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Slylock Fox, 3/23/08

So many good things are going on in Sunday’s Slylock Fox! First of all, it features my new favorite anti-hero Reeky Rat, trying to move up the social ladder but so ignorant that he thinks that stealing a nice suit will make him respectable automatically. As usual for Sunday, the solution to the mystery is too small for me to read; I’m guessing it’s supposed to be something about how the suit would be wet if Reeky had worn it in from outside, but really, the tip-off that he’s lying about it being his suit is that Reeky Rat doesn’t own any God-damned suits. His wardrobe consists entirely of stained t-shirts he shoplifted from the Goodwill.

Also charming are the plight of the Six Differences duck, trapped in the paws of a sleeping bear; a trumpet-playing rabbit thinks that startling the bear awake will free his feathered friend, but it will likely just get both of them eaten. Speaking of ducks, “how to draw” teaches the youth of today to draw a duck in a bucket, because really, why not? I can see that being an important part of any graphic novel you have planned. And, finally, it looks like our unfortunate baseball player is about to be eaten alive by birds in part of the worldwide animal revolt we’ve already seen brewing.

Panel from Judge Parker, 3/23/08

I just wanted to point out to everyone the extent to which Judge Parker is the King Of Not Moving Things Along: Biff Dickens buzzed the horses yesterday? Yesterday was sometime around Thanksgiving. And this is positively breakneck speed for this feature.

Panels from Mary Worth, 3/23/08

Mary’s big flashback continues to be lame and anticlimactic, but this pair of throwaway panels pretty much epitomizes the strip: a baffling and dubious traditional proverb from a random country, and then Mary talking over whatever her interlocutor was trying to get in edgewise to move the conversation back to her.

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Gil Thorp, 3/18/08

OK, ever since the Gil Thorp artist change, I’ve been able to accept that the vaguely flat-topped Robert Mitchum lookalike in the COACH sweatshirt is supposed to be Gil. But you will never, never convince me that the skinny, brush-cut dude in the COACH sweatshirt in panel two is Assistant Coach Kaz. Never, you hear me? Where’s the classic Heat Miser ‘do? The pearl earrings? The hairy forearms and brutish fists? This is a travesty beyond imagining.

Oh, also, Andrew and his little siblings are about to be put into foster care because “the man” says that it’s not OK for children to raise themselves. Presumably the Gil and Kaz stand-ins will cook up some web of lies that will prevent the sinister social services fascists from caring for the kids’ well-being; perhaps it will involve convincing them that Andrew’s “teenage” friends in panel three are actually his 35-year-old aunts, which from the looks of it shouldn’t be hard.

Apartment 3-G, 3/18/08

Margo is no doubt backstage chewing her single glove in rage and frustration as Lu Ann wastes her coveted Girl Talk slot by blathering on all moon-eyed about how swell her talentless junkie boyfriend is. Still, it’s really Margo’s own fault for trusting her air-headed roommate to go on TV without careful coaching. And for using Lu Ann’s embarrassing carbon monoxide poisoning as the selling point for her bland art in the first place. When things go spectacularly wrong, it’s usually a safe bet to blame it on Margo’s desperate scheming, is what I’m trying to say.

Mary Worth, 3/18/08

“For the moment, the mutant super-breath power we shared was a secret between the two of us. But we knew that someday, it would be the instrument of our revenge against a world that had been cruel to us for too long.”

Pluggers, 3/18/08

Pluggers are subject from birth to relentless propaganda and conditioning, so that by the time they’re eight, they suffer from crippling nostalgia for a world they never knew.

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Today’s comics contained something that we all should have expected, but that was nevertheless shocking and, to some, horrifying. Certainly everyone who loves newspaper comics strip is buzzing about it. I’m talking, of course, about today’s Snuffy Smith.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/13/08

Fellas! Of course, we all long to see our inamoratas in the super-classy see-through nighties of the kind found in mail-order catalogs and the Fredrick’s of Hollywood store. They’re hot because you can see your partner’s boobies but she’s still wearing clothes! But isn’t there something that isn’t quite perfect about those garments? Of course there is! They’ve been stitched together from some kind of non-edible artificial fiber, when they could be made out of delicious meat!

Seriously, this is one of the vilest things I’ve ever seen or read.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/13/08

Oh, also, Liz and Anthony are going to get married or whatever. You might think that this foobrosal (in the lovely formulation of faithful reader Gabe) is a bit lackluster; indeed the first three panels seem to merely depict two numb characters recognizing that the machinations of their universe are pushing them inexorably together, and that no free will they exercise could possibly change their preordained fate. But in panel four, said Foobiverse suddenly remembers that Liz is supposed to be happy about this, and you see her eyes glowing with some kind of creepy, supernatural illumination. Then she desperately tries to get Anthony to nuzzle her breasts. It won’t be the first time she fails.

Mary Worth, 3/13/08

Mary Worth’s flashback is finally underway, and we learn that Mary is totally OK with throwing around terms like “broken home” in 2008. We also learn that she was a hungry, hungry little urchin with a terrible haircut. Will this sequence end with young Mary in a back alley somewhere, desperately chewing on the bones of a stray dog that she killed with her bare hands? We can only hope!

Mark Trail, 3/13/08

Speaking of eating dogs, Mark Trail has apparently travelled to the big bad city with an agenda of handing out free puppies to eight-year-olds. I’m guessing that the sort of little kid who would write a passionate entry about pet ownership for a contest is exactly the sort of little kid whose parents won’t let have a dog. I sure can’t see anything going wrong this this plan! Also, since the magazine Mark writes for is named Woods and Wildlife and not Domesticated Animals, I’m hoping the “puppy” will actually be a wolf cub, or maybe a coyote pup.

Luann, 3/13/08

Ha ha! It turns out that when Brad heard his captain say he was bringing Toni to the ball, he meant that he was bringing Tony to the ball! Oh, the Three’s Company-style misunderstanding-derived hilarity!

This could be some sort of vaguely daring attempt to make a totally colorless supporting character in this comic gay; on the other hand, since he’s using the vague term “friend” and the battalion captain is bringing his sister, I suppose Tony really could be just his friend because, hey, they’re modern, sensitive new-age guys, and Tony always wanted to see what a real firefighter’s ball was like (and who wouldn’t)? Or, since Brad couldn’t tell “i” from “y” in speech, Tony Gale could really be Toni Gale anyway. I could get further into this, but I just realized that no matter how much I think about it, it isn’t going to get any more interesting, so I’ll stop.

Family Circus, 3/13/08

For those of you not up on the Shakespearean family drama beneath the surface of the Family Circus (and really, why would you be), Billy is actually based on strip creator Bil Keane’s son Glen, who is in fact an animator at Disney today; Jeffy is based on Jeff Keane, who has taken over the Family Circus from his dad. You could see this is some sort of dig at Glen for being a moron, but really a better way to go about that would have been something like, “Someday when I’m an animator at Disney, I’m going to help make a movie that will lose more than $100 million!”

UPDATE: Going over comments from the last thread, I see that the Spectacular Spider-Brick beat me to the “Foobocalypse now” joke … so a hat tip to the SSB as well!