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Dilbert, 5/23/06

Panel one: Trademark minimalist Dilbert art, straight on. Panel two: Trademark minimalist Dilbert art, at a 30 degree angle. Panel three: Trademark minimalist Dilbert art, through a window. Conclusion: You can dress these drawings up, but you can’t really take them out.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/23/06

For everybody’s who’s been waiting since 1971 for Herb and Jamaal’s take on glam rock-inspired androgyny: at long last, your day has arrived. Note cunning use of passive voice in punchline, maintaining the mystery for all of us, for some mysterious and unfunny reason.

Marvin, 5/23/06

Marvin has spent the last week and half lingering on a “Marvin’s grandfather has become obsessed with Sudoku” storyline so mind-warpingly boring that it makes Gasoline Alley’s DMV-a-thon look like the car chase scene in the French Connection by comparison. (The game has been referred to as “Yunoklu” throughout; I imagine that the reasons for this are trademark-related, because they certainly can’t be humor-related.) Today’s episode does have a glimmer of interest, however, in that blind panic has turned one (and only one) of Grandpa’s glasses lenses blue. If you can explain this, you’re a better comics-explainer than I.

Momma, 5/23/06

Hmm, there’s some odd quoting going on here: “Show biz” is quoted when Momma says it, but not when Francis does. I wonder what Finger Quotin’ Margo thinks of that?

Damn, girl, that’s cold.

Cockroach update: Another freakishly huge representative of order Blattodea in the cat’s dish this morning, leading to a humiliating repeat of yesterday’s pathetic drama. That’s twice in two days; in the 36 months of the food bowl sitting in that exact spot, it had only happened once before that. Are the roaches getting smarter? Are they plotting to rise up against us? I’m disturbed. Anyone have any bright ideas on roach control?

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Marvin and Six Chix, 4/18/06

Boy, here’s a cheery pair. Marvin is funny because, awwww, he’s too young to understand the concept of death! Isn’t that precious? He isn’t constantly stalked by the terrifying specter of his own mortality! How cute!

What on earth have his parents parked him in front of to distract him while they eat/read/have sex/pretend for one precious moment that their life hasn’t been ruined by a baby? Too many inspirational Lifetime movies can warp his tiny developing mind.

Also, if I were forced to wear that hideous grey union suit as a baby, I would have figured out what it meant to die … of embarrassment!

Six Chix, meanwhile, is funny because … well, I guess it’s funny because this old lady is going to die! That’s a knee-slapper, all right. Unlike Marvin, she has a grim, joyless look that says that she’s known all about death for some time, and frankly thinks it’s time to get on with the whole thing. So come on, hellish, grinning demon from the netherword, let’s get this show on the road! We can pick up Tommie’s favorite patient on the way!

Curtis, 4/18/06

If Curtis is going to insist on doing a zany, contrived storyline where Curtis accidentally signs up his dad to give blood, the thing he fears the most, then I have to say I think it’s very clever to do it this way: with the hijinks implied (“I saw it on the news!” “…and the firemen were able to get me down out of the tree!”) rather than actually trying to put everything in panels. Nevertheless, the word “happy” in panel one is smack dab between two of the most inappropriate quotation marks in comics history — and this being Curtis, that’s saying a lot. In fact, I’ve decided that when you abuse the noble quotation mark this badly, you must suffer the wrath of … Quotin’ Margo!

By the way, kids, don’t try to air-quote like this at home; Margo is especially suited for this activity because, as Uncle Lumpy pointed out when I posted the comic this came from, she’s got six fingers on each hand. Yikes!

Get Fuzzy, 4/18/06

OK, seriously Darby, I can’t go down this road with you. Just let me know when you get back from the brink, I’ll be waitin’ for ya.

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Marvin, 3/11/06

So, when I last was following Marvin on anything resembling a regular basis, it was about a baby and his sarcastic thought balloons. Now I’ve picked it up again years later, and it also appears to be about dogs and their sarcastic thought balloons. What is it about cartoonists and adorable pets and their inner thoughts? I turn to Marvin for baby thought action, damn it. The fact that the babies and dogs can understand one another’s thoughts is an even more disturbing development.

By the way, here’s a lesson for you childless types that I learned the hard way yesterday: if someone tells you an adorable anecdote about their toddler, and you counter with a very similar anecdote about your pet, the parent will not be pleased. Take my word for it.

Anyway, this particular cartoon about the travails of doggie love is deeply incomprehensible to me. There’s an Irish wolfhound that lives in my neighborhood, and it’s roughly the size of a deer; I don’t want to sound prejudiced against interracial love, but the logistics of the dating situation described seem next to impossible if things were to go beyond platonic. Next: armpit hair? Buh? Is this a joke about Irish people (or Europeans, or “foreigners” in general) not shaving their armpits? Is the joke supposed to be that no dog shaves his or her armpits, so Duke is just plain crazy? If so, why bring the freakishly oversized Irish wolfhound up at all? Are Duke’s crossed eyes supposed to be the Universal Comics Symbol for Crazy? Or do they work in conjunction with the tongue to represent Being Grossed Out? The more I think about it, the more I resent it all.