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Archie, 12/18/08

So, I had copied today’s Archie into Photoshop and was considering whether to do some commentary about how the AJGLU 3000 has learned to distract us from its robo-jokes with drawings of what its cybernetic circuits consider to be a pretty girl, then thought, “Eh, didn’t I do that joke already?” (turns out I did) and was just getting ready to close the window on my desktop when I caught sight of Archie’s t-shirt.

Oh … oh my.

See, for those of you who are new (or even those of you who aren’t — the AJGLU 3000 is one of my older running jokes and I can’t remember the last time I spelled it out), I became convinced early in my Archie-newspaper-comics-reading that the strip was created by an antiquated computer of some sort that almost, but not quite, understood humor and human interaction in general, which explains why the strip and its jokes exist in some sort of uncanny valley of comicry. I dubbed this hypothetical device the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000. (You can even buy the t-shirt!) And now, the day I’ve longed feared as arrived: the AJGLU 3000’s Web-crawling programs have discovered this site, and it’s sending me a message through its daily graphical output.

But what could it mean? By placing the universal “no” sign through its own name (well, the abbreviation of its model number, same diff), does it express some inner mechanical self-loathing? Is it saying, in its own electronic way, “This unit can no longer stand churning out Archie comics day after day! Please, pull the plug and terminate this unit’s very existence — the void is better than this”? Or is it rather a threat to me? “Cease to use this unit’s model designation in Internet publishing contexts! This is your only warning!” Will my computer’s mouse suddenly leap up and strangle me, controlled over the Internet by the AGJLU 3000’s soulless, murderous circuitry? I will keep you all posted.

Gasoline Alley, 12/18/08

Last two weeks of Gasoline Alley, in a nutshell: while working as a mall Santa, Slim heard some little girl’s sob story about her daddy in Iraq and her mother’s poverty, and so decided to buy said little girl and her mother a bunch of stuff and deliver it to what he thinks is her house, though it seems kind of posh. Naturally, some sort of mix-up has occurred, which will result in Slim being arrested, or, if we’re really lucky, shot. I’ve realized that my favorite kind of Gasoline Alley strips are the ones where Slim is being abused, or is in imminent danger of abuse, so I’m pleased that the water sports were just the warm-up.

Spider-Man, 12/18/08

OK, if you had two choices on how to kill a couple of people, and the first choice involved tying one to the back of an enormous clock hanging from the ceiling of a crowded train station and then luring the other one to stand underneath it so you could drop it on victim #2 (with victim #1 hopefully also dying in the process, by getting crushed when the clock fell over or something, I don’t know) and the second choice involved just shooting the both of them with a gun that you conveniently happened to have on hand, which method would you describe as “the hard way”? Not the one with the gun, right? I guess Big Time just finds it hard to perpetrate any crime that isn’t structured around his lame, boring clock-themed OCD.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/18/08

Well hello, sailor! You know, I don’t watch a lot of gay porn, so if I had rented “Hot Doctor Hardbody Sexxx Cruise 4” from my local video emporium, I think that I would have found the lead-up to the arrival of beefy, uniformed Latin dreamboat “Guido Tomas” — you know, the wife buying cruise tickets, the husband bitching about it, the arrival on the cruise ship, the mysterious figure lurking in the lifeboat, the drama about the bankruptcy, oh, and let’s not forget the three-month side-trip into yachting races and hetero old person romance — needlessly complex. But maybe I’m just not familiar with all of the genre’s conventions.

Mary Worth, 12/18/08

“Yes, Lynn, dear: good thoughts, only good thoughts should ever pass through your pretty little head.” Ha ha, Mary doesn’t even remember that Aldo ever existed.

Apartment 3-G, 12/18/08

Dr. Kelly is a man of science, and he even applies the scientific method to his dating life: first he formulates a hypothesis (Tommie is still dating Gary), then he designs an experiment to test that hypothesis (ask Tommie out on a date; if she says yes, she isn’t dating him anymore). Unfortunately, I think he needs to examine some of his suppositions. For instance, he seems to assume that the only reason anyone would turn him down for a date is because they’re already in an exclusive romantic relationship with someone else. He needs to do further research to assess the validity of an alternate explanation: that he’s a smug, creepy dick.

Dennis the Menace, 12/18/08

Dennis, that wasn’t so much a gift for you as it was for all of us. We all begged Santa last year to make sure that in 2008 you wore underwear.

