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Curtis, 11/17/06

You know, many once-great works of continuous narrative art reach a certain point where they, for reasons mysterious to us on the outside, feel a need to add an adorable character whom everyone hates. Though this is a move to keep things fresh, it ends up disgusting fans and ruining everything. So, for instance, the Flinstones had the Great Gazoo, and Scooby Doo had Scrappy Doo, and now Curtis has “Oogie.” Except that this is Curtis, so I’m not sure “ruined” is really the right word here.

Apartment 3-G, 11/17/06

Wow, Gina is the most socially inept person who’s ever managed to get out of high-school alive. The only thing I can think of is that she’s a serious method actor, and her character was just punched in the jaw before coming on-stage.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 11/17/06

You know, I like to think that I’m a pretty close reader of TDIET. In fact, I probably spend more mental energy parsing its panel every day than 99 percent of the people in this country. And yet I can’t tell you exactly what it means when the narration begins with the phrase “Living on the edge,” as it does fairly regularly. Nothing even remotely edgy happens in the panels that contain this phrase; it’s just the usual litany of insane, petty rants and human degradation. Today is a good example, though it might indicate that Ma and Pa are on “the edge” of death; they certainly have the stunned stares of a couple who are suddenly coming to grips with their own mortality. I gotta say that if my dad were sitting around inside with his eyeglasses up on his forehead, I’d be looking into homes, too.

Mark Trail, 11/17/06

“Man, if only we had some way to, I don’t know, explosively propel tiny metal projectiles into them, thus killing them! But where would we get such a thing? I guess we’re just going to have to tie them up to death.”

Family Circus, 11/17/08

“It’s a little channel I like to call ‘Ambien,’ and it’s on 24 hours a day, honey!”

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For Better Or For Worse, 11/13/06

OK, so maybe this final panel doesn’t mean what we all think it means. Maybe it’s been punctuated wrong. Maybe Elizabeth means, “You’ve changed so much? I don’t believe it. I think you’re the same whiny, passive-aggressive, schlubby, boring, dull, soul-crushingly dull, boring, boring, boring, dull, annoying, whiny…”

Oh, who the hell am I fooling. TRUE LOVE CANNOT BE STOPPED.

Mary Worth, 11/13/06

Aw, see, Mary? She’s just as scared of you as you are of her! It’s like it is with bears! And speaking of bears…

Mark Trail, 11/13/06

Huh, some of that dialogue seems awful familiar … almost as if I’d heard it before somewhere else. But where could that have been?

Mark Trail, 11/11/06

God damn it, Mark Trail, don’t you move slowly enough without, you know, just repeating the same damn dialogue over two strips? At least Jake and Snake have swapped lines in what’s suddenly become some kind of low-rent, heavily armed Waiting for Godot. The giant rabbit has fled, presumably out of boredom.

I do have to admit that if I were in the process of being kidnapped by mulleted cabin-dwelling bearnappers, I would be profoundly uncomfortable to learn that my fate would be determined “back at the cave.”

Slylock Fox, 11/13/06

I’m not resentful that I spent five minutes staring at Slick Smitty’s coat, trying to figure out if the fact that he was wearing a suit and had rolled up his sleeves was a clue about the origin of his latest flight; nor do I begrudge the fact that the crucial clue to this puzzle is Smitty’s watch, which is completely illegible. Rather, I take umbrage on behalf of our broad-tailed, buck-toothed friend. Why is he just “the beaver”? Why doesn’t he get a patented Slylock Fox clever name, like “Bobby Beaver” or “Buford Beaver” or maybe even “Castor?” Instead it’s just “the beaver,” like they’re all alike, like their individuality doesn’t matter. This strip is racist.

Family Circus, 11/13/06

Translation: “When I grow up, I’m going to move as far away from the rest of you losers as the science of the age will allow.”

Marvin, 11/13/06

Wow, Marvin sure isn’t afraid to disparage Italians. Good thing none of them live in Indiana, right? Right? What? Uh oh.

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Blondie, 11/11/06

You know, Dagwood gets walked in on when he’s in the bathtub an awful lot. It’s one of this strip’s stock jokes, but you have to admit that it’s pretty weird. But our nosey paint-jockey’s comment made me think, “Say, it’s kind of unusual that Dagwood is shampooing in the bath, rather than in the shower,” which then made me think “OH MY GOD DAGWOOD AND BLONDIE DON’T HAVE A SHOWER WHAT WEIRDOS.” Seriously, there’s no shower head, or curtain, or even a rod where such a curtain would be, and the soap dish is blatantly at tub-level. This strip shows the showerless tub at a different angle. This goes a long way towards explaining why Dagwood is so damn late for his carpool every morning.

Hey, is that a glass door on the bathroom? This gets more disturbing by the moment.

Mark Trail, 11/12/06

I love the way Jake and Snake — surely two of the dumber miscreants in the history of Mark Trail villainy, and that’s saying a lot — don’t ever form any kind of long-term villainous plans, but rather lunge at each new opportunity for evil like a giant rabbit at a delicious carrot. Sure, bear-baiting and illegal organ sales are all good fun, but why not engage in a little kidnapping and torture if you have an opportunity? Unless they think that Kelly Welly gallbladders sell for good money on the Asian market, they seem to be losing track of the goal here.

I also enjoy the reassuring similarities in the appearance of Mark Trail villains. Facial hair is of course an obvious indicator of evil, but the orange-shirted, non-mulleted half of Jake and Snake (has it actually been established which is which?) is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to the no-necked patriarch of the petnapping hillbilly clan from two or three storylines ago:

The Phantom, 11/11/06

The NEXT: box in the Saturday Phantom is pretty much always awesome. This one sent the phrase “Last night the Phantom saved my his life,” to the tune of the title line from Indeep’s 1983 hit “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”, rattling through my head for the past 36 hours or so, so I thought I’d subject you to the same treatment.