Post Content

Wizard of Id, 5/15/10

I must give reluctant kudos to the Wizard of Id for not only acknowledging its medieval setting, but using it as a springboard for an anachronistic play on words. The modern expression “fell off a truck,” a euphemism for stolen goods, would of course be meaningless to the inhabitants of Id, who are wholly ignorant the internal combustion engine, so “fell off a wagon” is the closest equivalent; but this in turn is itself a modern expression, denoting an addict whose attempts at reformation have failed. The combination of the archaic and the modern results in a commendably multilayered gag that ought by rights to be the stock in trade of these period strips.

The Wizard of Id also holds true to its milieu by depicting human beings being bought and sold like chattel.

Mary Worth, 5/15/10

Ho ho, we’ve spent all this time focusing on Bonnie’s piddling little compulsive shopping problem, and only now does she confess that she has “many bad habits”? I can’t wait to see how Mary reacts when she realizes that she’s spent all her meddling energy on a red herring. Does she have the strength left to deal with the cross-country bank robbery spree? The ketamine distribution ring? The dismembered drifters neatly packaged in Charterstone’s communal storage space?

Family Circus, 5/15/10

Soon Jeffy’s possessed demon-hand will lead to a string of gruesome stranglings. “Now, Jeffy, tell us why you did what you did,” the court-appointed social worker will ask. “I’m sorry!” he says. “It was my fingers! My fingers got away from me! My bloody, murderous fingers!” [GENTLE LAUGHTER FROM ELDERLY NEWSPAPER SUBSCRIBERS ACROSS AMERICA]

Post Content

Herb and Jamaal, 5/8/10

This strip, which consists entirely of Herb sitting around silently ruminating about his own inadequacies, would have been depressing enough if it had run, as you might expect from its set-up, on Monday. Had it appeared at the week’s beginning, we could at least console ourselves with the thought that perhaps Herb was being too hard on himself, and that he might find to his own surprise that this week would see some triumphs, large or small. But as it instead appears on Saturday, there’s really no other interpretation other than that he’s spending his weekend obsessively going over the wreckage of another failed week in his mind. The fact that all of this is in thought balloon form indicates that he feels that he can’t share these dark thoughts even with his closest friend; the next time we see our two title characters engaged in light-hearted banter or wacky antics, I for one will assume that Herb is putting on a brave face and secretly contemplating suicide.

Mary Worth, 5/8/10

“Easy for me to come here and criticize you? Bonnie, let me put it this way. When you’re tired, do you find it easy to fall asleep? When you’re thirsty, do you find it easy to drink? Do you find it easy to breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide?”

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 5/3/10

Good lord, what sort of grim PSA is this? “Forest animals who would have normally gone off to their sweet reward in Death’s friendly bosom must now live on for decades inside their broken, shattered mortal shells, thanks to the tyrannical Forest Government and its so-called public safety legislation!” Of particular note are the expressions on the faces of our paramedics; the haunted eyes and spontaneous perspiration are presumably a horrified reaction not to the bear’s mild head injury, but to the condition of whatever poor beast is still trapped in that car. (Sorry, colorists: you can’t convince me that the fluid pooling around the overturned vehicle is motor oil.) Once the the jaws of life extract the mangled form of the gorilla or crane or what have you, the poor soul will have years in a hospital ward getting nutrition through a straw to look forward to, rather than Heaven. Thanks a lot, seat belts!

While the dull-eyed pink bunny is clearly just a run-of-the-mill accident gawker, I’m betting that dog in the suit is a lawyer with a pain and suffering case on his mind.

Mary Worth, 5/3/10

I hate to actually agree with Mary for once, but … has Bonnie actually heard from Ernie that he’s staying away from her neatly stacked clutter? I mean, she’s just narcissistically assuming that his decision-making is all about her. Maybe he just met some other woman during his business trip and has fallen in love and run off! Or, maybe he wasn’t wearing his seat belt and was killed in a terrible car accident, and right now his corpse is waiting unclaimed in some far-off morgue, just because Bonnie was too full of self-loathing to make some phone calls! Won’t she feel bad then, hmmm?

Say, you know what could really soothe those bad feelings? A little retail therapy, if you know what I mean!