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They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/28/06

TDIET exists to give whiny, petulant voice to the sort-of-but-not-really voiceless, and thus I always assume that whatever character is best expressing that classic look of quizzical put-upon-ness is meant to stand in for whoever sent the idea in to Mr. Scaduto in the first place. Today’s episode is an elaborate fantasy in which helpful teenagers are constantly thwarted in their attempts to pull their weight in the household; thus, we can only assume that “A. White” is the helpful baseball-cap flipping, vest-wearing cool cat. The idea that a teenager might be a regular TDIET reader is truly horrifying, however. Please, please tell me that, like David Tarafa, A. White is a plucky young Curmudgeon reader. PLease?

Another possibility is that A. White is actually the silent but clearly horror-stricken mother in this scenario. She’s too terrified to stand up to her obviously rage-filled hubby on her kid’s behalf in person, so she’s hoping that his favorite cartoon feature in the Boston Herald will show him the error of his control-freakish ways.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and Mark Trail, 10/28/06

“Yeah, Andy, we’ve got to find Molly! And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’ Go find our friend! I’ll be here with the gun … you know, if you need me … or whatever.” This strip just further illustrates that there isn’t a single featherless biped in Mark Trail who’s worth a damn. I hope that after Andy and Molly take care of the brothers -ake, they turn on Mark and his friends, and then rule over Lost Forest like the King and Queen of the Beasts that they are.

I offer this Snuffy Smith for comparison, to illustrate how Mark Trail is hopefully going to play out in a few days. That “Grr!!” coming out of the bear is meant to be menacing, but comes out just sort of cute and Molly-like.

The Phantom, 10/28/06

The Ghost Who Walks Very Uncomfortably In His Tight, Tight Pants is offering a lovely ass shot in the first panel (this one’s for you, bootsybrooks!), but I’m more looking forward to next week’s thrilling factory tour! “And in here is the break room … you can see we just got a new refrigerator … now down here is the factor floor, and here’s the conveyor belt … an interesting thing about this model is that it was first designed to accommodate a five-foot-wide belt, but they’ve been able to expand it to accommodate our shipping containers, which have had to get bigger because of changing packaging regulations…”

Judge Parker, 10/28/06

God damn it, is this strip going to be about not making assumptions about people based on first appearances, and about how people who seem very different might have a lot in common, and could even become good friends? Because that’s going to blow.

For Better Or For Worse, 10/28/06

Oh, 4Evah and Eva’s public humiliation is going to be delicious.

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Mark Trail, 10/24/06

Normally I would go into some sort of liberal namby-pamby crap here about how the Mark Trail isn’t going to let no goddamned fourth amendment stop him from handing out left hooks and right crosses of justice, what with him being the King of LoFo and not needin’ no warrants and all, but then I realized that MOLLY IS IN DANGER and these guys are freakin’ NAMED JAKE AND SNAKE FOR GOD’S SAKES so let’s just GET ON WITH THIS ALREADY.

Cathy, 10/24/06

I break my usual contemptuous silence on the subject of Cathy in order to point out that there’s a carrot in Mr. What’s-His-Name’s word balloon in the second panel today. Yeah, you heard me. A carrot. A frickin’ carrot. What. The. Hell.

Get Fuzzy, 10/24/06

I’m really pretty sure that this is the first Holocaust collaboration joke in the history of the comics.

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Blondie, 10/19/06

I think this may be a first for this blog, but I have to say that I really like the job the coloring drones did in today’s Blondie. The color of the leaves, with the red gliding into yellow, is quite lovely, and a nice change from other instances where the coloring seems to be done by people who don’t know that fall exists. Unfortunately, the colorer was so keen on the yellow that it got slathered all over the car, too, leaving it a hideous mustard. With colors, it’s all about context.

Question: Does Dagwood (or Herb, or what’s-her-name) ever drive in the carpool, or is it always glasses guy? Isn’t the point of a carpool that you rotate the driving duties? Jeez, he’s late all the time and he never offers to drive. Plus he often dozes off in the back seat, snoring and drooling, and probably smells like sandwiches. What a hump.

Popeye, 10/19/06

For longer than I care to remember, Popeye has been following a bizarre “generation gap” storyline whereby Sweet Pea (the Sailor Man’s adopted charge, who is capable of normal adult speech despite being incapable of walking upright) left home after a spat, finding his way back after many tedious adventures. Today, however, things perked up when Olive Oyl violently turned her years of suppressed sexual frustration on the hapless child. A brutally honest look at how having a baby can affect your relationships with other adults, or just deranged insanity? You be the judge.

Mark Trail, 10/19/06

The Perils of Molly just got more gut-wrenchingly perilous! As Mark and Officer Exposition continue their grindingly slow witty banter, the awesomely named Jake and Snake prepare a grim fate for our favorite bear. What puzzles me is that the rhyming duo seems to only now be waking up to the possibilities inherent in the lucrative overseas bear-organ market, yet they still took the trouble of putting a collar on her and keeping her in a pen rather than just killing her for their sick kicks the moment they found her. Maybe even for low-lifes like Jake and Snake, you have to be in the mood to murder a lovable bear in cold blood — like, you have to watch a bunch of bear-baiting videos first or something.

For the faint of heart, I’d just like emphasize that MOLLY IS GOING TO BE FINE. Mary Worth may have killed off Aldo, but the world of Mark Trail is too relentlessly Manichaean to allow evil (in the form of a mustachioed mullethead and his orangey friend) to triumph over good (in the form of a fuzzy, adorable bear who is so incapable of hostility that she can’t even understand it when it’s directed at her). The only question is, who is going to save her? Mark, dishing out patented Right Hooks of Justice? Hoyt and his dogs, redeeming himself for his chicken-kicking crimes? The giant talking duck, pecking out Jake and Snake’s eyes with his razor-sharp bill? I vote for the duck, personally.