Post Content

B.C., 6/13/11

You know, as much as I rail against the practice of keeping the same 30 or so comic strips in every newspaper in America, despite the deaths of their creators, I do understand why people like having them around. There’s something tremendously comforting in seeing the same characters, day after day, year after year, doing the same things. You get so accustomed to their rhythms that you pretty much stop questioning the strip’s visual conventions, even those conventions were laid down years before you started reading and you’re never quite sure where they came from in the first place.

Take the clothes that the cavemen of B.C. wear, for instance. I guess they’re supposed to be kind of a loincloth thing? At one point they involved a shoulder strap of some sort, but now they’re just a black strip around the waist area. Johnny Hart no doubt came up with the character design fairly early in the strip run and then promptly stopped thinking about it. However, now his grandson is in charge and is playing around with things, which involves forcing us to contemplate the fact that the cavemen’s dangly bit are on full display under these “suits,” which, thanks a lot, I think I’d like to go back to the unchanging nostalgia now.

Gil Thorp, 6/13/11

Ha ha, look at how angry Gil is in panel two! He may not have given a crap when sinister Hobart threatened to slash school budgets and lay off most of his co-workers, but when people start talking about his drinking problem and his inappropriate fraternization with students, well, that’s when things get ugly.

Slylock Fox, 6/13/11

This is pretty much one of the most hilariously depressing Slylock Foxes ever. “Sorry Max, your idea is flawed due to your fundamental inability to grasp basic thermodynamics. What? No, I don’t have a better idea. All these candles are going to melt and and this poor lady is going to go bankrupt! Well, we really should be going.”

Marvin, 6/13/11

While I can’t blame Marvin’s family for turning to illegal drugs to deal with the fact that they’re related to Marvin, I’d have guessed that they’d go for alcohol or other depressants, which would dull the pain if only temporarily. But Jeff clearly finds that coke or speed or something along those lines helps him cope, and who am I to judge?

Post Content

Marvin, 6/3/11

With this, I dearly hope that Marvin has reached the lowest point it can with the bathroom humor. In fact, I’m not sure this can be defined as “humor” at all. It’s just all “That dog has a name that sounds like ‘pee,’ because he urinates everywhere.” I guess if this were a spoken conversation (or, as is the case here, a telepathic conversation between a baby and a dog) there’d be a vague pun in that you’d think the name is spelled “Peabody” but really it’s “Peebody” because he likes to “pee” on things. But seeing it written out means that you know there’s nothing but piss jokes coming in panel two, so hang onto your hat (because otherwise Peebody the dog will urinate on it).

I suppose “bladder control issues” was some kind of syndicate-imposed euphemism, but it does add an extra bit of awfulness because it implies that Peebody’s peeing is involuntary, and probably causes him great shame.

Apartment 3-G, 6/3/11

Oh, hey, Aunt Iris has departed abruptly and now Mrs. Bloom is back from Florida, whither she decamped a few months ago, apparently for extensive cosmetic surgery. Don’t anger her any further, Tommie, she’ll taser the crap out of you.

You know, Iris has vaguely intimated that her friends and family don’t approve of her “gypsy lifestyle.” Naturally I’ve always assumed that this was because the squares in the A3Giverse are easily shocked by any even vaguely out-of-the-ordinary behavior, but maybe it’s because she always just picks up and leaves town without saying goodbye to anyone, like a jerk.

Post Content

Marvin, 4/9/11

Never mind whatever kind of baby HUAC Marvin’s got going on here; why do the infants to his left bear an expression of heavy-lidded ennui, while those to his right have eyes opened wide with horror? Given Mavin’s love of sitting in his own foul-smelling feces, I think we can say with some certainty which way the wind is blowing here.

Archie, 4/9/11

Never mind Archie and Jughead’s inane banter — what exactly is Random Second Panel Gal looking at on her tablet device? It’s a given that all the ladies in Riverdale are hot for our feckless protagonist for no reason anyone can ever identify, so I suppose it’s not out of the question that someone developed an Archie app. Still, I weep for the waste of programming time it would represent.

Momma, 4/9/11

The Hobbes children are so traumatized by their upbringing that their mother’s face haunts even their masturbatory sessions.