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Momma, 9/15/14

I don’t mean to intensely overanalyze a few stray sentences in an ephemeral work of art … no, wait, it turns out that’s exactly what this blog is for, so I think I’ll do exactly that with today’s Momma! Anyway, I find Momma’s pronoun use somewhat unsettling in this strip. Perhaps MaryLou’s line was originally “I’d like to eat dinner out for a change,” with dinner cut for space reasons, but as it stands Momma is resolutely refusing to explain to her daughter what, exactly, she will be required to eat, and it’s freaking me out. There is only the mysterious, terrifying it. “Too late! It’s ready to eat. You’ll hate it … but you’ll EAT it. Don’t you understand? IT must be C O N S U M E D”

Shoe, 9/15/14

I have to say that I appreciate the fact that there’s a banner halitosis headline on the front page of today’s Treetop Tribune health section, as the Perfesser’s question thus actually sort of makes sense in context now, rather than just being an off-the-cuff joke setup. Maybe Tribune staffers are being tasked with starting real-life “viral” conversations about the paper’s content, in order to compete with these newfangled internet sites and their social media reach? Anyway, Biz the cantankerous old bird-man is chiefly concerned with not dying, so maybe, considering audience demographics for print newspapers, the Tribune health editor ought to be assigning more stories on that topic.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/15/14

Way back in the mists of time, Bull Bushka was not the amiable if slightly dim fellow who appears in the current iteration of the strip, but rather a vicious bully whose narrative purpose was to make Les’s life miserable. Anyway, it’s good to see that, despite his change of heart, he still likes to pull elaborate little pranks to make teenagers feel terrible about themselves.

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Archie, 9/11/14

If Mr. Lodge really wanted to make sure Archie didn’t damage any of his delicate artworks, he could’ve, say, just moved his precious crystal spheroid more than an elbow’s length away from the chair where he seats his clumsiest guests! Or, instead, he could just construct an elaborate cage around said chair, so Archie can see the delicate orb and know that he probably would’ve broken it if not for Mr. Lodge’s draconian measures. He forgives and doesn’t forget and also has the sort of wealth and copious free time that allows him to implement elaborately passive-aggressive retaliatory measures, is what I’m saying.

Blondie, 9/11/14

Good lord, Dagwood, you see Lou pretty much every workday of your life, and yet you still can’t recognize when he’s trying to initiate an erotic role-play scenario. It’s like you don’t even know who he is, after all these years.

Momma, 9/11/14

Hello! If you’re a fan of Momma’s unsettling sexual undertones but have finally had enough of the Oedipal angle, might I recommend today’s strip, in which Francis and his sister obliquely discuss venereal disease?

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Blondie, 8/18/14

Blondie has always been cheerfully hostile towards contemporary pop culture and/or modernity, so it’s pretty impressive that the strip has actually managed to find a musical reference here that isn’t dated or just completely wrong-headed. If it’s being deployed in the context of Elmo aggressively demanding that Dagwood forge an affectionate note from a wildly popular 24-year-old songstress for his own inscrutable and no doubt sinister purposes, so much the better.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/14

So the whole point last week’s noir-ish reverie, at the end of which someone got killed, was to remind Les of the existence of his “kill fee.” In the normal world that humans inhabit, a kill fee is what a writer gets from a publication when they fulfill the obligations of their contract but then the publication decides, for whatever reason, not to publish what they’ve written; it’s less (usually substantially yet) than what they were originally promised for the article, but the writer keeps all rights to their work and can try to sell it to someone else. But in the cutthroat world of Hollywood screenwriting in the Funkyverse, it apparently refers to a fee a writer gets when he decides he hates working on movies and just up and quits, even though he’s already gotten a big check for his script, which sounds pretty neat. Looks like I made the right choice to go west and try to make my own way in the entertainment industry!

Pluggers, 8/18/14

A physically active plugger expressing unbridled and even manic joy rather than down-home smugness or vague unease with modern life? A plugger’s all-wheel-drive that doesn’t refer to a proudly retrograde smoke-belching motor vehicle of some kind? What the hell is this even? Was someone just really, really eager to draw a bear wearing roller skates and a helmet? Not that I can blame them, it’s a pretty rad thing to draw.

Six Chix, 8/18/14

While I’m not familiar with the specifics, I’m sure there are any number of belief systems in which the sea is regarded as a single, feminine entity. Over the millennia, she’s drawn tens of thousands of sailors to their doom in her watery bosom, so the idea that she might be constantly murmuring their final terrified blasphemies seems reasonable as well.

Spider-Man, 8/18/14

I swear I’m not just saying this over bitterness over my own botched attempt to get an academic PhD, honest: I find it really pretentious when people who have non-medical doctorates go around calling themselves “doctor.” Maybe Doc Ock wanted to call himself “Professor Octopus” but then he got an angry letter from the provost reminding him that he was only an adjunct lecturer.

Momma, 8/18/14

Hello, ladies! Have you ever left the house or had interactions or experiences of any kind? Well, Momma is sorry to hear you’re such a whore.