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Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G, 10/20/07

OH SNAP DR. DREW GOT SERVED AGAIN BY HIS OTHER GIRLFRIEND! See, this is the advantage of dating an older woman: instead of violently lashing out when she’s wronged, she just slips some stilleto-sharp barb right between your emotional ribs. Drew, Vera’s tough because she’s had to endure things you can’t even imagine. Did you know she used to be rich and now she’s not? And then she had to get a job? Clearly she’s not to be trifled with.

On an unrelated note, I’m a little unsettled by Vera’s throw pillows being the exact same awful orange color as he sofa. They’re supposed to complement the piece of furniture, not blend in as if they’re hiding from predators.

The contrast between Vera’s steely, several-weeks-post-breakup resolve and Margo’s floundering hostility is instructive. Obviously our still conspicuously non-engaged gal Magee is not holding things together as well as she’d like us to believe, and Ruby’s little smile shows she knows who has the upper hand in this confrontation. Still, now that Margo has arbitrarily decided that Ruby is her enemy, she can’t back down, so this should be a gloriously amusing conflict. Perhaps she’ll lasso a heartbroken Gina into some sort of Axis of Insensitive Brunette Evil.

Gil Thorp, 10/20/07

Faithful reader Virginia deserves credit for noting the resemblance between this obviously bad news dude (torn-off sleeves? torn-off sleeves?) and Mary Worth’s legendary Tommy the Tweaker. Whether or not he’s an incompetent meth dealer, I’m going to guess that ponytail guy is going to lead poor, vulnerable, prone-to-violence Cully down the wrong path (I mean, torn-off sleeves? Seriously?). In the end, we’ll learn a valuable lesson, which will either be that youthful offenders need to be integrated back into society as quickly as possible to avoid recidivism, or that there is no hope whatsoever for youthful offenders and they need to be put into a dark hole from which they’ll never be able to get out.

I appreciate Cully’s perfectly triangular sandwich in panel one. Does he get his lunch from OCD Deli?

Dick Tracy, 10/20/07

I don’t want to cast aspersions on the intelligence level of the average American, but I’m willing to bet that more people in this country know the name of Britney Spears’ ex-husband than the name of the current governor of the state they live in; therefore, any town in which Dick Tracy and the governor are “celebrities” has got to be either the best educated municipality in America or the most boring (probably both, actually). Still, the managers of this bizarre charity event are right to think that getting the trigger-happy Detective Tracy involved will attract media attention. The banner headline in the local paper the next morning will no doubt read something like “DETECTIVE MISTAKES GOVERNOR FOR GHOST, SHOOTS HIM 148 TIMES”.

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Apartment 3-G, 10/18/07

On days when I don’t get to do a post until very late, I usually don’t even read the comics until I sit down to write my commentary. I do, however, read my readers’ comments, as they’re e-mailed to me as I’m sitting at my computer trying to do real work. Thus if something really wacky is happening somewhere in comics land, I’m forewarned. But no mere description could have prepared me for the awesomeness of today’s Apartment 3-G. I mean, sure, Lu Ann’s look of pleasant vapidity in panel one, Margo’s superciliousness, her vaguely sexual dig at Lu Ann (“Your boyfriend will be working under me … which I’m sure will be a new experience for him, right Blondie McChaste?”) — that’s all easy to envision. But panel three, in which Margo gets her little snide remark in while grabbing her Georgia O’Keefe-brand toaster pastry out of the air without even looking at it — that has to be seen to be believed.

Hey, shouldn’t Ruby be here to defend her poor, brain-damaged cousin with her Texas-sized sass? I guess she’s too busy working under the Professor to notice that she’s needed! Ha ha! Ah, I amuse myself with my ribaldry.

Archie, 10/18/07

oh my god don’t look at the ceiling don’t look at the ceiling DON’T LOOK AT THE CEILING AAAGGGGGHHH

Dennis the Menace, 10/18/07

Technically, Dennis, the only “guy” you hang out with is Joey. I don’t think you have to worry about him out-butching you.

For Better Or For Worse, 10/18/07

A writer and an author? That’s … quite an achievement!

Garfield, 10/18/07

Tomorrow: Garfield and Jon finally put their suicide pact into motion.

Judge Parker, 10/18/07

I haven’t really been able to follow the business and legal implications of the current Judge Parker, since I didn’t get an MBA with a concentration in crazy, plus whenever I try to think about it too hard I keep get distracted by boobs. But I’m pretty sure that when Sam says “steal this land,” he means “offer cash to the land’s owner in an attempt to purchase it.” But hey, what do I know? I’m not a smooth-talking asexual lawyer with a big thatch of exposed chest hair, now am I?

Mary Worth, 10/18/07

Speaking of things that have to be seen to be believed … that is the most bizarre t-shirt ever to appear in Mary Worth — no, in any comic strip, ever. It’s up there with the pinball-playing fish in terms of weirdness. Because they don’t want to offend the bluehairs, it’s impossible for Mary Worth to really tell us how far Drew and Vera’s relationship went, but I’m guessing a sensible gal like Vera would have broken things off if Drew had taken her back to his condo, closed the mauve curtains, and told her to relax as he changed into something more comfortable, and then, just as her eyes settled on the framed picture of a Conestoga wagon and she began to wonder what the hell the deal was with that, he emerged wearing that … thing. Yes, this relationship was doomed from the start.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/07

Yes, thank goodness General Halftrack is keeping up with radical newspapers like Vorwärts and the Daily Worker to keep tabs on their stinging and remarkably specific criticisms of the quality of American general officers! By exposing the rot and incompetence at the upper echelons of the US military, they help forward the cause of proletarian revolution!

No, seriously, what the hell. My guess is that this cartoon is what happened when the whole ludicrous New York Times/MoveOn.org Petraeus/Betray Us kerfuffle managed to seep through the layers and layers of Out Of Touch that surround the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Funny Enterprises LLC compound. Though I’m guessing that if anyone bought a full-page ad entitled “General Halftrack or General Half Assed?” there wouldn’t be any kind of Congressional resolution condemning it.

On the other hand, Halftrack could be reading a radical right-wing newspaper, which puts a whole different spin on things. “Under Halftrack, Camp Swampy has sunk under the scum, his corps lousy with blacks, Asians, and homosexuals. Under his leadership, the army is incapable of bringing the cleansing fire to this nation that it so desperately needs!”

Momma, 10/17/07

This may mark me as a bad son, but when I see an (I assume) adult describe living at home with their dwarfish, clown-haired freak of a mother as “a spiritual and emotional pleasure,” I don’t think “happy, well-adjusted young man”; I think “budding serial killer.” More specifically, I think “pretentious budding serial killer.”

By the way, when I first saw this strip, I read the final word balloon as “–is that the same as ‘the pita’?” Which, frankly, is funnier than the actual punchline. The “pita” version isn’t actually funny at all, but the real gag is anti-funny, and zero is greater than a negative number.

Mary Worth, 10/17/07

If you’re not following along at home, yesterday Vera’s creepy, estranged brother Von bought her forgiveness with a check. We have to assume that it was large enough to overcome the huge chip on Vera’s shoulder; sadly, it was not an oversized novelty check that would have allowed us to see the exact amount. Anyway, I’m hoping that now desperate Drew is ready to resort to an overworked, overpaid, oversexed young man’s answer to any current problem, which is to throw money at it. I’m sure Mary will approve of Vera’s masterly techniques of holding grudges for fun and profit.