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Marvin, 7/28/11

Every once in a while, I question some of my comics obsessions and bêtes noires. Do the newspaper comics really have the horrible tendencies that I attribute to them, or am I just being uncharitable because of my own particular mission as a curmudgeonly comics commentator? Take Marvin; is this strip really the shit-stained horror that I make it out to be, or is it merely a whimsical take on infancy that happens to include the occasional joke about diaper-changing? When I’m wracked with self-doubt of this kind, it’s almost a relief to see strips like today’s, in which Marvin spasms uncontrollably while taking a huge dump in his pants, and then cracks wise about how gross it is, inside his pants. Thanks, Marvin, for reinforcing all my worst opinions about you!

Mark Trail, 7/28/11

Because Mark was able to convince mountain man John Thrasher to come down from the mountains and also no longer have PTSD, he’s now gotten cocky and believes that he can convince anyone or anything to do whatever he asks. If there’s a something more hilarious than Mark Trail wading towards a goose and bellowing “WAIT! RELAX!” at it, I’m not sure what it could possibly be.

Mary Worth, 7/28/11

Oh, wait, never mind, some poor waitress running away from Mary Worth and vomiting in terror and disgust is definitely funnier.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/26/11

OMG SCOTT GAINES! Despite the fact that I sneer at the oppressive nostalgia that lies over the newspaper comics industry like a suffocating blanket, I admit that I love it when the soap strips bring back beloved minor characters from the past. Scott Gaines was briefly engaged to Lu Ann; they met when he was pretending to be a janitor, but then she found out that he was cartoonishly rich. They broke up for some boring reason I forget now; later, Margo, during her brief stint as a wedding planner, took on Nina Blake, whose savagery she found pleasing, as a client; it turned out Nina was marrying Scott, who got cold feet but then agreed to marry her because Margo berated and humiliated him. So I guess now our gal Magee is hitting up the two of them for money? We should be in for serious fun times!

Family Circus, 7/26/11

Ha ha, Billy, you really shouldn’t let Boston Harbor touch your skin! What you’re feeling isn’t so much cold as numbness; the various pollutants are destroying your nerve cells as they rapidly eat through your flesh.

Judge Parker, 7/26/11

This whole plot in Judge Parker — involving as it has Jackie Thornton the man-eating marketing director getting hit by a bus and replaced by her college-age intern who then took Judge Parker Emeritus to see a play but then brought him up a secret passage to the roof where they found a beautiful defense contractor about to kill herself but then Judge Parker talked her out of it except he was accidentally knocked off the roof by the cops but it’s OK he’s totally fine oh and also some mysterious neighbor filmed the whole thing and live-streamed it to millions across the Internet, making him a national hero and his book an instant best-seller — has seemed so ludicrous and contrived, even by the standards of this strip, that many of you have believed quite earnestly that there must be a more rational explanation. Several have suggested that perhaps the whole thing was a set-up, arranged in advance by Constance and Jackie, with Constance playing the suicidal lady and the Internet live-streaming arranged in advance, all to drum up publicity for the Judge’s latest unreadable book.

But as the strip wraps things up, it’s beginning to look like there’s exactly as much here as meets the eye. Today, Judge Parker gives Constance an important lesson in being a character in the comic strip that bears his name: if someone dies and thus makes your already extremely comfortable life even better, you don’t worry about them; you just lay back smugly and enjoy it. Hopefully he’ll soon call in a woman to give her another important lesson that Judge Parker characters need, if they’re female: How to sit down in insanely tight dresses.

Marvin, 7/26/11

So, as was in retrospect fairly obvious, the whole “Marvin gets a brother” subplot in Marvin turned out to be just a dream sequence. Now we’re back to the strip’s sad reality, starring Bernie as a shameless pill addict.

Mary Worth, 7/26/11

Having successfully fended off another painfully awkward marriage proposal from Dr. Jeff, Mary heads off to lunch in triumph. “Yes, table for one, please. Table for one … forever.”

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Marvin, 7/21/11

So a few days ago, Marvin featured a strip that went something (I’m not even going to check the archives to get all the details right, that’s how much I resent thinking about Marvin over multi-day spans) like this:

[Marvin’s parents are looking at Marvin while he’s asleep.]

MARVIN’S MOM: Oh, Marvin’s dad! Doesn’t our awful poop-baby look adorable, when he’s asleep and not moving or making noise, or pooping? It makes me want to have another baby!

MARVIN’S DAD: [Eyes wide with silent horror]

I figured this was nothing more than another attempt to make a joke out of the fact that Marvin is such a loathsome baby that even his parents hate and fear him, and live in terror that they might bring another like him into the world. However, apparently it has set up the actual conception, incubation, and birth of a new Marvin-sibling, all over the course of only a few days. Did the Marvin franchise need shaking up to this extent? Eh, well, it can’t get any worse, so why not? (Unless we learn in a week or two that this seemingly major change was all dream. That will be worse.)

Funky Winkerbean, 7/21/11

Oh, man, when I analyzed Monday’s Funky Winkerbean, I obviously wasn’t prepared for the multiple layers of smugness we were in for. Les didn’t smugly display his superiority over his old professor; instead, he refrained from this act of petty taunting, so he could come home and wax smugly about his moral superiority. Kudos to you, sir!

Family Circus, 7/21/11

I’m reasonably sure that this week’s “Keane Kids trash Boston” strips are repeats from several decades ago, which would explain why the camcorder Big Daddy Keane is holding in front of his face looks so awkward and out of place and pasted-in-later-y. Presumably it was put in to cover up the circa 1962 Nikon F Photomic he was using in the original? Honestly it looks more like a canister that he’s huffing paint out of, and really, who can blame him.