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Hi and Lois and Pearls Before Swine, 9/8/08

I got about a jillion e-mails about this today basically asking me OH MY GOD DO YOU THINK THIS IS A COINCIDENCE?, which I have to say that I pretty much do, as the jokes don’t work together quite well enough for it to be a coordinated effort. I think Pastis just picked the wrong day to make fun of Hi and Lois (though when the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC hired goons burn down his house, he’ll find that any day is the wrong day to make fun of Hi and Lois.) It might at first be hard to imagine that Hi and Lois would be taking on any kind of international politics, but keep in mind that this strip was one of the first to tackle the subprime meltdown, so it’s smarter than it looks.

I’m intrigued by Ditto’s shirt. It looks like when the time comes for him to take absolute power from his sister’s ailing hands, he’ll have a spiffy logo for his paramilitary organization all ready to go.

Family Circus, 9/8/08

There’s something off about this cartoon. Big Daddy Keane’s indulgent smile clashes with his complaint that the days when his house wasn’t cluttered up by four pants-pooping submorons and their many overpriced toys are now as distant as the Fillmore Administration or the Thirty Years War. And the children’s rather generic hijinks don’t at all imply a brash solipsism in which everything that preceded their birth is consigned to a single inchoate prehistoric moment. Presumably this panel is designed to be repeatedly trotted out and assigned a new “parents say the darnedest things about their kids” caption as needed — which captions, I predict, will only become more bitter as time goes on.

Marvin, 9/8/08

Say, remember the Hulk, the sort-of popular comic book character that became the basis of a hit TV show in the late ’70s, and then later of two not-quite-blockbuster films in the ’00s? Well, Marvin hopes you still have “Hulk fever” as a residual effect of the marketing behind these media properties, because we’re apparently going to get some lame Hulk-themed jokes for the next few days. No matter how bad they get, we can at least console our selves that they appear not to actually feature the hated Marvin himself.

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Panels from For Better Or For Worse, 8/31/08

So I was mostly defeated by the FBOFW Wall o’ Text that greeted me on Sunday, but I feel I have to say something, so…

Thank God Deanna gave up on that pharmacist gig to finally get into an acceptable profession for an ovaries-bearing Canadian: sewing, and the sale of sewing accoutrements. Now at last a more qualified man can take her old job advising women on how to “accidentally” not take the pills he prescribes!

The “just for laughs” angle baffles me a little bit. Perhaps now that the Pattersons and their hangers on aren’t being monitored and controlled minutely by their Creator, they won’t be forced to end every interpersonal transaction with a terrible pun; but Deanna, in some form of Stockholm Syndrome, is no longer able to survive without the constant corny jokes.

But April, at least, got out. And got to get it on with a cowboy, whom she’ll presumably drop like a hot potato when she finds out that Gerald is getting divorced.

Anyway, Ces Marciuliano’s Medium Large today pretty much has the definitive statement on the subject.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/31/08

“For $10,000 to the clinic, she can write anything she wants!” Oh, Rex, you’re such a whore for humiliation. And for money.

I’m kind of in love with Rex’s little office-basketball move in panel four. “Check it out, everyone! I may not be a big yachting expert, but I’ve still got the athletic talents of my youth! I’m totally not going to cry like a little baby next week while clinging to the side of the boat and projectile vomiting!”

Slylock Fox, 8/31/08

In today’s puzzle, Slylock has gone back to his “Teach other creatures how to be meddling detectives” gig that we’ve seen before. You’d think that this would just produce competition for his own work as a freelance nosey detective, but maybe he gets the big bucks for these classes — especially in this case, in which he isn’t lecturing to kids but appears to be running some sort of adult education program. But the one who looks really anxious about obsolescence is Max, who is regarding that duck with the notepad suspiciously. “Wait — is a sidekick supposed to write things down? Oh, God, I’m going to be replaced! Please, don’t, Sly! I have no job skills!”

Panel from Marvin, 8/31/08

I kind of love this panel out of context. The joke is about terribly fiery grilling accidents, a trope that (and here’s a sentence I don’t think anyone has ever written before) is done better in Crankshaft; but in this panel on its own, with the parents regarding each other with heavy-lidded hostility and Marvin’s eyes wide with terror, it pretty much reads like a threat.

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Marvin, 8/19/08

The feature that brought you “Belly Laffs” now presents a running “gag” that’s even more recycled-art-a-riffic: “Ask Marvin,” in which not even the third panel contains any illustrative artwork! No, it’s just three panels of a terrible, typing baby, who urges his fellow infants to be so incredibly hateful that parents won’t just think twice about having more children, they’ll actually be physically unable to have sex because they’re so soul-blightingly exhausted!

Speaking of babies, faithful reader aquagirl2 fears that her youngest bears more than a passing resemblance to the terrible Marvin. What do you all think?

The haircut is a little uncanny, I think, but that’s easily fixed with scissors or clippers. Remember, a bald baby is better than a Marvin-resembling baby.

UPDATE: At aquagirl2’s request, I’m posting the other pic she sent me, in which her little Marvin-a-like looks happier and cuter. I didn’t put this up originally because he doesn’t look as much like Marvin here — in particular, his eyes aren’t let up with Satan’s hellfire — but he does seem to be thought-ballooning something, possibly about making his parents’ life miserable, or about crapping.

Gil Thorp, 8/19/08

Elmer’s too dumb to realize why “that job for [his] coach” involves painting a huge target in an open field and standing on the bulls-eye. Having already bombed Jimmy Hughes’ house with his deathplane, Gil is now flying to Michigan to eliminate Elmer as well, determined to put an end to these painfully boring summer storylines once and for all.

Mary Worth, 8/19/08

Dear Toby Cameron:

You probably think that we can’t see your thought balloons, and that you therefore are free to visualize your shirtless husband whenever you’d like. Well, we can, and you aren’t.

Sincerely,
The Mary Worth-reading public

Crankshaft, 8/19/08

Ho ho, the battle of the cranky old folks just keeps getting better! It’s pretty obvious that at the end of this trip to the cemetery somebody’s going to end up at the bottom of a shallow grave — but who? I’m on tenterhooks!