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Cleats, 1/22/10

On those occasions when I think of Cleats, I think of “gentle (to the point of blandness) humor punctuated by bouts of unspeakable horror.’ This week’s installment, focusing on the whimsical subject of “Bigfoot football,” has mostly been on the gentle-to-the-point-of-blandness side, but only today did I notice that the Sasquatches are using the withered corpse of a beaver as their ball. So that’s something, I guess.

Family Circus, 1/22/10

Dolly, you panderer! The snowman and snowlady should not be left alone in the yard together until they’re married. This is exactly the sort of ideas you get from public schooling.

Hi and Lois, 1/22/10

Chip’s friend is wearing a little hat secured to his head with some sort of elastic chin strap, so, yeah, it’s probably a good idea that he’s reading Style magazine in the second panel.

The poster on the wall indicates that the boys are fans of Paul Butterfield Blues Band keyboardist Mark Naftalin, which is a little disappointing to me because at first glance I just thought they were proponents of free trade.

Mary Worth, 1/22/10

You’ve gotta feel bad for Dawn as she angrily swoops and dances around the nervous Mary. Not long ago her boyfriend cheated on her with another woman, and now she finds out that her father’s sperm cheated with another egg, before she was even born! I have to say that her withering “something” in the second panel is the piece of Mary Worth dialogue most loaded down with contempt since Mary threw “Capisce?” in Aldo’s face.

Spider-Man, 1/22/10

“He thinks I can point him to Wolverine! And he’ll keep attacking me until I do! Unless — I run away, like a coward! Yes, that’s it! Ha ha, can’t catch me, I have the proportional pusillanimity of a spider!”

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Blondie, 1/20/10

I haven’t compiled an elaborate spreadsheet charting the time of day that the action in Blondie takes place or anything — that will be the point when I officially slip into the comics-obsessive deep end, and you are all allowed to officially have me put away when that happens — but my gut tells me that we’ve been seeing more nighttime episodes of late. This is all good with me, as I find that it gives the strip a sort of poignant charm that it desperately needs. Take today’s installment, for instance, in which Dagwood and Herb wander the otherwise empty sidewalks of their soulless exurb. They’re in their work gear, but it’s a well-known fact that they car-pool in to their generic white-collar jobs, and they live in the American sprawl zone where you can’t get anywhere without a car anyway, so where exactly are they supposed to be walking to? My guess is that they were dropped off in front of their bland low-slung off-white homes and had some sort of midlife crisis à deux, and are now walking around their subdivision jabbering nonsense as they psych themselves up to abandon their families and launch themselves on a life-affirming adventure.

Mary Worth, 1/20/10

Say, let’s check out what’s going on in Mary WoAAAUUUGGGH DAWN’S FACE HER TERRIBLE TERRIBLE FACE

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Crock, 1/18/10

One of the interesting aspects of following a decades-old comic strip as it runs through its mildly lucrative paces is that you’ll start to notice all the visual and conceptual cruft that is kept in place for reasons nobody can really remember. For instance, once upon a time, a prominently cleft chin à la Cary Grant or Rock Hudson was sort of a stereotypical marker of an especially handsome man, so naturally comically attractive Crock character Captain Preppie was outfitted with one. His chin cleft has only grown more exaggerated with time, even as society’s appreciation for cleft chins has waned, and one wonders if the artists remember what exactly that is at the end of his chin or what it signifies. At least the anatomically alarming bulbs depicted in panels one and two today are somewhat within the bounds of comic-strip stylized chins; but the two growths dangling asymmetrically off the bottom of Preppie’s jaw in panel three … well, let’s just say that they don’t speak well of the Foreign Legion’s medical care, or of the aesthetic judgement of the local ladies, who are generally depicted as being unable to get enough of the captain’s tumor-ridden face.

B.C., 1/18/10

Of course, you always have the option of just ignoring long-running visual features of your strip. Look, Wiley’s other leg grew back!

Mary Worth, 1/18/10

Mary Worth does nothing better than shattering our expectations for excitement and fun, but I’ve been really disappointed by the lack of drama in this bastard-son storyline so far. So, Wilbur and Kurt reconnect via the Internets, and, after a little initial awkwardness, bond over fishing and … all is well? NOT HARDLY! Look at that crazed, murderous expression on Kurt’s face in the final panel as he describes his mother’s lovers coming and going out of their lives, if you know what I mean, and I think you do! In a transparent bit of Freudianism, Kurt never got over the jealousy he felt when confronted with his mother’s sexuality as a child, and now has decided to track down every man Abby ever slept with and kill them one by one. Better start waddling for your life now, Wilbur!