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Hi and Lois, 1/20/11

All week I’ve been trying to figure out what if anything to say about the distinctive shift in art in Hi and Lois this week. I can’t decide whether it’s a sort of simplified version of the previous artwork representing a move to a more digital process, or if it’s just a new hired hand taking over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC coming up with a more stylized take on the characters (which, I have to say, I kind of like). I was about to trouble my pretty little head more about it, but then I realized that I was troubling my pretty little head about Hi and Lois, which really hasn’t earned the trouble. Any artists out there who have better insight into how cartooning actually works should compare today’s strip to, say, this and give us your expert opinion. Or, you know, don’t! Lord knows we won’t hold your refusal to think about Hi and Lois against you.

Apartment 3-G, 1/20/11

Ha ha, Lu Ann has known that the couple that raised her weren’t her biological parents for maybe an hour or two now, and already she’s calling them by their first names rather than “mom and dad.” She is so done with Ken and Vera, you guys.

Ziggy, 1/20/11

Oh, man, those environmental regulators: overzealous, amiright? But seriously, no matter what your opinion on the EPA and the Endangered Species Act and the spotted owl and what have you, I think we can all come together and celebrate the fact that Ziggy is going to prison.

Marmaduke, 1/20/11

It had been a long time coming, this moment. Phil had watched so many innocent souls go down Marmaduke’s gullet, heard so many screams for mercy, saw so much carnage, so much blood. Years ago he knew that he couldn’t be just an observer in the awful process forever, that one day the demon-hound would come for him. “Hungry?” he asked. There was no fear in his voice, only sadness, and a small bit of relief. The huge, gore-soaked paw on his chest was almost gentle.

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Mary Worth, 12/10/11

Just think about what a rabbit hole of meta this strip is. Yes, it features a comic strip character complaining that “life already feels like too much of a comic strip”; but, when you think about it, when most people think about comic strips, they think about ones that have jokes and punchlines and such — not Mary Worth, in other words. Who would be the sort of person who would be more likely to use “comic strip” as a shorthand for soap opera strips, in which pointless people slowly live through plots that are simultaneously bland and ridiculous? Mary Worth, that’s who! Wheels within wheels, people.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/10/11

When I read this comic, I snorted dismissively and said “Please, ‘that singer with the high-octave voice,’ why don’t they just say–” but then I realized that I don’t really know who in the current pop cultural landscape “that singer with the high-octave voice” would be. Apparently this is what it feels like to enter the Herb and Jamaal audience demographic. It doesn’t feel good, for the record.

Marmaduke, 12/10/11

Marmaduke’s owner manages to hand his last-ever paycheck over to his wife as Marmaduke starts to tear through his flesh and gnaw on his tasty bones.

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Side note: here is a thing I meant to pass on from faithful reader ChattyGenes: some comics collections about the aftermath of the tsunami and nuclear accidents in Japan. You should read them if you are interested in these subjects!

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Marmaduke, 12/9/11

I don’t think the Marmaduke creative team has ever seen a vegetarian before, or at least they haven’t bothered to come up with some kind of visual shorthand to differentiate vegetarians from one of the run-of-the-mill miscellaneous middle-aged humans flummoxed by Marmaduke. Marmaduke’s mind is boggling anyway, presumably at the concept that any living being can feed without something dying in agony.

Apartment 3-G, 12/9/11

“It’s just that … Paul’s a creepy, controlling weirdo, and he deserves a passive, empty-headed wife who will do whatever he says and not be unsettled by his demands. I thought I could be that wife! But it turns out that sometimes I have opinions.”

Marvin, 12/9/11

Oh, man, cat, you do not want to get into a shitting contest with Marvin. You’re going to regret the day you ever learned to poop in a box, my friend.