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The Phantom, 2/11/06

Panel three: Does that teaser line imply that the Bandar are going to eat the Phantom’s kids? Please, please, please let the Bandar eat the Phantom’s kids. I hear white tweenagers are pleasing to the Bandar tongue.

Mark Trail, 2/11/06

Ah, the classic “Look! Over there!” move. Mark may be getting fancy in this adventure with his jungle traps and whatnot, but he’s always willing to go to the basics when they work, as they inevitably would against this clan of mouthbreathers. Question for discussion: is the point of this ploy to further emphasize the “hillbillies are stupid” theme we’ve got going here, or just a desperate attempt to bring things back to the origin of this plotline?

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Judge Parker, 1/26/06

Yeah, I’d bet you like her to “define” “physical” for you, wouldn’t you, Sam? I know that floor-length purple jumper has been driving you wild all night (a night that has, by my reckoning, lasted since about November). Still, you’re eventually going to have to come to grips with the fact that your clown-haired girlfriend gets most of her jollies through spying on her daughter. Oh, the shame.

Down in the rural south, on the other hand, the folks have a less complicated relationship with their physical desires:

Yeah, “entertainment.” Check out Mark’s Spock-style eyebrows in this panel. Maybe he’ll take care of this clan of bumpkins with some well-timed Vulcan neck pinches.

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B.C., 1/24/06

Shoe, 1/24/06

The Lockhorns, 1/24/06

I love it when people write angry letters to the paper. I’m a connoisseur of ridiculously overblown outrage. My favorites, as you might imagine, are the people who complain about the comics, how they are full of sleaze like single mothers and gays and uppity Negroes and people who use the word “butt” and/or “Jesus Christ” (the latter irreverently) and won’t someone please think of the CHILDREN? It’s always the CHILDREN who must be protected, because, as we all know, the CHILDREN are the ones who read the comics pages.

Well, if I were a child, I would be less disturbed by gratuitous use of the word “butt” and more by authors who think that its funny to admit that you have no concept of how high tech devices work. If I were around 8, I’d just be puzzled that there was anyone out there who was so dense; if I were around 12, I would just feel disgust and contempt for such fogeys. I don’t mean to hate on those who are baffled by all our modern conveniences — I’m sure that fifty years from now all the kids with their skull-installed data ports will be mocking me — but today’s Shoe and B.C. just seem to exude a certain stubborn pride in not getting it. (Does Johnny Hart really think that the word “iPod” should appear in a different font from the rest of the sentence? Does he even know what one is, outside the context of those ads with the shadow people?) The Lockhorns, meanwhile, doesn’t even bother to engage with technology, and merely seems to believe that mother-in-law-joke + “e-” prefix designating technology of some kind = comedy gold.

Some comics actually do a good job of dealing with technology jokes. Dilbert and Fox Trot are obvious examples; and For Better or for Worse does a pretty good job of showing how Internet communication is a casual part of people’s lives (particularly young people’s lives). Even Cathy’s endless Irving-becomes-obsessed-with-some-gadget storylines ring true in terms of how some people go a little tech-crazy. Those plots still aren’t funny, mind you, but they don’t come off like they’re being pounded out by some gin-crazed 90-year-old on a aging Selectric typewriter, or shouted into one of those old-timey phones with a crank on the side.

Oh, and I couldn’t let this one by:

Words to live by, my friend. Words to live by.