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Marvin, 10/21/06

Behold, the first nice thing I’ve ever said about Marvin: whereas most comics engage in rampant grandparent worship, treating our elders as endlessly loving and patient repositories of wisdom and affection, Marvin dares to say what no one else will: that old people are just as likely to be as vain, self-serving, emotionally manipulative, gold-digging, and cranky as the rest of us. All of last week, Daddy Marvin’s mother held the Marvin household in a reign of terror, humiliating her daughter-in-law and emasculating her son; you can see the aftereffects of the visit in the numb stares of the entire family in panel one. Not even the wise-cracking baby has emerged from the ordeal with a shred of affection for the old bag intact.

Mary Worth, 10/21/06

Speaking of old bags, this Mary Worth reveals both why hospitals view volunteers as a double-edged sword and why adult children are sometimes uncomfortable with their parents’ new romantic partners: in both cases, once they’ve been around for a while, they start to act like they run the place. I’m particularly tickled by the Cory Wonder Twins’ stunned expression in the second panel: “Did … did that hag just order us to present ourselves to her at noon? Oh, hell no.”

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Judge Parker, 10/20/06

FOR GOD’S SAKE, SAM, HAVE SEX WITH YOUR WIFE! Jeez, how clear to she and her left breast have to make it to you? Because if you don’t service this hot, mature, mulleted woman, that job is going to get “outsourced to India” when the kids get home from the party, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Blondie, 10/20/06

I think what everyone is thinking in panel two is not, “Ew, this kid hasn’t washed his hands?” but “What is this kid doing here?” Elmo sometimes drops hints about his home life, but I think it’s all a front: my guess is that he’s secretly living a Dickensian existence as a street urchin, and that the food that falls onto the floor out of Dagwood’s structurally improbable sandwiches is all that stands between him and starvation. If he is a hobo-boy, it would explain his unfamiliarity with basic hygiene skills. This is the first time I can remember him actually conning his way to the family table though, though the presence of the bathroom step-stool in the Bumstead household, where everyone is over the age of 16, indicates that he probably at least washes his one set of clothes in the sink there from time to time.

Against all logic, Dagwood seems to treat Elmo like the son he never had, something that must make Alexander die a little inside every time he sees it.

Mary Worth, 10/20/06

Speaking of children someone never had … the fact that Dr. Jeff reproduced, and managed to go two for two on doctors, is news to me, and I’ve read Mary Worth pretty much every day for the last four years. Since that represents about an month and a half in Worth-time, I suppose it makes sense that I’ve never met these two before. It does seem a bit creepy to me that the two siblings AND the dad all work at the same hospital, which I assume is called Our Lady of Perpetual Cory (Messrs Haim and Feldman could both check in for rehab stints).

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the relationship between Mary and her non-sexual beau’s children ought by right to be painfully awkward. The facial expressions in the second panel give me hope. While Adrian just looks garden-variety confused, Drew’s face appears to me to be caught at the moment when the polite smile he’s put on for his father’s girlfriend is starting to crack. “God damn it, I told dad that I don’t care if he wants to spend the next six months in a whorehouse in Phnom Penh, but I don’t want to have to lie to his old biddy about it!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/06

Lucy is a master of psychological warfare, and Ted is her unwitting bagman. I can’t wait to see Tommie try to tart herself up.

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/06

I don’t have contact with anyone in the army right now, so I have to assume that Beetle Bailey is an accurate picture of what life is like in the American military today — and a very troubling picture it is, too. I’m not sure what’s worse: Beetle stewing over getting punched in the face by his superior officer, the chaplain urging Beetle to just submit to the abuse, or the idea that a “turn the other cheek” philosophy makes for good soldiering. Beetle pointing to his bruise in the second panel looks like something out of a Lifetime movie about domestic violence starring Judith Light.

One Big Happy, 10/17/06

First pants-wetting jokes, now pants-crapping jokes. Let it never be said that One Big Happy doesn’t push the boundaries of acceptable child-centered family-newspaper comedy.

Judge Parker, 10/17/06

“Hoo hoo, Sam, look, if I put this cigar under my nose, it looks like a mustache! Hee hee! Isn’t that funny? Oh, wait, I forgot, you’re on the phone, you can’t see me.”

By the way, Sam came home from work this evening to find his wife wearing something low cut with a bottle of wine and a lit candle set out, glowing at him with a thousand-watt “let’s get it on” stare, and yet this is how his evening is ending. Maybe Reggie Black is onto something with his “not the marrying kind” smears against the Randy Parker campaign.

Mary Worth, 10/17/06

Oh my God, Mary Worth is the queen of bitch. “I’m sorry, were you still giving a second thought to what’s-his-name, with the mustache, whom we drove to his death? You pathetic, weak-kneed little fool. And now you’ve interrupted my favorite sex fantasy: you know, the one where Dr. Jeff Cory wants to have sex with me and I turn him down.” This heavy-handed shift is presumably meant to indicate that we’re ready for the next storyline, which will involve Dr. Jeff’s triumphant return from the exotic and cleft-palated east, but I’m still hoping that the ghost of Aldo will haunt the proceedings yet. Best case scenario: Jeff, newly awakened to a life of service and kindness to his fellow man by his trip to Cambodia, hears the description of Aldo’s doom and recoils in horror. “Why … you’re all a pack of murderers! Sociopaths!” He flees Charterstone in disgust, while the Fearsome Foursome stares on uncomprehending. “What’s his problem?” huffs Ian.

Gil Thorp, 10/17/06

I … I don’t know what this means, but … it seems kind of gay to me. “Stormy” needs your life-breathing-nipple-based heroism, Sean, whether you like it or not.

By the way, faithful reader/madman jonnya offers this hilarious instigation for you to buy crap from my store: