Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 10/12/07

I’ve got to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed in this week’s Apartment 3-G plot. With the set-up we were given, I was expecting to see either (a) Eric dumping Margo and laughing at her shattered hopes and dreams, (b) Margo berating Eric at great and colorful length for failing to propose to her when ordered to, or (c) angry, angry sex (and to be honest I was hoping for some combination of the three). Instead, we’ve had a lot of blah blah blah about Alan, a character I care about less than just about anyone in this strip — less than Gina, less than Blaze, even less than Tommie.

At least Margo’s face in panel two indicates that she’s also a bit put off by how this conversation is going. “Stretched too thin? But … does that mean you won’t let Mistress Margo put you on the rack tonight?”

Mary Worth, 10/12/07

I am, however, pleased that Vera’s creepy brother Von is back in the picture. Just when I thought that the creepy Flowers in the Attic-style hijinks were over! My guess is that the item of importance that Von has to explain to his sister involves their father’s will, out of which, you will recall, Vera was cruelly and chauvinistically cut. Von will reveal that Vera’s half of the family fortune will be hers, as long as they fulfill their father’s dying wish and marry each other. You can only protect yourself with that tennis racket for so long, Vera!

After watching Wilbur fondle his heartbroken daughter all last week, I’m really looking forward to the incestuous triangle of jealousy that will bear down on Drew with greater and greater force. Will he be able to fight off both millionaire Von of Pacific Cliffs and syndicated columnist “Ask Wendy”? Maybe he’ll need to call his own sister into the fight just to be on the safe side.

Gil Thorp, 10/12/07

OH MY GOD! Cully Vale killed a kid in a backyard wrestling simulation gone horribly wrong! And was tried as an adult for it! It’s ripped from the headlines … of newspapers on microfiche from 1999, which is when the incident this is referring to actually happened. Gil Thorp, always on the cutting edge. Anyway, I think the DA was right to prosecute Cully as an adult. For one thing, he appears to be about 27 years old. And just look at that glassy-eyed dopey smile — clearly that’s the face of a premeditated murderer. You’ve brought shame to the state of Oregon, Vale! You don’t deserve to squat awkwardly behind its flag!

By the way, the kid in the real-life backyard-wrestling murder/manslaughter/what have you case ended up getting paroled, only to be arrested later for armed robbery. I hope very much that a similar incident is integrated into the story of “Cully Vale, gentle giant”.

Herb and Jamaal, 10/12/07

“I can’t believe all of the issues in the church today” now officially joins “Wow, check out the latest on the hotel socialite! The stuff they say about her really makes you think, doesn’t it?” on this list of Things Nobody Would Ever Say At Any Time But Which Have Been Incomprehensibly Used As The Set-Up For A Joke In Herb And Jamaal.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 10/9/07

No, Margo! Don’t trust him! Eric Mills is not what he seems! Her suspicions shouldn’t necessarily be raised by his expressing passing concern for the well-being of another female human when he should be attempting to seduce and/or marry Margo; I’m sure his curiosity about Lu Ann’s health is essentially mercenary, and can be summed up as “Will she still be capable of churning out mediocre fern prints that I can unload on the condo and hotel lobby market at a healthy profit?” No, the real clues of nefariousness are those glasses, which are totally inappropriate for serving cognac. That means Eric’s not a real millionaire, and Margo’s been wasting her time and sexual energy on him; she needs to move on post haste. Does she really want to be tied to someone whose financial future lies in Lu Ann’s artistic abilities?

Archie, 10/9/07

One might have written off a single reference to Betty’s blog as a sad and desperate bid to remain relevant to the kids today; but her Web journal’s reappearance as a plot point here indicates that, in a bid for cross-media corporate synergy, the Archie newspaper strip is pimping Betty’s actual blog (or, well, “Betty’s” “actual” blog), which I suppose I’ll serve as a tool of Archie Comics Publications Inc. and direct your attention to. The many content providers for this sprawling media empire haven’t coordinated their efforts well enough to actually have date details up that might make Veronica beverage-dumping mad, but Riverdale’s cheeriest blonde does wish her Canadian friends a happy Thanksgiving, which is more than FBOFW has managed to do (unless the secret message of this week’s plot is “Be thankful you haven’t had multiple strokes”).

