! It’s his goldfish. Does mocking and belittling your goldfish make you feel like a big man, Ziggy?

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Slylock Fox, 4/18/11

When your cartoon is populated by anthropomorphic animals, you eventually run into awkwardness when you need to introduce some non- or semi-anthropomorphic animals, a conundrum known to philosophers as the “Goofy-Pluto Paradox.” Here, for instance, we have a a gaggle of clothed, house-dwelling animals confronting a pair of naked (albeit still bipedal, or at least upright) animals who are accused of doing animal-type things like eating tomatoes on the vine. Are the snake and raccoon meant to be understood as mere beasts? Or do they belong to some caste that is oppressed and excluded from Slylock-world society due to prejudice, despite their ability to reason? Either way, once Slylock fingers the guilty party, it looks like he’ll be subject to brutal mob justice rather than taken under the gentle wing of owl law.

B.C., 4/18/11

Speaking of sentient animals, here’s a sentient bird who chose a bad hiding place and now is going to be devoured alive! That … that’s the joke, I guess?

Mark Trail, 4/18/11

You might find the premise of this strip incredibly unrealistic, but think about it: if someone were so unable to understand human nature that they would consider Mark a good guy to approach with a “personal problem,” then he’d probably also have trouble relating even to the people closest to him.

Pluggers, 4/18/11

Yes, these hideous mutant abominations will continue to mate with one another and produce ever more freakish offspring — no matter what our elected officials in Washington say or do. I think our only hope is to call in the military.