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The Lockhorns, 1/7/10

Today’s Lockhorns is particularly rich in the delightful seething contempt that keeps me coming back day after day. As if the naked animosity on the principals’ faces weren’t enough to bring joy to fans of marital misanthropy everywhere, we also have the fork jabbed into Leroy’s pile of undifferentiated food-like matter to amuse us. While it’s easy to imagine Leroy leaving it there sticking upwards to serve as a sort of visual confirmation of his complaints about the meal’s unappetizing physical qualities, the angle of the utensil, with its handle pointing away from him, implies that it was actually Loretta who put it there. Perhaps she initially appeared to thrust the fork at Leroy’s doughy torso, before changing her angle of attack at the last minute and leaving it in the home-cooked meal her husband is unable to appreciate! I also note that the configuration of the Lockhorns’ dining area seems to have changed, with Loretta’s seat being replaced by a portal to some kind of ecru nothingness, into which she can stalk when inevitably provoked.

Curtis, 1/7/10

I was about to rag on this year’s Curtis Kwanzaa storyline for its less-than-lunatic plotting and all-too-zen ending when I got to today’s final panel and found out that the whole thing was actually a touching tribute to a late friend of cartoonist Ray Billingsley. So, uh, thanks a lot, Mr. Billingsley, for making me feel even more like a petty jerk than I usually do. You’ve left me with nothing to do except point out that panel two’s depiction of an adorable bunny sleeping on the back of a contented hippo is quite charming.

Mark Trail, 1/7/10

Anyway, I certainly hope that nobody involved in the production on Mark Trail is dying inside due to neglect from his or her spouse, because I’m sure as hell going to make fun of that. Today’s exchange shows that each of the Trails has their role in this terrible dysfunctional marriage down pat, with Mark openly acknowledging that leaving his wife in a desert of emotional emptiness is just what he does!

Like a sonnet, each Mark Trail storyline is built out of a strictly defined series of components, and each story must begin with Cherry being ritually humiliated. First, she herself becomes the unwitting agent of her own loneliness. Why did she even tell Mark about that phone call, when she must have known it would lead to his almost immediate departure? In truth, she had no real choice in the matter, being driven on by her universe’s remorseless narrative logic. Compare her dialogue in that earlier strip to one from several years ago, as acted out by my lovely wife in our production of Mark Trail Theater. Amber read Tuesday’s dialogue out in her best Cherry Trail voice, and the echo was uncanny. Today, Cherry completes her debasement by launching a desperate and doomed sex advance at her husband. In panel three, Mark is closing his eyes and holding absolutely still, in the hope that Cherry will eventually lose interest and go away.

Beetle Bailey, 1/7/10

Meanwhile, Beetle Bailey grows less circumspect by the day, with Beetle no longer willing to pretend that Sarge’s elaborate exercise instructions have any purpose other than to get the young private out of his uniform trousers.

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/5/10

So I’ve been reading the new, retooled Funky Winkerbean long enough to distinguish amongst the various forms of creeping dread found therein, and to have preferences among them, and this here is pretty much my least favorite flavor of creeping Funky Winkerbean dread: Les’s creeping dread about his daughter’s burgeoning sexuality. Summer actually seems against all odds to be a pretty well-adjusted person, but that won’t stop Les from mapping his own awkward, fumbling adolescence onto her. (The rear-view mirror knocked askew by his helmet of hair in the flashback is a nice touch.) While Les should probably be more worried about the terrible, life-ruining car accidents the kids are prone to — just ask Becky the one-armed band leader! — the automobile instead represents to him an avenue Summer can use to escape his suffocating control, and his thoughts drift unbidden to his daughter and some faceless dude in the back seat, hands drifting south, clothes slipping off of young, athletic bodies … and … so forth.

Luann, 1/5/10

Of course, if you really want unsettling car-based sexuality in the comics, you’ve got to turn to the Brad and Toni show in Luann. It’s Toni’s hand gesture in the third panel that really puts this strip beyond the feature’s usual ribaldry, as she seems to be promising to “go under the hood” and manually pleasure Brad’s car in unspeakable ways.

Mary Worth, 1/5/10

One person whose awkward sexuality I personally can’t get enough of is Wilbur, obviously. Most of us would have a lot of conflicted emotions if we discovered that we had an adult son we had never met, of course, but Wilbur mainly seems to be having sexy intrusive thoughts about the boy’s sexy dead mother. Those huge blue eyes … that unnaturally long neck … that weird bunchy collar … who could ever forget a face like that? Well, Wilbur could, as you can see when all of his reveries about his lost love are compared:

With the different facial features and neck lengths on display here, I think you’d be hard pressed to recognize these as the same woman. The only thing they seem to have in common is a tendency to list to the right, perhaps as a result of some kind of inner ear disorder. I’m now guessing that Wilbur was such a prolific seducer in his youth that he honestly doesn’t remember who this “Abby” character was, and the “demon” he needs put to rest is his uncertainty over which of his many lovers bore the man who showed up on his doorstep.

Mark Trail, 1/5/10

Of course, Mark Trail is where we should go to escape from human sexuality of any sort. I particularly love today’s new-adventure-launching installment, as it nicely encapsulates the sort of dream state that defines most Trailian narrative. “Oh, my old friend called me earlier? I’ll just pick up this phone right here at the table and talk to him. Hello, Leonard Nimoy!” “Hi Mark! Did you know that you have an ‘outdoor reputation’? You do, and it can solve problems! Why don’t you bring you and your reputation over to out here, which is far, far away from your wife?”

