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Beetle Bailey, 4/28/10

I’m not sure why the Camp Swampy leadership is so excited about America’s still fragile economic upturn; after all, they’re all career officers with guaranteed government pensions, and improved private sector hiring is likely to make military recruiting more difficult. I guess maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical, and should just accept that these four guys are rooting for our nation’s GDP and glad to see it growing again. It’s also possible that they will take literally any available excuse to get blotto.

The “again” bit doesn’t come as a surprise to me at all, since there have been 10 or so recessions over the 60 years Beetle Bailey has been in print.

Spider-Man, 4/28/10

Spidey is always quick with a quip, but maybe he ought to give a little bit of thought to these one-liners before he lets loose with them. “That’s right, Sabretooth — I was able to successfully hide from you, like the coward I am! That’s why you can’t see me right n — aw, crap.”

Marvin, 4/28/10

Man, Marvin is definitely not disappointing when it comes to this “stand-up comedian grandma” shtick. “My aged, wizened body is falling apart, bit by bit! I feel the stench of death rising up from my own flesh! I could go out at any minute! Seriously, why are all of you laughing?” Also worth noting is that the art is not a repeat of yesterday’s strip, even though it’s just as static and boring. Kudos for that, I guess?

Jumble, 4/28/10

Oh look, it appears I’m in the Jumble again, this time as a counterfeiter? Sorry, Jumble Jeff, as a professional blogger, I already have a license to print money.

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Marvin, 4/27/10

Regular readers of Marvin (a company of damned souls among whom I number) know that the strip takes occasional breaks from poop jokes to churn out multi-day theme weeks, like “Belly Laffs” or “CrySpace” or “Marvin’s Terrible Advice Column For Babies, The Name Of Which I Refuse To Look Up.” One of the least pleasant aspects of these sequences is that they feature jokes that are supposed to be jokes within the strip’s reality. We’re not just being invited to laugh at Marvin’s heavy-lidded antics; we’re expected to celebrate the characters’ own wit when they come up with hilarious “pregnant women get fat” gags. This to me doubles the offense of the whole project; it’s not enough that the jokes aren’t funny, but the structure of the narrative is built around taking the funniness of the jokes as a given, which makes the whole thing fail all the more.

That having been said, I have high hopes for this emerging “Marvin’s grandmother’s stand-up career” sequence. By looking at the expression of naked contempt on her face, we can tell that she has no illusions about the humorousness of her material. The fact that the easily amused and possibly senile residents of her retirement home are laughing uproariously at her litany of old people jokes doesn’t allow her to fool herself into thinking that she’s funny; instead, it just causes her to turn her internalized loathing onto her pathetic audience. If she can maintain this attitude of icy disdain, she shows great promise of becoming an excellent meta-comedian, with her entire act based on her own knowledge of her comic inadequacies and hatred for her fans.

Family Circus, 4/27/10

Speaking of comedic structure, I have no idea whatsoever why this Family Circus is supposed to be funny; however, I know why I like it, which is because Billy is having some kind of full-on manic episode, flinging envelopes of seeds all over the floor and gibbering out semi-comprehensible nonsense. I’m not sure why exactly Mommy, who will be responsible for picking up all those seeds when Billy runs shrieking into the fertilizer section, looks so pleased; maybe she knows that her eldest son’s brief enthusiasm for locally grown nutritious food will have passed within minutes, and she can continue to feed him Top Ramen and Pop Tarts until he’s felled by type 2 diabetes and/or hypertension at age 15.

Apartment 3-G, 4/27/10

This is almost certainly some sort of unnecessarily coy set-up to a “Tommie gets an ambush makeover from I Dressed In The Dark” storyline, but I’d like to believe that Ruby’s describing how, almost without noticing it, she became a phone sex operator.

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Hagar the Horrible, 4/19/10

Wow, this little crowd scene may represent the most artistic effort and affection I’ve ever seen lavished on a Hagar the Horrible strip. There are really quite a lot of nice touches: the crowd behind our heroes, grinning good-naturedly at the spectacle; the occasional pitchfork, conveying the both social class of the onlookers and the threat of violence lurking just beneath the surface of the seemingly festive gathering; the knight just to the left of Lucky Eddie, literally licking his lips in anticipation, and his friend, cheerfully pointing out some detail of interest to him; and, of course, the black-robed, torch-wielding executioner, his eyes wild but his dour expression indicating that he alone appreciates the terrible gravity of what’s about to take place.

Of course, all this is in service a particularly grim punchline — ha ha, everyone likes coming out to see a couple of guys get set on fire! Of course, said guys are savage Viking warriors who may well have killed or enslaved many of the family and friends of the people in the crowd, so perhaps their murderous glee is justifiable.

The Phantom, 4/19/10

So it turns out that the narrator dude who I misidentified last December as Billy Dee Williams was, as several helpful readers pointed out, merely a miscolored depiction of deceased Phantom creator Lee Falk. Apparently the coloring crew has been alerted and today he has been depicted with the proper skin tone. However, I’m not sure if anyone can explain the artist’s choice to portray him in panel three as a some kind of deranged goth leprechaun, complete with skull-tipped shillelagh.

Marvin, 4/19/10

Oh, look, it appears to be a new character in Marvin! Nothing good ever comes of new characters in Marvin, as nothing good ever comes from the strip itself, but since she’s making her debut by threatening physical harm to the titular hell-infant, I’m willing to give her a chance.

Apartment 3-G, 4/19/10

We may not get to see anyone die in a hail of bullets in Apartment 3-G, but we do get to see how Margo’s mind works, which is almost as harrowing/hilarious! “Only people who are so fanatically devoted to me that they’ll sacrifice their lives for my safety merit Margo Alone Time.”

Mary Worth, 4/19/10

I’m pretty sure Bonnie just made a pass at Mary, which I’m pretty sure makes her the second most sad, lonely, and pathetic person on Earth (after Dr. Jeff, of course).