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Apartment 3-G, 11/28/07

Hmm, perhaps I was too hasty yesterday when I dismissed out of hand the idea that there might be some tension between the A3G narration boxes and the actual narrative. How else to explain panel one, in which we are told that our fearsome foursome are “on the way to the tavern” when in fact they are very obviously standing around in Apartment 3-G’s blandly decorated living room and not going anywhere? The only way they could be less going to the tavern is if they were out on the street walking away from the tavern, though that would be harder to convey in the limited panel space here.

On the other hand, the sudden transition from blinding white to inky black in the second panel is evocative of some kind of movement. Maybe the Professor has whipped up some advanced transporter device, and we’re seeing them walk through a hole in space-time to emerge safely on the tavern’s front steps without having to encounter Manhattan street riff-raff. Or maybe there’s just an entrance to a Prohibition-era secret passageway behind the girls’ kitchen cabinets that connects to every gin joint in town.

Dennis the Menace, 11/28/07

I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen Dennis with a look of obvious panic on his face; I guess it’s also the first time I’ve seen him with his pants down. I’ll stop going further down this incredibly inappropriate road because I mainly wonder how this can be worked into the increasingly awesome The Luck of Dennis St. Michel, Viscount Stokington. If you ever doubted that the combination of Dennis the Menace and Regency pastiche would be completely hilarious, this blog should put your mind at rest.

Mary Worth, 11/28/07

Man, I thought Mary was cold-hearted over the past few days as she allowed him to believe that she had some gentleman caller over so that he’d run over and fight for her honor. Now she continues to thrust her hound at her erstwhile not-lover as the latter’s respiratory passages begin to seize up. The question now is: who will win this battle of wills for Mary’s heart? Chester’s cuter, but Jeff is probably marginally smarter.

In panel one, Mary is waving Chester’s little paw at Jeff to give some veneer of respectability to her blatant attempt to thrust the dog’s genitals in the good doctor’s face.

Luann, 11/28/07

I’d say that this is supposed to be some sort of commentary on how secular iconography is displacing the true religious significance of the Christmas holiday, but this is the same strip that had town tramp Tiffany playing the Virgin Mary in this pageant. Luann headquarters is lucky that it isn’t a smoldering, lightning-struck hole right now.

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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.