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Like most of you, I have some New Year’s traditions. Of course, yours probably involve some kind of self-improvement resolutions, which would be unnecessary for me because of my extreme awesomeness. Instead, I generally take the first post of the year to catch up on the action in my beloved continuity strips.

Panel from Dick Tracy, 12/24/09

Let’s start with Dick Tracy, which appears to be as unfamiliar with the social and economic realities of early 21st century classical music as it is with pretty much any other kind of realities you could name.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/26/09

Over in Rex Morgan, the visit of June’s slobbish thieving white-trash cousin has driven this upper-middle-class family to the breaking point. Rex can absorb a lot of punishment, but for God’s sake don’t interfere with his precious, precious breakfast!

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 12/27/09

Against all expectations, Margo managed to enter a church without bursting into flame and crumbling into dust. This can only mean that, while we were wasting our time with the Professor’s boring love life, Margo beat God in a fight off panel.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/3/10

In Funky Winkerbean, the reformed alcoholic title character gazed at a bottle of champagne with more tenderness and affection than he’s ever shown any of his family or friends.

Judge Parker, 1/3/10

Just hours after acting as an unlicensed private investigator, Sam is ready to act as an unlicensed marriage therapist to violent rage maniac Rocky Ledge. One of Rocky’s employees, familiar with the man’s temperament, suggests that Sam will need protective gear before beginning the session.

Mark Trail, 12/28/09

In Mark Trail, Mark and Rusty managed to survive only because this gentle small-town sheriff was too much of a wimp to shoot an unarmed man in the back. I was all excited when it seemed like only Rusty’s head would be saved, leaving him a malformed skull in a jar that Mark would have to tote from place to place…

Mark Trail, 12/31/09

…but instead he just hobbled out of the doctor’s office Tiny Tim-style. His extreme cheerfulness in the face of his crippling is a testament to the powerful painkillers this rural medico has prescribed him.

Oh, and hey, what’s up with Gil Thorp? The Thorps typically celebrate Christmas Day by posing in a family tableau for our entertainment — see for example the entries from 2006, 2007, and 2008. But there’s a little something missing from this year’s installment, isn’t there?

Gil Thorp, 12/25/09

Yes, the holidays do come early when you somehow do away with your children, don’t they, Mimi? Presumably one of the pictures on the mantle there in panel two is of the two young Thorplings, off in their faraway boarding school or Bangladeshi garment factory or shallow grave or wherever they’ve been sent to give the Thorps senior more time to give each other presents and get romantical.

And speaking of presents, the strip give me a little gift last week; as it occasionally does, it brought back a wacky character from the past who only true obsessives like me will remember.

Gil Thorp, 12/28/09 and 12/30/09

In this case, it’s Steve Luhm, who was the protagonist in one of the very first Gil Thorp storylines I read, which was probably the one that got me to fall in love with the strip. Steve was assigned to romance women’s rights agitator Hadley V. Baxendale to keep her from disrupting the Milford patriarchy with her feminism; but instead, he ended up joining Hadley in her political activism, fighting for equal treatment for the girl’s basketball team. As you can see from that old strip, his hair used to be the most beautifully awful thing you’ve ever seen. Steve would later pop up with some hilariously misguided attempts to talk “street”. He got a better haircut and glasses after he went to college, but has not apparently improved his socioeconomic standing. Will this storyline be a biting commentary on the usefulness of a Women’s Studies degree in the post-collegiate world?

Spider-Man, 12/25/09 and 12/30/09

Spider-Man also celebrated Christmas, by having a fat, sweaty man stick a gun in our face. It’s like being robbed by Santa! Later, in keeping with the strip’s traditions, the storyline’s villain was defeated by one of his henchmen while Spider-Man stood by and watched.

But the crown the jewel of the past week or so has been the hot, hot illegitimate son action in Mary Worth.

Mary Worth, 12/25/09

On Christmas Day, Wilbur paused to look back to the past: when he had hair, a flat belly, and the same terrible taste in clothes, and his beloved became the first person in history to pair a belly shirt and an Easter bonnet.

Mary Worth, 12/28/09

But wait! It looks like the fruit of Wilbur’s youthful indiscretion has arrived! And he’s some sort of disheveled hobo!

Mary Worth, 12/29/09

Don’t worry, though: Wilbur can see the beautiful lady beneath the grime and stubble.

Mary Worth, 12/31/09 and 1/1/10

These two strips on either side of the transition to 2010 promise that we’ll be seeing father and son teaming up to become a pair of demon hunters, purging the earth of sinister supernatural forces once and for all.

Mary Worth, 1/3/10

Dawn, meanwhile, keeps her eye on the prize, the prize being Wilbur’s money. “Dad, the last thing you should be doing now is taking responsibility for your actions, especially when it could affect me! We can afford two hideous purple shirts a month for me now. I won’t settle for less than that! I won’t!” Wilbur’s so agitated that he appears to be attempting to chew off his own lower lip.

Yesterday I sent an email to my mother (who has become quite the Mary Worth reader, thanks to my site) asking if she thought this Kurt Evans character was really Wilbur’s son, and this is what she said:

It’s kind of hard to imagine anyone (especially that pretty blond) wanting to have sex with Wilbur!! Maybe he looked better back then. But what are these “demons” that he needs to lay to rest??!! And when does Mary pop in again?? It’s a puzzlement!

It is a puzzlement! A glorious puzzlement that we’ll all enjoy in the coming weeks, which makes me glad to be back in the blogging saddle. PLUS: When will the Curtis Kwanzaa story finally go completely bonkers, as we know it eventually will? We’ll find out as 2010 unfolds!