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Apartment 3-G, 1/22/08

I swear I’m not obsessed with the sex life of the Apartment 3-G girls. If anything, I’m obsessed with how any feature that’s about three single young women in New York City can be marked by such a stunning lack of sex, which, I’ll try gamely to argue, isn’t quite the same thing. Anyhoo, I’m always open for any hint that I might be wrong, and we’re getting some hints today. Note that Lu Ann isn’t responding to Tommie coming home in the morning with “OH MY GOD TOMMIE WHERE WERE YOU WERE YOU KIDNAPPED??” but “Huh, you’re not wearing the same clothes you left the house in last night, plus I don’t see any hickeys.” So, while Tommie didn’t get lucky last night (obviously, ’cause she’s Tommie), the idea isn’t completely out of the question for even goody-goody Lu Ann.

It’s also possible that goody-goody Lu Ann thinks that Tommie and Gary engaged in some “Naughty Nurse”-style role play after their date, and is goody-goody enough that even this extremely mild kink would drive her to two question marks’ worth of shock.

I can’t really remember — is Dr. Kelly another bland lookalike vying half-heartedly for Tommie’s affection? It’s nice to be wanted and all, but I have to imagine that forcing a lady to leave in the middle of a date just so she can sew together New Years Eve drunks with you rates pretty high on the old Actionable-Sexual-Harrasment-O-Meter.

Mary Worth, 1/22/08

Panel two proves that the absence of ESP is in fact an evolutionary advantage: if your potential partners could hear what you were thinking in the moments leading up to sex, nobody would ever reproduce. I’m not sure if Drew is supposed to be adjusting his nonexistent bow tie or if he’s just relishing the thought so intently that he’s unbuttoning his shirt right there in the local cafe.

Marmaduke, 1/22/08

A roving pack of semi-feral dogs has eaten fourteen elderly residents of the neighborhood so far, luring them to deserted parks with promises of companionship and pizza. Authorities urge citizens to stay indoors until the National Guard can defeat the savage canines.

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Blondie, 1/21/08

I don’t want to come across as some kind of elitist food snob (and anyone who’s ever seen me cook and/or eat is no doubt enjoying a hearty laugh that I would ever have to preface anything I write with that sentence). But I have to say that Dagwood’s armful of foodstuffs doesn’t strike me as all that unhealthy. It’s hard to see at this resolution, but most of it appears to be the kind of fresh ingredients (including actual vegetables) of the sort that you’re really supposed to be eating, and not the boxed and/or frozen heavily processed and low-grade-corn-based stuff that most of us (myself included) actually eat. Who would have guessed that Dagwood’s love of food ran to quality, not just quantity?

Dagwood’s rejection of the modern industrial food chain might be a sign of a broader Luddism that has extended to more troubling dimensions, though. For instance, his insistence on carrying his bounty rather than putting it in a more convenient cart points to his rejection of that devil’s tool, the so-called “wheel.” Unrelated but also unsettling is the coloring error that rendered the word balloons in this strip an icy blue. As if today’s weather didn’t leave me cold enough!

Apartment 3-G, 1/21/08

Real-life chances that, in New York, a city of 8 million or so souls, a lonely, horny Margo would show up at the same bar where a lonely, horny Alan has decided to fall off the wagon with gusto, and the two would end up drunkenly making out: practically zero. Chances in Apartment 3-G’s New York, population approximately 50: very high, especially when you consider that Alan and Eric look essentially identical. If Alan’s hair settles into whatever color Eric’s was when Margo last saw him, all bets are off.

For Better Or For Worse, 1/21/08

As several faithful readers wrote me to point out, Grandpa Jim’s hand gesture in panel three is essentially the British version of giving someone the finger. While I’m not sure if the Brits left their rude hand signs in the Canadian psyche as a legacy of their Empire, it’s true that Grandpa spent most of WWII fixing up planes in the UK — plenty of time to learn how to flip off folks like a local. Once again, this poor man, trapped both in the half-responsive shell of his body and in the floundering final days of this comic strip, expresses what we’re all really feeling.

Mary Worth, 1/21/08

Dr. Drew manages to neatly combine surprise and smugness into one facial expression in panel two. “Ah, to be young and Drew Corey!” he seems to be thinking. “To be so gosh-darn irresistible that the ladies can’t even wait for you to sit down together before their need for your sweet young body becomes irresistible!” His narcissistic glow should last another five or ten seconds, until Vera starts eating his face.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/21/08

If my record-keeping is right, “Bob Bennett” is none other than faithful reader benro, and truly by now we should have come to expect that any TDIET that features newfangled advances like cell phones or e-mail would be from a Comics Curmudgeon reader. Cell phone glued to his ear or no, Hossbutt may have some problems hearing his wife when he calls her, considering that he and the nameless URGEd individual are apparently riding in a tiny, roofless go-cart in the middle of a multilane highway.

Pluggers, 1/21/08

You’re a plugger if your intimate life becomes a terrifying Oedipal nightmare by the time you hit 45.

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Crock, 1/20/08

I’m less concerned about the ever-hapless Figowitz than I am for the fish. I realize that fish don’t have eyelids, but the poor beastie’s little frownie face makes it look as if he’d been pumped full of air (or something — is that a caulk gun?) and then sent on to Crock for consumption while still alive. Worse, he’s been treated in some devilish way that has allowed him to pass through the cooking process from scaly gray to golden brown while remaining inflated. I’d look unhappy too, I think.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 1/20/08

I’m kind of at a loss to explain the throwaway panels in today’s Dennis the Menace. Are they some kind of allegory on international politics? Margaret in her beret represents the Europeans, who spend much of their GNP on social programs and can’t understand why the Americans (represented by Dennis in his blue jacket and red-and-white striped hat) invest so heavily in “ammunition” (i.e. defense programs). Will the two sides ever learn to see eye to eye? Or will Dennis just paste Margaret in the back of the head?

Mary Worth, 1/20/08

Dr. Drew, you show us all that chivalry isn’t dead! He’s well aware that his checked sports coat is a aesthetic crime against all that is good and holy, but he’s also seen how Vera dresses, and he knows that a gentleman always makes sure that his lady isn’t wearing the ugliest thing in the room.