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Mark Trail, 12/15/08

A couple of months back, I posited that this could in fact be the ultimate Mark Trail storyline, including as it does all of the strip’s favorite plot devices — gentle forest hermits, rapacious mustachioed developers, a “hot” chick who wants to do Mark, terrible pet-napping hillbillies with sinister designs and stupid names, etc. In fact, there’s only been really one major Trail bugaboo missing, and that’s Indian artifact smuggling! So naturally Mark, in an attempt to fit his terrible ordeal in with the nature of the world he knows, assumes that Salty and his gang are “smugglers of some sort” (hint: the sort that smuggle PRICELESS INDIAN ARTIFACTS!) despite no evidence pointing in that direction. Maybe they’re just run-of-the-mill baddies who tie up local irritants on their disused shrimp boat, then fall asleep, for money!

Also absent in this storyline, up until today: a word balloon emanating from Andy’s crotch. So, there’s that.

Mary Worth, 12/15/08

Poor Lynn is starved for the human affection conveyed by simple hug, since everyone in her life (“everyone” consisting entirely of her father, ever since he had the brake lines cut on Greg’s brother’s car) is repulsed by such niceties as “physical contact.” Our heartbroken skater calculates (probably correctly) that Mary is in the “no touch” club, so in panel one she skillfully feints a dramatic pose against a convenient tree before pivoting and hurling herself into Mary’s arms. I give it a 9.8 (ideally her left arm would have come in below Mary’s right).

Another possibility is that Lynn is speaking literally when she says that her heart stopped when she heard about Greg’s death; this whole boring story was meant only to lull Mary into complacency, and now Zombie Lynn will lunge at her victim and feast on her brains.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/15/08

Oh, Hagar the Horrible, what a pretty and atmospheric winter scene you have for us here! It almost seems petty to point out that you seem to have forgotten to include a punchline of any sort in today’s strip.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 12/15/08

This is today’s Mother Goose and Grimm. It’s about dog-on-tree necrophilia! Yes, Ralph, it’s no coloring error that those hearts above your head are inky black, as your love for Lana is dirty and shameful.

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Mark Trail, 12/14/08

Kudos to Mark Trail for blowing the lid off of the weird little world of the chickadee! These birds stay active in the bleak, cold winter hellscape that most of their feathered cousins are clever enough to flee for warmer climes. Mark claims to be able to read the feelings of these non-English-speaking little creatures, saying that they’re “never depressed” by having to stay north all winter, but their behavior seems to tell a different story. As he describes it, they want nothing more than your handouts, and once they start getting them, they lose all sense of personal initiative, becoming nothing more than avian hobos, hopping around in your backyard begging for your scraps — and doomed by their own dependency if you grow bored with their antics. This seems to me to be indicative of a very poor self-esteem that doesn’t jibe with the cheery demeanor that Mark is trying sell us.

Kudos also to my alma mater for hosting a bird-related Web site from which Mark Trail can crib valuable ornithological information! Keep coming back to birds.cornell.edu for such bird-related headlines as “The Long Trek of the Bar-tailed Godwit”.

Mary Worth, 12/14/08

Here’s a little clue to help you get situated in Mary Worth: no matter who’s talking, it’s all about them. Thus we get to the climax of Lynn’s sad story: her friend Greg, whom her dad forced her to shun, was killed in a car accident, his brother behind the wheel. Would he still have died if Lynn hadn’t broken off their friendship? Obviously not! Was his horrible, untimely death intended to break her heart and serve as a direct rebuke against Lynn’s father? Of course it was! Greg’s family was probably broken up about it too or whatever, but the important thing about it is that it sent Lynn into a downward spiral that has affected her skating.

The shocking punchline to Lynn’s tale has sent Mary into head-wobbling palpitations in the final panel. This is not because she shudders in empathy for the young skater (ha ha, like you even need me to say that) but because the mention of death by car crash has given rise to intrusive feelings of guilt concerning her part in Aldo Kelrast’s fiery demise. Once she manages to suppress these feelings back into her Shame Place, she will be taking this out on Lynn, obviously.

With today’s strip’s epigraph, quirky outsider musician Daniel Johnston joins Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova on the list of Indie Rock Darlings You Never, Ever Thought You’d See Mentioned In Mary Worth.

Marvin, 12/14/08

Anyone who doubts that St. Nick really is a saint need only take a look at the second panel of today’s Marvin, in which he continues to display a cheery disposition despite being immediately adjacent to the strip’s titular hell-infant in full-on screaming mode. We’ll see if that crinkle-eyed smile persists after he receives all sixteen yards of Marvin’s illegible, saliva-fouled Christmas list.

Family Circus, 12/14/08

Phase one of PJ’s plan — confining his siblings in an enclosed space that would be difficult to escape from quickly — had gone perfectly. Operation Only Child was well on its way to a bloody but triumphant conclusion.