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Beetle Bailey, 9/25/13

Probably you were hoping that Spec. Gizmo’s sex robot would a be a shameful, one-off joke that would never reappear in the comics pages or on the Internet again. Well, too bad, because you don’t live in your perfect world! You live in this world of unrelenting horror, with the rest of us. Anyway, panel one reveals all sorts of unfortunate things. For instance, when Gizmo’s robot was first unveiled, nobody had bothered to drape human clothes over its square metallic chassis, yet now it appears to be wearing some kind of exaggeratedly girly dress with a crinoline skirt, further gendering the fembot and making it a slightly more acceptable target of Chip’s sexual lusts. The mere act of clothing it can be seen as akin to teaching it a shame-based code of sexual morality, much like the one Adam and Eve learned abruptly after eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The fembot’s rudimentary ethics may be limited to sexual matters, as it seems more than willing to use its inhuman strength to work violence against humans, though perhaps this is a sign that its advanced circuitry understands the concept of consent and believes that attempts to violate its structural integrity may legitimately be met with self-defense.

Anyway, I was going to do a close reading of panel two along these same lines, but then I read “He has to turn off the work switch and press the love button” and so I went and lied down for an hour instead.

Mary Worth, 9/25/13

OK, Mary Worth: I enjoy making endless jokes about Wilbur’s sandwich obsession as much as the next person who blogs about newspaper comic strips, but I like to do it on my terms. Frankly, if you’re going to include an entire panel of the sort of filthy talk that you might expect to hear when you dial 1-900-HOT-SANDWICH, I’m going to feel a little bit baited.

Herb and Jamaal, 9/25/13

I genuinely enjoy how insanely excited our nameless white-collar drone/Heart and Soul customer looks in the first couple of panels as he sets up his joke about how meetings make you doze off, ha ha, amiright people. He’s really going the extra mile here, and I appreciate it when people put effort into their sarcasm.

Phantom, 9/25/13

“Except for a period from the 1870s, when European powers began the wars of conquest referred to as the ‘Scramble for Africa,’ until the process of decolonization really took hold in the 1960s! I mean, the British, man! I couldn’t leave a skull mark on the chins of the entire British Empire, you know what I’m saying?”

Pluggers, 9/25/13

Pluggers remember a time, now thankfully in the distant past, when they had to engage in brief bouts of physical movement every half hour or so.

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Luann, 9/23/13

Congratulations, Luann: for the first time in years, you have caused me to feel actual empathy for your title character! I worked in libraries for much of my high school and college career, and I always enjoyed those gigs and saw them as a haven from the stressful food service jobs taken by many of my peers. I sure would’ve been upset if I had lost that job because of budget cuts, and particularly upset if I had lost that job because the library decided to spend money hiring H.R. Giger to design ever more elaborately phallic Billy the Bookworm costumes.

Shoe, 9/23/13

Usually when you see liver on a menu you’re being offered some kind of bird liver, right? What I’m saying is that this is another instance where Shoe’s goggle eyes of horror are wholly justified. “What am I, chopped liver? No, seriously! Am I to be this lunchtime’s sacrifice, my gut slit open and my organs chopped to bits and cooked for the culinary delight of my fellow bird-men? Has the day when I become chopped liver finally arrived?”

Hi and Lois, 9/23/13

I’ve seen few things in the comics more harrowing than Trixie’s expression in panel two. Her hands folded in her lap are a nice touch. Pretty sure she’s been sitting there, staring at that leaf, rolling the concept of mortality around in her mind, for several hours now.

Mary Worth, 9/23/13

“Hi Mary … it’s Wilbur! How are you? Are you making a sandwich? Are you making one right now? MY SANDWICH SENSE IS TINGLING”

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Mary Worth, 9/18/13

Oh, man, I really fell down on the job of keeping you up with Mary’s adventures (and I use that word in the loosest possible sense) over the past few weeks, didn’t I? Well, lucky for me, I don’t even have to type up a recap, because she’s conveniently thought-ballooning one for you. Her choice of reading material does give me an opportunity to point something out that I’ve been meaning to bring to your attention, though: there is now an officially authorized Mary Worth anthology that you can buy with your money on Amazon, right now. It is called Love and Other Stories of Mary Worth and it includes three of the great Mary Worth storylines of the past decade. The first is the story of Anna, who Mary urged to pursue her old flame Brian at her high school reunion even though he was married, but it turned out he wasn’t married anymore and so they got married and had sex and then she was afraid she was barren but then she barfed and it turned out she wasn’t. Next of course is the gripping tale of Aldomania, following the tale of thwarted romance from first glimpse to fiery death. And then it concludes with the story about the figure skater and her overbearing father-coach, which I seem to remember enjoying at the time but in retrospect it seems kind of meh and I’m not going to bother fishing through my archives to find the strips, but still, you should buy this book, because why not? I actually had forgotten the title of this collection and briefly thought that, in an act of subliminal buzz-building, Mary was reading her own book. Still, we can hold out hope that Return to Love is the sequel that will follow hot on the heels of Love and Other Stories, and will include all sorts of romantical Mary Worth tales like, uh, that lady who almost had sex with Charterstone’s designated pervert but then decided to stay married to her husband instead. Stay tuned!

Spider-Man, 9/18/13

Man, do I love how indignant El Condor is over Spidey and Tarantula’s ruse! Now I know why the U.S. government keeps propping up his regime despite its well-documented history of human rights abuses: because he’s hilarious! (Also, he’s cheerfully subservient to American business interests.)

Crock, 9/18/13

Remember when everyone was freaking about E. coli in their hamburgers? I think it was the late ’90s? Also, remember when “hamburger steak” was a thing that people said and/or ate? I think it was never? I guess they mean Salisbury steak, but if so why does supposed Frenchman Crock love the Kaiser so much?