Post Content

B.C., 3/16/07

Ha ha! It’s funny because his wife talks a lot, and he’s tired of it, even though he presumably knew she talked a lot when he married her, so he’s got her tied up in the basement with duct tape over her mouth!

Wait, did I say “funny”? Because I meant “horribly offensive.” But see, when he calls her some 19th century term of abuse like “magpie,” it’s all old-timey, so we can just ignore it. Ha ha, that Johnny Hart! That crusty old hateful bastard! Ha!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/16/07

Wait, now hold on just a darn minute. Niki might be pretty good at garage cleaning and such, but there is one — exactly one — person in this neck of the woods who works on fence-related issues. One. And I think we all know who that is:

Hopefully, that’s him at the door right now, to set things straight and present a grossly inflated estimate.

(Baffled Rex-Morgan-readers-come-lately should check out this classic post.)

Apartment 3-G, 3/16/07

You know what offends me about Apartment 3-G? It’s set in New York, right? Now, I don’t live there, but I do love the place. It’s one of those cities in the world that has a really strong sense of place: if you’re there, you know you’re there, and nowhere else. Unless, of course, you’re in Apartment 3-G, which could take place literally anywhere that’s full of tall buildings and white people. The Apartment 3-G girls never take the subway, or a taxi. (Even Neddy and Abbey are taking the Paris Métro, for God’s sake.) They never eat at any of the many famous, recognizable restaurants at their disposal. Starving artist Lu Ann never visits any of the world-class art galleries. And Neil is getting great reviews in the “local press.” I think the world could handle the name of one or more of the major New York papers, people. You can look them up on the Internet even.

Mark Trail, 3/16/07

YEARRRRGGGHH HUGE SOULLESS TERRIFYING EYES SCARY SCARY SCARY NOOOOOOOO

Mary Worth, 3/16/07

YEARRRRGGGHH MARY INQUIRING ABOUT SOMEBODY’S SEX LIFE SCARY SCARY SCARY NOOOOOOOO

Post Content

Mark Trail, 3/11/07

Holy smokes, this is one of the bestest “Mark Trail Teaches You About Nature And Crap” Sunday Mark Trails ever! None of the usual “Aren’t animals interesting/endangered/cute” nonsense today; instead, we get a crazed gang of killer elephants, harassing a pair of fleeing stereotypically garbed natives, flinging some red-shirted white dude across the savannah, and molesting a field of innocent sweet potatoes like so many 15,000-pound gophers. Mark himself, who usually strolls fearlessly into the frame to narrate as his chosen beast of the week menaces the nameless extras who are clearly desperate to break into the comics, has wisely chosen to stay safely off-camera when it comes to the tusked menace that is the elephant.

I’m guessing that the strong elephantaphobic slant of today’s strip was made possible from a large check from the International Federation of Ivory Harvesting Professionals.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/11/07

Yes, the whole point of this overcontrived family drama was to make John think that his wife was shaving her nether parts in front of several of her children; and yes, it’s both horrifying and kind of shamefully funny. I mostly want to point the second panel, which would make an excellent LiveJournal icon to sit atop the phrase “Mood: Suicidal”.

The Phantom, 3/11/07

I haven’t been covering the current Sunday Phantom storyline at all, because it’s pretty dull; it has centered some kind of weird temporal anomaly that has allowed the Ghost-Who-Violates-The-Laws-Of-Physics to interact with a group of gangsters from the ’30s who have been trying to stop a thinly veiled Amelia Earhart stand-in from making an historic flight of some sort. I’m kind of intrigued by the last panel, in which the very married Big Purple Guy allows the comely aviatrix to rest a hand on his enormous left pectoral muscle; I guess his logic is, “Hey, it’s 1937, I’m not going to be married for about 50 years, so anything goes!”

(UPDATE: Thanks to several commentors who pointed out to me that “Beryl Markham” is not actually some made-up character meant to avoid a lawsuit from Amelia Earhart’s estate, but a real person who actually lived in East Africa. I never should have doubted this, as the Phantom’s devotion to authenticity is notorious. Also, time travel is real.)

Curtis, 3/11/07

I could point out that Gunk’s “balloons” look remarkably like condoms, or that while “FOOO!” is a legitimate onomatopoeia, “TWIST!”, “BEND!”, and “SHAPE!” are not. My main concern, however, is that Gunk has used his devilish Flyspeck Island powers to create living beings out of inanimate matter, only to force them to end their short lives in a mercy killing and suicide. The face-flop is a usual exaggerated Curtis response to a joke, but here I hope that our protagonist is weeping openly at the sadistic little performance he was just forced to watch.

Post Content

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?”