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Rex Morgan, M.D. 6/29/09

Rex Morgan, M.D.’s narrative lens has blessedly chosen to avert its gaze from June and Rex’s sure-to-be-awkward attempts to make a baby, which, I assume, means that we have arrived at the beginning of an EXCITING NEW ADVENTURE! Involving, uh, Becka, I guess; I mostly forgot who she was, but I think she’s a nurse at Rex and June’s practice (you might remember her helping June prepare for the MRSApocalypse). Anyway, she’s married to … Peter, it appears, whom I’m pretty sure I have no idea who that is, and who appears to be skulking about Sector T5 with sexy nutritionist Estelle Kirkland! What could these two be up to? Nutrition? Adultery? Adultery, followed by nutritious meals? Stay tuned!

Mary Worth, 6/29/09

Mary’s increasing desperation at her failed attempt to bludgeon Delilah back into her doomed marriage has been rather transparent. Nevertheless, Mary, that’s no excuse for pointing so rudely. Delilah may not be able to see it, but we can, and I for one am quite offended. It makes me want to refuse to join Lord Kitchener’s Army, which, having defeated the Hun, is apparently to be deployed to restore the magical Delilah-Lawrence romance back to its rightful unity, despite what the actual parties involved want.

Shoe, 6/29/09

Specifically, on someone who actually has hair — a mammal, say.

Pluggers, 6/29/09

Pluggers are sick of all this wasteful government spending. When will Congress allocate funds to something truly useful, like helping pluggers poop?

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Mary Worth, 6/20/09

I love that Mary Worth has gone all Herb and Jamaal-y on us, with “Thanks for preparing my favorite dish!” Perhaps this ambiguity is meant to draw the reader in, so that Delilah becomes the viewpoint character. You can imagine that Mary Worth has prepared your favorite dish, whatever that happens to be! If you concentrate on the deliciousness hard enough and then fix your eyes on Mary’s grinning face in the second panel, it’ll be like you’re there! Then you’ll run screaming into the woods!

I think it’s more likely, though, that the author knew that whatever specific food references were put into the dialogue would be ignored in favor of the artist’s favored blobby food-like units, and couldn’t bring herself to write “Thanks for preparing my favorite dish, fist-sized grey ’n’ orange masses! I can’t believe you remembered!”

Funky Winkerbean, 6/20/09

Uh huh, “went up to Cedar Point,” “took off with some of his buddies,” whatever. Summer and Cory are totally off getting teen pregnant right now, as these two mope it up.

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Hey kids, it’s comics education time! You’ve probably seen me refer to “throwaway panels” when I tackle some of the Sunday strips, and it may be that you don’t know what this means! Essentially, most Sunday strips are shipped to newspapers with an extra row of panels at the top, which some (many, in these days of shrinking budgets) papers cut off so that they can fit more comics into a limited space; as a result, the strip as a whole must be able to stand without these panels. There are varying strategies for dealing with the narrative problem thus raised.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 6/14/09

For instance, some strips use them to present little mini-episodes that stand somewhat apart from the main action. A good example is today’s Dennis the Menace, where we learn that Mr. Wilson would like nothing better than to spray his irritating neighbor with deadly poison.

Panels from Curtis, 6/14/09

Another is today’s Curtis, where we discover that Gunther is sweeping the floor to his barbershop! Ha ha! That Gunther! What won’t he do?

Mary Worth, 6/14/09

Sometimes the throwaway panels change the focus of the strip. For instance, without the top row of panels in today’s Mary Worth, we’d probably manage to ignore those pinkish briquettes that Mary and Toby are gobbling up by the fistful. But with those panels in place, we’re forced to confront the fact that they’re genuine Mary Worth-prepared “salmon squares,” and must kill a little bit of our souls trying to figure out what, exactly, a “salmon square” might be. Has Mary taken moist, delicious, tender salmon and mercilessly baked it until it’s a series of hard, crispy pucks that are easy to pick up without getting your hands oily, and that taste like ashes in your mouth? Is the salmon inside some kind of pink pastry shell, resulting in an awful salmon-flavored Pop-Tart? Was this so-called “new recipe” written on parchment in human blood in the bowels of hell by Satan himself? Probably!

Marvin, 6/14/09

Then there are throwaway panels that alter the entire thrust of the strip. For instance, without the top row of panels, this strip could be summarized as “babies love cookies, and grandmas love giving cookies to babies”; but with them, the message is more “babies and dogs are an awful lot alike.”

Mark Trail, 6/14/09

And sometimes the throaway panels can accommodate differing levels of ambient prudishness across various media markets. Would a drawing of a comely lass in a bikini result in angry letters from comics readers in your paper’s distribution area? Just remove the top row et voilà! You’ll still get a helpful text wall on avoiding rip currents, and a terrifying close up of our naive swimmer dying in terror. That seagull in the final panel doesn’t seem to be helping matters; in fact, I’m guessing that he will soon be dive-bombing our hapless swimmer, so that she’ll drown more quickly and fatten up the fishes that he’ll eat later. Nature is cruel!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/09

Unrelated to throwaway panels, but related to dying in terror: does this strip finally settle the “What happened to Wally” question? This being Funky Winkerbean, we should have guessed that he died, probably in terror.

I was going to make a crack about how Becky conveniently arranged the parade to conclude at the cemetery where Wally’s grave was, but in all likelihood in the world of Funky Winkerbean it’s impossible to plan a parade — indeed, it’s impossible to plan a trip of any significant distance — that doesn’t end up at a graveyard.