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Dennis the Menace, 2/15/07

Can anyone explain to me what Dennis is supposed to be doing in this panel? Is he riding his chair like a horsey? Is that it? That doesn’t seem menacing so much as insane. If he were swinging the chair around at the heads of the other children, that would be menacing.

I note that Dennis’ chair does not have a little desk attachment like the other children’s. Perhaps he ripped it off and flung at someone. That’d be menacing, though apparently The Man doesn’t want to show it to us.

Mark Trail, 2/15/07

“Yeah, I did a lot of foolish things back then! Like take advantage of the opportunities afforded by my military service to learn an exciting and interesting trade that would allow me to get high-paying jobs in civilian life!”

Does Sally ever get to decide things for herself? Dan may have released his death grip on her upper arms, but it looks like he’s got a hold that’s just as strong on her soul. It may be that his raw sexual charisma has her under his spell — check out those pecs in panel two! That is one well-fitted turtleneck.

Judge Parker, 2/15/07

OH, SNAP! FEEL THE BURN, MME. SPENCER!

If it turns out that it never occurred to Abbey and Neddy that a French art school might conduct its classes in French, I will be very, very happy. “But … but … I bought a beret! I can’t believe you expect me to do more to fit in!”

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Gil Thorp, 2/12/07

Sometimes, you just need to go with your strengths. Since everyone in Gil Thorp already looks like the shuffling, grey-skinned undead, it’s perfectly logical that they start bleeding profusely from the head while looking vaguely uneasy. Panel one reminds of me of the horrifying scene in the second Star Trek movie when that eel thing crawled out of Chekov’s ear, and it would probably be just as traumatizing if it were drawn at all realistically.

Mark Trail, 2/12/07

Sweet Jesus, Cherry has never looked scarier than she has in panel two. Note the blue hair combed forward to mask her freakish, bulbous forehead. She’s just an inch or so of foundation away from looking like Tammy Faye Baker.

Since Dan seems to have learned everything about fishing from magazine articles, I’m really looking forward to his encounter with the viscera-stained reality. “Hey, what are you doing to that fish? Wait, did you just use ‘gut’ as a verb? AAAHHHHH!”

Apartment 3-G, 2/12/07

When this weekend began (about three and a half weeks ago) I expressed my suspicions about Margo’s schedule. Now I’m even more dubious that a party planner would have a schedule that has her arriving home from Long Island early Monday morning, unless “party planner” is code for “prostitute” and “Long Island” is code for “the Port Authority bus terminal.”

In panel three, Tommie is going to hold that smug facial expression as long as she can, but eventually she will have to admit that her big weekend involved making out with a pencil-mustachioed theater impresario who forgot her name, and then giving her phone number to a shy guy she didn’t like. And then Margo will laugh and laugh and laugh.

For Better Or For Worse, 2/12/07

I am all in favor of harassing and abusing Michael Patterson by any means available. I’m not sure that I would have started out by shouting things at the top of my lungs directly into his face, but I’m willing to wait and see where Weed’s going with this.

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Curtis, 2/10/07

What a roller-coaster ride this week has been in Curtis: from Philly’s own “Compton Kaheem” to drunk, jiggling, syrup covered ladies to the fantastic dancing Nicholas Brothers to Curtis being savagely mauled by vicious dogs. I will ignore the labored and unnatural “I met … I met … we’d like you to meet” set-up so that I can question “Onion”‘s assertion that he needed to get his stomach pumped after accidentally ingesting a little Meow Mix. Cat food is bland and not very nutritious, but it certainly isn’t poisonous. I mean, I ate a whole bag of dog treats when I was a kid, and I came out fine!

What? It was an accident. Honest!

Still and all, if Curtis is killed or at least horribly disfigured by this pit bull attack, it might be adequate punishment for the horror that was “the syrup chapter.”

Mark Trail, 2/10/07

Speaking of labored and unnatural, I’m beginning to suspect that the real name of this feature is Mark Weg in Verlorenem Wald and that the dialogue is all translated on the cheap. I’m pretty baffled by the sentence “Rusty here is the main member of our family … he keeps us all in shape”; I assume it means that Rusty has near-omnipotent powers, like the little kid in the “Put them in the cornfield” episode of the Twilight Zone, and he forces Mark and Cherry to engage in their various inane adventures for his amusement and benefit. Meanwhile, “Sally, the love of my life” sounds to me like a circumlocution that allows Dan to avoid actually describing the nature of their relationship. Presumably, their prudish hosts wouldn’t allow them to share a bedroom if he said “Sally, my latest assistant grifter/sex buddy” or “Sally, a thirty-dollar-a-day hooker I met at a truck stop an hour before we got here.”

Mary Worth, 2/10/07

I like Mary’s self-righteous assertion that helping others is the exclusive province of the young and impoverished, while middle-aged types like Jeff ought to be instead carefully monitoring their investment portfolio so that he can be sure to be able to afford ever larger powerboats and thrice weekly “dates” at the Bum Boat that don’t result in any action. Still, I’m not entirely sure that 21 is the primary age for selflessness. I’d have been much more amused by Mary’s “You’re not twenty-one anymore” plea if she had discovered Jeff sucking Bud Light out of a keg tap while being held upside down by two guys named Chad and “the Gooch”.