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Shoe, 1/13/09

Not to wax rhapsodic about the decline of any sense of community in American life beyond the bounds of commerce, but … shouldn’t this cartoon, in which someone ambushes a baffled person behind a desk with a pointless faux koan, be taking place in a library? Isn’t the venerable reference desk the place where corny unanswerable questions are thrown at stereotyped librarians? (In this case, for instance, we could have also gone with “Why do we drive on a parkway but park in a driveway,” or any number of other stupid things that your aunt may have forwarded you from her AOL account.) My first impression was that this little scene was instead playing out at your local Enormous Chain Bookstore, because … I’m not sure why. Maybe because the books have their covers facing out whorishly, practically shouting “Buy me! Buy me!” instead of being demurely tucked spine out onto the shelves like they are in the library stacks, where you can take them out or not, doesn’t matter to us. I see upon further examination that this place-where-books-exists is actually just labelled BOOKS, so it may in fact just be the books ghetto of your local Enormous General-Purpose Chain Store, where remaindered copies of Twilight and The Purpose-Driven Life and Oprah’s Book Club picks from 2006 go to die.

Wherever it’s taking place, it sheds no light on when exactly this wizard’s (whose name in the strip I think is merely “Wizard”) status as a wizard, which was once some kind of metaphor for his prowess in computer-fixing, actually became just, you know, a wizard. Doubtless it’s another random aspect of the Shoe universe, where bird-reporters and wizard-birds fly, or drive, or live in trees, or shop in BOOKS, because whatever, why not, who cares.

Beetle Bailey, 1/13/09

Never mind for the moment that Beetle and Sarge “play for the same team” or that Sarge has a “habit” of pushing Beetle down onto the ground from behind with a hardy (W)HUMP. No, I’m more concerned about the lower half of Beetle’s body … or rather, the lack of a lower half. In panel one, Sarge has squashed everything below about mid-thigh into two-dimensional nothingness; in panel two, it all seems to have just vanished entirely. Normally I’d blame this on the colorists, but given that Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC has seen fit to only provide two vaguely football-player-like blobs floating in some kind of featureless void to work with, you can hardly blame them for doing thirty seconds of desultory clicking with Photoshop’s Paint Bucket tool and then moving on in disgust.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/13/09

Oh, Bull, you and your “supportiveness” and “fairness” and “hard-working athletes.” Don’t you and your feminazi friends realize that the whole point of high school sports is so that everyone concerned can secretly view the interaction of the boys on the court/field/what have you and the girls cheering on the sidelines as some sort of elaborate mating ritual? (They will view it this way repeatedly in their minds, later, in private.) Get ready for a treatment of teenage gay panic with that extra dash of bleak that only Funky Winkerbean can provide!

Mark Trail, 1/13/09

Jeez, Cherry, I dunno, maybe she left so quickly because she got within good viewing distance of your enormous, terrifying head. I’m sure if I were confronted with the vision in panel three, and then the hairline started talking to me, I’d get the hell out of there with considerably less politeness and aplomb than Patty did.

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Apartment 3-G, Funky Winkerbean, and Mark Trail, 1/12/09

Not one but three continuity strips greet the new week with shocking plot twists, which, in the world of continuity strips, just means “dragging out the current plot lines in the hopes that you might complain if the newspaper decides to replace said continuity strip with Brewster Rockit.” We begin with Margo, who last we saw was snooping happily around Eric’s well-appointed apartment, finding what appeared to be her own engagement ring (and showing admirably un-Margo-like restraint in not tearing it open and proposing to herself on the spot). Then she noticed a message on Eric’s answering machine, decided to listen to it, and … what? What recorded message could have shaken Margo to her very core, leading her to physically remove the machine from the premises, presumably as a prelude to encasing it in concrete and dropping it into the ocean? Did Alan leave a detailed message explaining the profit-sharing on their dope-dealing scheme? Does Eric have significant overdue fines from Blockbuster for an embarrassing series of romantic comedies (including but not limited to The Lakehouse and Kate and Leopold)? Was it a call asking if he wanted his subscription to Hot Girls Who Never, Ever Wear Vests Magazine renewed? WHAT?

Funky Winkerbean perhaps isn’t supposed to be mysterious; maybe we’re supposed to be familiar enough with Rana’s personality to understand why she would find a “cheerleading notice” to be shrieeekworthy, and whether that would be a good shrieeek or a bad shrieeek. Of course, that would require more than maybe five post-time-jump strips to have focused on her, which hasn’t been the case, so: confusion. And Patty’s sudden urge to flee the Trail compound is confusing in that run-of-the-mill why-do-the-humans-in-Mark-Trail-act-like-this sense. “I thought that five in the morning would be the perfect time to have a woman-to-woman talk, Cherry! Usually at that time my husband is out in the woods, with the animals … oh, I’ve already said too much.”

Hi and Lois, 1/12/09

Ah, the too-busy suburban couple, failing to savor a too-brief moment of contact before heading out to their separate lives. By “icebergs” Hi no doubt means “the genitals of your fellow realtors, at least one of whom apparently has a thing for Phrygian caps.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/09

“Haw haw, I knew that’d get a good tongue-wagglin’ laugh out of y’all, considerin’ our illit’racy! Now let’s commence with the book-burnin’.”

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Mark Trail, 1/9/09

“Dear Penthouse: I never thought this would happen to me, but one day I came home from a long trip early in the morning, with my dog Andy, and found my wife with both of her hands touching another lady! Andy is a St. Bernard! The lady who isn’t my wife was blonde, and my wife was wearing her robe! They leaped away from each other when I came in, and yet it still made me feel funny, somehow, as if I were seeing something unlawful! Andy sure is a good old dog! That’s why I take him on trips, instead of my wife! Later, my wife told me she had changed her hair, but I didn’t notice. I hope you print my letter! Sincerely, Mark Trail.”

Dick Tracy, 1/9/09

The current Dick Tracy plot is only just getting underway, but since it revolves around Tess attempting to market a Dick Tracy line of cosmetics, it may already the strip’s most laughable yet, since the Dick Tracy brand mostly consists of his impossibly square head and cheerful fascism. It’s appropriate that the final panel juxtaposes the phrase “doesn’t smell right” with a flaming house in which a scientist has just accidentally immolated himself, as the Dick Tracy cologne will smell mostly of seared human flesh.

Marmaduke, 1/9/09

When Marmaduke viciously claws at the eyes of random passersby, blinding them, his owner refers to his violent acts as “kisses.” I shudder to imagine her home life.

Oh, yes! Don’t forget:

(Thanks to Uncle Lumpy for the graphic! And vote for Ces and Medium Large, too!)