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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.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/8/06

Panel two of today’s Apartment 3-G is a thrill for Margo lovers everywhere (which, I think it goes without saying, is ALL OF YOU, if you know what’s good for you). She’s moving in for the kill, and looks like she’s either going to ravage Eric Mills’ hapless assistant with red-hot Margo-style smooches or bite off her face. The girl’s facial expression, which is one of terror mingled with excitement, matches this dramatic ambiguity.

Margo’s near-victim bears a striking resemblance to Alan’s barely legal paramour from that infamous party. Did anyone leave that event not tangled up in this boring blue-suited billionaire’s life one way or another?

Margo’s lonely “Oh.” in panel three demonstrates a great use of word balloon punctuation and white space.

For Better Or For Worse, 11/8/06

I imagine a crisis meeting over at Foob Central: “Dammit, people, we’re getting murdered by Funky Winkerbean in the depressing realism department! We need to bring out the big guns!” How else to explain this harrowing plot twist, in which Grandpa Jim’s fully functioning mind is trapped in a shattered shell of a body, unable to communicate and prevent his unbearable and continuous humiliation? I’m going to imagine him remembering the morse code he learned in his days in the Royal Canadian Air Force, desperately tapping out “KILL ME” on his portable tray with a spoon, hoping that Iris will stop smothering him emotionally and start smothering him with a pillow, while Metallica’s “One” blares on the soundtrack.

FW is really going to have to raise its game here. Wally’s gonna have to accidentally blow up a busload of Iraqi orphans and puppies, then shoot himself, if they want to keep up.

Curtis, 11/8/06

I’d like to ignore the usual tomfoolery with Derrick and “Onion” (something that’s all too easy to do) and focus on Curtis’ alarming laughing fit in panel three. I wonder if the word balloon had been predrawn to accommodate some much longer bit of exposition, and the iterative, punctuationless laughter was stuck in there in a fit of horror vacui, or if we are really meant to understand that Curtis mechanically repeated the word “Ha” 25 times.

In a move that further undermines this pair’s fearsome reputation, “Onion” (or maybe it’s Derrick, I don’t know) appears to be taking fashion tips from Dennis the Menace’s Joey.

Mark Trail, 11/8/06

By having Ranger Rick utter the phrase “hold up,” Mark Trail has now successfully deployed more street lingo than Curtis has in its entire run. No, really, take a look at the Curtis strip above. The part where Curtis says, “Oh, I’ll be!”

Spider-Man, 11/8/06

“Or didja ever see Hitler having dinner with a Romulan?” Jesus, this strip is weird.

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Faithful reader Angela Petteys, along with Richard Jones and Brian Parker, whose status as faithful readers I am unclear on, have produced this … this … well, all I’m going to say is that it’s a preview for The Lockhorns: The Movie and it’s hilarious.

This was the product of some sort of student TV show up at Ferris State, where they all go to school. All I can say is that when I went to college, there was a lot more studying and partying and a lot less making fun of the Lockhorns. It’s a brave new world out there, kids.

Also, this is funny in a sort of navel-gazing way. Faithful reader yellojkt, commenting on this Mark Trail, speculated that Rick and Kelly were setting up the camera for pics to be posted on NaughtyNatureLovers.com, then expressed hope that said URL didn’t actually post to a real site … and then, well, then faithful reader Chaz Larson did this. Hope your servers can handle the load, Chaz! UPDATE AS OF JUNE 4, 2010: An archive-diving reader has just alerted me that this link now points to … an actual porn site. It was inevitable! BE WARNED BEFORE YOU CLICK.