Post Content

Curtis, 9/6/06

OK, COMICS, WE GET IT! WE REALLY DO! SOMETIMES YOU GO TO THE STORE TO BUY JEANS, AND THERE ARE JEANS THAT ARE ALL BEAT UP! AND YET THEY COST MORE THAN JEANS THAT LOOK BRAND NEW! AND THAT’S CRAZY! BECAUSE WHY CAN’T YOU JUST BUY A NEW PAIR AND THEM RUN THEM THROUGH THE DRYER A BUNCH OF TIMES OR HIT THEM AGAINST A ROCK OR SOMETHING? SAVE YOU SOME MONEY, YOU KNOW? BUT THE KIDS TODAY! WITH THE FASHION! THERE’S NO REASONING WITH THEM! WHADDYAGONNADO? IT’S CRAZY! NOW WILL PLEASE STOP HARPING ON THIS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

Ahem. I find most of today’s comics unworthy of comment, but I do think you all need to see this. What we have here is three comic geniuses acting out a month’s worth of Mary Worth comics from 1998. The actors, portraying Mary, Ian, and Toby, are more or less frozen in the positions presumably held by the characters in the original comic strips as they recite the dialog for each panel. The gentleman playing Professor Cameron is particularly good: not only does he capture Ian’s massive level condescending bloviosity, but he went the extra mile and grew a chinbeard. The whole thing is filmed in grainy black-and-white and has eerie atonal music playing in the background, giving it the feel of one of those slightly cheesy but still awesome British horror movies from the early 1960s.

If anyone smarter than me can put this up on YouTube, I’ll be happy to post an embedded version here.

Update: Almost forgot to give credit where credit was due: this was pointed out to me by faithful reader/commentor Laura.

Upudate 2: The promised YouTube version, provided by faithful reader iburl:

Also, there are apparently four more parts! If anyone knows these people, please have them contact me! Though egotistically I’m sort of surprised that anyone who would go through the troubles of making those films isn’t already a reader of this site.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 9/4/06

Let’s get my assessment of this out of the way right now: Lame. LAME. LAAAAAME. This is just typical of the touchy-feely logic of this strip’s southern California locale: they think they can talk Stalky McStalker out of his stalking ways. Well, some mustachioed monsters can’t be reasoned with, you liberal namby-pambies.

We can’t see Dr. Chinbeard’s hands in panel one, so there’s still an off chance that he’s holding on to a pillowcase full of doorknobs and is about to start wailing away at Aldo’s face and chest. I like the fact that Wilbur is standing there with his arms crossed, like he thinks it makes him look like a bad-ass. Nobody wearing that shirt looks like a badass, Wilbur.

Gil Thorp, 9/4/06

Gil Thorp, meanwhile, is the diametric opposite of lame, as unlame as a comic strip can possibly be. Clearly Sean Pettibone has stumbled upon some sort of avant-garde band from the 1980s attempting to refresh their cutting-edge creative efforts by working up a new chainsaw-based act out in the deep woods, which they’ll record for their new album, Clearcut Symphony. Either that or they’re chainsaw-handed cyborgs, sent back from the future to prevent Milford from winning the football championship this year. Either way: distinctly non-lame. The retro Moose Miller t-shirt is just icing on the cake.

Dick Tracy, 9/4/06

It’s always kind of hard to follow the jumbled Dick Tracy chronology, but I’m reasonably sure that Dick is either engaging in pre-sex tie removing or post-sex tie retying in panel three.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 9/3/06

Ted: I could use some decorating tips.

Tommie: I’m afraid that’s not my strong suit.

Ted: Never mind, because that’s NOT ACTUALLY WHY I’M INVITING YOU UP TO MY APARTMENT. Jesus, you’re dense. How about dinner? Will dinner work? Great. See you at seven. Don’t wear underwear.

Ted at least can pull off his smooth talk without resorting to scare quotes, unlike some people would-be lotharios we could mention…

Mary Worth, 9/3/06

Note that “talk” and its variant “conversation” only appears in pervert-quotes when Aldo uses it. Mary is too forthright to resort to that kind of euphemism. Still, since nobody ever discusses this subject with Mary, we need somebody to just tell it like he means it:

Of course, we all are desperate to know just what it is that Aldo is looking at in the last panel, but sadly we won’t find out until at least Tuesday, since Monday will inevitably be a recap of today, and because Monday is a holiday, Tuesday may need to be a recap of Monday. My guess: a phalanx of cops, or the exhumed corpse of his wife. I’m enjoying the look on Mary’s face in that final panel; she’s thinking, “Oh, Aldo, I didn’t want it to come to this, but, well, you started things: I’m just finishing them.”

For Better Or For Worse, 9/3/06

“You kids are right into the ‘pop culture’?” Christ, even by Canadian standards you couldn’t possibly say anything dorkier than that without collapsing into some sort of black hole of dweebishness. The quote marks are just icing on the cake. No, there’s only one word that can properly describe Dr. P.:

Of course, 4Evah and Eva’s bassist is wearing a turquoise tank top, so maybe they aren’t exactly arbiters of cool themselves.