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Apartment 3-G, 3/4/07

The final panel of Sunday’s Apartment 3-G — in which Margo, unfamiliar with normal human methods of showing emotion, does her best to illustrate adoration with closed eyes and pouty lips, while Eric recoils in disgust — is pretty much the best thing ever. It’s enough to almost make me ignore Katy’s blatant bit of pantomimed drug innuendo in the fifth panel. We’ll soon find that Eric is only capable of showing real tenderness to his blood relatives; he only chose Margo as a sexual partner because of her steely invulnerability to typical weaknesses like “feelings”, and thus he’s about to drop her like a hot potato.

Dennis the Menace, 3/4/07

Dennis’ level of menacing has hit a new low. By right, Dennis ought to be causing nightmares with malice aforethought, not suffering from them. But the last panel offers a clue to the lack of Menace: Dennis has clearly undergone some traumatic, Clockwork Orange-style de-menacing process. (The strip title in the first panel indicates that the techniques may have been derived from the CIA’s LSD-based mind control experiments from the 1960s.) Dennis knows that some essential bit of his soul has been killed, and he begs his father to reverse the procedure, or, failing that, to crack his skull open and be done with it.

Judge Parker, 3/4/07

Ah, wealthy suburban Americans, your wealthy suburban Americanism is showing! “Oh dear, my teenage daughter has a bag with several books in it; she can’t possibly take public transportation! I’ll call the butler, post-haste! This trip is totally helping her learn about life on her own.” Of course, like most of the 3.6 million people who choose to ride the Paris Metro every day rather than call for their manservant to come with the Bentley, Neddy and Abbey will inevitably be assaulted by punk rockers.

Incidentally, Neddy, they have these things called “backpacks” now that allow you to carry books more comfortably than that … whatever it is you have slung over your shoulder. Backpacks are even for sale in backwards, retail-starved cities like Paris.

Panels from Shoe, 3/4/07

The throwaway panels in Sunday’s Shoe brought me up short. Is that the bird version of Andy Warhol the Perfesser is talking to? So, if Andy Warhol were still alive today, he’d be doing public service announcements about the importance of staying in school? And he’d be a bird?

Also, this panel from Sunday’s Mark Trail was a little marvel of cruelty:

“Hey, kids! Did you know that the beach is covered with corpses? Rotting corpses?”

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Herb and Jamaal and Wizard of Id, 3/3/07

OK, cartoonists, white and black alike, we get it, we get it. Rap music is a defining genre for a generation of young people, black and white alike, but you just don’t care for it. Feel free to intersperse your rants against rap among your rants about the fact that young people don’t seem to find the comics relevant anymore.

At least the admonishment in the Wizard of Id makes some vague sort of sense, since it takes place centuries before the birth of hip-hop. Presumably the rap aficionado is a time traveler from the future, being urged to keep quiet about his aesthetic choices lest he somehow alter the timeline and create a twentieth century Earth ruled by Hitler, or possibly by KRS-One.

Gil Thorp, 3/3/07

More proof that Marty Moon is from Mars and the Lady Mudlarks are from Venus. “Nothing seems to bother the girls”? Jeez, Marty, do you think they always look like a bunch of numb-eyed, emotionally stunted zombies? Oh, wait, this is Gil Thorp, I suppose they do.

Mark Trail, 3/3/07

Mark’s doing exactly the right thing here. When I took a swim safety class in high school, they taught us that you can save a drowning person just by believing in their abilities hard enough. Also, in a situation like this, you should never leave your breakfast unattended, because your bacon might get cold.

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Family Circus, 2/24/07

Siddhartha Gautama was born a prince, and his parents vowed that he would never experience any suffering. When, as a young man, he slipped out of the palace and saw an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, the shock set him on a spiritual journey, at the end of which he became known as the Buddha, or “the Awakened One.”

Since Dolly has apparently been kept in some kind of hermetically-sealed plastic bubble, protected even from insects, for her entire life, I’m curious as to what sort of religion she’s going to found as a result of her stunning first encounter with these tiny filth-eating creatures. I’m guessing it will really, really like ants, or really, really hate them.

Mark Trail, 2/24/07

Who knew that Dan would make this the sexiest Mark Trail storyline ever, what with his strolling around naked day after day? Admittedly, random objects intervene so we can’t see his perky man-nips, but this is Mark Trail, where a lady’s sexiest outfit is a pink polo shirt, so you have to take sexiness where you can find it. The first panel in particular, taken in isolation, would work if Dan were about to go on stage one more time tonight as part of some tawdry Chippendale-style revue; even though he’ll be subject to the drunken stares and hooting of dozens of women, he assures his lady love that hers is the only gaze he really cares about.

I’m assuming Dan’s “thing” is actually some kind of ill-conceived insurance scam involving faking his own death. The plan will fail because it relies on Sally’s anguished reaction in the wake of Dan’s feigned demise; since she never seems to have any dialogue, I’m guessing that her inability to speak will derail the scheme.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/24/07

So, yeah, this happened. Do you think maybe all the other FW suffering is in video game form too? Harry Dingle could get his hearing back if he just got more power-ups? Cancer Girl is really playing Halo’s “Remission” mod?

They’ll Do It Every Time, 2/24/07

I’ve mostly posted this so that you could unironically enjoy the Loyal Order of Caribou roll call (including “Anson Pantz” and “Harv Buttly”). But I do wonder whether Schnookly is less a “member” of the club and more its “hired servant.” It would explain a lot.