Mary Worth, 10/9/07

Ah, see, this is how we know that Drew was right to choose Vera over Dawn; Charterstone’s go-gettingist clerk-typist doesn’t resort to tears and incredibly bland quotes when confronted with an ambiguous offering from a two-timing ex; rather, she thought-balloons a clever little bon mot that includes a “drew” pun and prepares to move on with her life. Perhaps she’ll find happiness with a new man — like that handsome deliveryman! His russet hair is rakishly long, but not drug dealer long.

Popeye, 10/9/07

The current loopy, meandering Popeye plot involves “spincoal”, a superpowerful form of compressed spinach that serves both as a miracle food and a miracle fuel. It hasn’t been all that exciting, but I am intrigued by the promise of energy industry skullduggery to come. I’m pretty sure that Popeye strips are actually reruns from the 1990s, so I’m assuming that the figure in the second panel is then-Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney.

Post Content

Mary Worth and Judge Parker, 10/8/07

“Sure, why not” vs. “You think?”: The sassy young ladies of the soap opera strips come up with the closest things to snappy comebacks allowed in this genre. Dawn has bizarrely chosen to encapsulate her sass as some kind of bit of quoted wisdom. My question: is this some flip statement that Drew made once, long ago, that Dawn memorized like every other sentence he uttered in her presence? Or is it just another in the long line of Mary Worth things-presented-as-quotes-that-aren’t-actually-quotes? A trip through the archives would answer this question, but I don’t have the spiritual strength for it this afternoon. I will say this, though: Dawn’s tremulous tear in panel one is actually better drawn than the single droplet usually seen on the faces of the various girls in Apartment 3-G.

Meanwhile, Judger Parker’s Sophie has come up with the only appropriate response to Rusty’s increasingly desperate bids to bend Sam to her legal will. Unable or unwilling to recognize her old classmate’s total disinterest in her assets, she’ll be humping the place settings before she’s through. Sophie’s droll reaction indicates that she knows well enough why Sam and Abbey expanded their family by adopting a pair of homeless millionaire adolescents rather than via the more conventional route.

By the way, does anyone know how old exactly Sophie is supposed to be? Is she ten, or forty and suffering from some kind of glandular condition? Her little lilac pantsuit is kind of freaking me out.

Dick Tracy, 10/8/07

Calling the heads in Dick Tracy “enormous and terrifying” isn’t exactly breaking new ground, but — God damn, those heads in panel two are enormous and terrifying. They sort of remind me of characters from video games in the mid-90s — two-dimensional drawings wrapped freakishly around some overly simplistic polyhedron. Anyway, the face on the front of the slightly smaller and less terrifying head in panel two looks glum, and why shouldn’t it? Dopey Dmitri and now-exploded Gretchen get all the credit in Dick’s exposition, but what about him? Doesn’t he at least rate an unimaginative and stereotypical name, like “Ivan” or “Hans”?

Gil Thorp, 10/8/07

Huh, so Cully Vale is a murderer. I’m assuming Gil already knows this — he always seems to be one step ahead of his cretinous students (a talent that sadly doesn’t seem to translate to his coaching, but never mind that for the moment). Since Gil seemed pretty blasé about having his baseball team coached by a fraud, it should come as no surprise that he’s let a cold-blooded killer into his locker room; I would have thought that the strip would have worked up to this with maybe a little light drug dealing first, but heck, why not just go for the gusto right away. I can’t wait for the cops to come question Coach Thorp about all the bodies only to have him reply with a resounding “Eh.”