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Mary Worth, 11/20/07

Ah ha! Chester’s real owner! Here at last is the conflict, the drama that has eluded this storyline for so long! Mary will be confronted with some sad-eyed waif who’s so happy to be reunited with her very special Prince Snuffles or whatever the dog’s real name is. She’ll be all torn up inside about letting go of the dog she’s come to love in a short time. Will she be able to do it? Will she do the right thing and return the dog to his rightful owner? Or will she find some way to rationalize keeping the dog, leaving the child heartbroken? Action! Excitement!

Or, you know, it could play out like the damn condo rules feint. “I’d better find out if Chester has a real owner. Oh, he doesn’t! Hooray! I’m so great!” Damn you, Mary Worth, I don’t need another strip that sets up dilemmas only to summarily dispatch them with no effort on the part of the characters. I have Spider-Man for that.

You’ll note that Chester himself has given up on anything fun happening in this strip and has decided to just hump Mary’s leg until her shin goes numb.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/20/07

Ah, yes, “that sappy chick flick.” Thank God US law only allows one of those to be in theaters at any given time so that we don’t have to sully our lips with its name.

Judge Parker, 11/20/07

Things that might be going through Abbey’s shocked and horrified mind in panel three:

• “Oh my God, my husband kissed another woman!”
• “Oh my God, my husband kissed a woman!”
• “Oh my God, my husband broke several rules in the Bar Association’s ethics code!”
• “Oh my God, my husband thinks that ‘a big wet smacker on the lips’ is some kind of acceptable phrase to use in conversation!”

And here’s a couple of amusing standalone panels for today:

Panel from Gil Thorp, 11/20/07

We all know how pathetic and basically lonely Coach Thorp is, but today, with Gil giving a pep talk to the shrubbery outside his house, really brings it home.

Panel from Popeye, 11/20/07

There’s context for this, sort of, but I like it best in hilariously inappropriate isolation.

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Zits, 11/15/07

So it appears that Funky Winkerbean has jumped ten years forward from the present to … the present. And you know what? It really doesn’t bother me that much. It’s just an extreme manifestation of the comics chronology problem that only For Better Or For Worse has avoided — everybody stays the same age, but the strip goes on for decades and the cultural references remain more or less current. Funky Winkerbean’s original cast was in high school for something like twenty years, which at least as much a violation of laws of time and space as the current age jump.

For whatever reason I’ve been kind of fixated on the problems that arrested chronology is causing in Zits lately. It’s definitely been discussed that Jeremy’s dad Walt, at least, is an ex-hippie, and I think they’ve gone as far as to mention that he actually went to Woodstock. My parents are part of the first wave of baby boomers (mom born in ’46, dad in ’48) and were both at Woodstock (separately, before they knew each other); at 23 and 21, I have to imagine that they’d have been among the younger people there. So, even if Walt had managed to sneak up there at 16 or 17, that’d make him at minimum 55 today, and probably more like 60 — starting to push it just a bit for someone with a 15-year-old son. This was a non-issue when the strip was launched 10 years ago, but it’s only going to get more unlikely as time goes on. Retconning the ages can have its own jarring effects. When I first began reading Sally Forth, I was the same age as Hillary, and so naturally assumed Ted and Sally were the same ages as my parents, an assumption that went unchallenged in my mind despite obvious evidence until a flashback-to-college storyline a few years ago that featured Sally (or was it Ted, I forget now) wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt.

While I think this series of Zits strips have been cute, I also have to say that I find it a little unlikely that even a contemporary teenager interested in rock music to the extent that he plays in a garage band is only now discovering the Beatles. There was a funny story in the paper here a couple of years ago about the high-school aged rockers of today and their ongoing love of dinosaur acts (and honestly, who doesn’t like to get the Led out? I ask you).

None of this monkeying around with time in any way justifies the concept of Walt and Jeremy “hav[ing]” Connie “in common.”

Slylock Fox, 11/15/07

Oh, brave Max! Noble Max! Stupid, stupid Max! I know you’re desperate to do something useful for once in your life, but trying to catch an enormous red-suited gorilla-pimp who probably weighs 20,000 times as much as you do is not the answer.

I love that the gorilla-pimp is carrying his money around is the classic burlap sacks with dollar signs on the side. Do you think he carries the sacks around and makes the ladies in his employ dump his cut of their earnings into them? Does it make him feel like a big man?

Mary Worth, 11/15/07

…aaaand here’s the moment where absolute power officially corrupts Mary absolutely. “I’d hate to make it obvious that I am the unquestioned dictator of this joint, and that rules don’t apply to me! It might make it more difficult to force everyone else to obey the arbitrary laws I’ve laid down if they saw that I can just have them changed on a whim. Who’s a good dog? Yes, you’re a good dog!”

B.C., 11/15/07

Ho ho, there’s nothing zanier than ecological disaster! See, it’s funny because he dumped viscous oil on those seals to shut them up. Soon they will be dead! Mercy.

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Gil Thorp, 11/14/07

Oh, Gil, Gil, Gil. I know that your desperate need to salvage some shred of dignity out of this season has lead to radical measures, like actually coaching, but surely you know that the reason your team is in this mess in the first place is because they’re not only athletically untalented, but incredibly dim. Building an offense around trickery and cleverness is doomed to failure in too many ways to even begin to describe. You’ll be lucky if the team hasn’t accidentally set itself on fire by the end of the first quarter. Gil’s fear that any other team might be trying to find out about the Mudlarks’ top secret plans is hilariously misplaced as indicated by the sadly deserted hall outside of LOCKER LOCKER, completely devoid of spies from rival high schools or snoopy reporters looking for a scoop.

There are so many more interesting phrases that could have followed “those years” in panel two. “Picking pockets,” for one. Or maybe “working as a magician at children’s parties.”

Mark Trail, 11/14/07

Today’s Mark Trail is yet another example of a recurring phenomenon in which I think the chatter of commentors has prepared me for the action in a strip, only to still be blown away when confronted with the reality. As so many of you noted, Johnny clearly isn’t punching Malone; he’s rubbing his fist in the cigar-smoking cad’s face, forcing his nemesis to smell whatever foul-smelling substance he’s smeared across his knuckles (don’t think about what that might be don’t think about what that might be).

The depiction of that saucy, arrogant Malone in panels one and two is actually quite charming. He looks like he just strode off of some Merchant Marine freighter, circa 1943, and if the Nazis tried their best to send him to the bottom of the Atlantic and failed, he’s not going to let some pissy little French Canadian discombobulate him with his stinky hand.

Mary Worth, 11/14/07

WAIT WHAT MARY DIDN’T CHECK THE CONDO BYLAWS BEFORE BRINGING HOME A DOG? HAS SHE GONE COMPLETELY INSANE? The condo bylaws are like sacred scriptures to Mary (as indicated by the fact that she keeps them in the upper drawer of her dresser, as if they were a Gideon’s Bible) and now she’s throwing ALL THAT AWAY because of some yapping pooping little mutt? Oh, Mary, the other condo-dwellers will be right to chase you out of Charterstone with torches and pitchforks — not because you’ve violated the condo codes, but because you’re obviously some kind of reverse pod person impostor who actually has normal human emotions.

B.C., 11/14/07

Today’s B.C. took on a current event in a weird, loopy, mushy way that didn’t make much sense and also wasn’t funny. Somewhere, Johnny Hart must be so proud.

Pluggers, 11/14/07

Pluggers hate foreign food almost as much as they hate actual foreigners.