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Marvin, 1/22/09

If there’s one thing that Marvin does well repeatedly, it’s come up with some labor-saving gimmick joke that can serve as a template for multiple days worth of material. We all remember the week of pure horror that was “Belly Laffs,” in which each new day proved just how not-funny a joke about women gaining weight when they’re pregnant can get. If there’s anything to console us during this cryspace.com nightmare, it’s that we started in the middle of the week, which means that we have at most two more days of this left.

Also, as a red-headed American, I resent the implication that the lady gingers need to bill themselves as blondes in order to increase their sex appeal. Nobody can dispute the attractiveness of redheads, people! And as a human being with a shred of decency, I am disgusted by the idea of a baby making her profile sexy, what the hell, this is monstrous beyond description.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/22/09

Little Sarah has always been a precocious child, and that, combined with the affluent upbringing her father’s medical practice has provided, may be bringing her down a very dark path, as she seems extremely intrigued by the prospect of joining this wizened alcoholic aristocrat in hunting a wily urchin for sport. “Come, child, let me tell you about the thrills of the most dangerous game!”

Apartment 3-G, 1/22/09

Some people have doubted whether Margo is really as awe-inspiring and terrifying as all that. All I can say is that if any roommate of mine had left me a list of imperative mood verbs like the one seen here, I’d respond less with a resigned sigh and more with a string of obscenities. Either Margo really can kill with her mind, or the surreptitious, never-talked-about sex must be amazing.

Marmaduke, 1/22/09

“Howling at the moon,” ha! Marmaduke is actually summoning his demonic Master to appear and accept the blood sacrifice of these two innocents. Naturally, Marmaduke will carry out this sacrifice himself.

Momma, 1/22/09

Ha ha, Momma called her daughter a tramp! A tramp wearing a tiny, tiny lampshade as a hat.

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Gil Thorp, 12/1/08

Good lord, what … what is that that Gil’s wearing in panel one? It looks to me an awful lot like part of one of the uniforms from the earlier Star Trek movies, which suddenly throws the whole insanity of this strip into a whole new light. See, Gil was really a big sci-fi nerd in high school, relentlessly persecuted by jocks, until his mind snapped and he hatched a terrible plan of revenge: he’d take a job as a high school athletics director, and subject the next generation of jocks to a hellish regime of incompetent coaching that always resulted in either total failure on the field — or, worse, a glimpse of victory snatched away by cruel defeat in the playdowns. Then, secure in the knowledge that the dozens of student athletes in his care have had their little hearts broken, he goes home to his hot blonde wife and engages in his real first love: Star Trek cosplay.

Meanwhile, Marty Moon’s producers are plotting to put known fraudster Jeff Ponczak on the air to provide a counterpoint to Marty’s drunken, anti-Thorp diatribes. I love the way they’re plotting all this so carefully behind his back, as if he’s a brilliant but insane dictator with a hair-trigger temper and a platoon of fanatically devoted bodyguards who will kill on his command, when in fact he’s their employee. They can just say “Hey, Marty, your ratings are dropping because your shows are meandering and pointless, so we’re hiring that high school kid that lied about his heart condition to be on the show with you, and if you don’t like it, you’re fired.” And then he’d go and cry in his car.

Apartment 3-G, 12/1/08

Note: Starting tomorrow, the “Comics Curmudgeon” blog will be replaced at this URL with a new site, entitled “Margo Magee Says Hilarious Things That Make You Laugh.” Installment one will be entitled “Ya think?!” We thank you for your continued patronage.

Momma, 12/1/08

“Get it? Get it? ‘Correspondence’? Get it? Will you get it if I emphasize the first syllable even harder? ‘Correspondence’? Get it? Of course not, because it makes no fucking sense, you know? Correspondence? Hengh?”

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/08

As part of my thrice-annual attempt to be nice about Beetle Bailey, I’ll say this: I find it pretty funny that Otto is so lazy that he’s drinking out of his water bowl through a straw, so he doesn’t have to leave the cozy confines of his neatly labelled box. I’d probably find it even funnier if I weren’t distracted by the fact that said straw appears to have materialized out of thin air between the first and second panels.

Gil Thorp, 10/17/08

Speaking of giving credit where it’s due, I find the line “Wherever girls go after they dump a guy” utterly charming. It has certain film-noiry world-weariness about it, not that that justifies the stupid fedora, Matt.

Momma, 10/17/08

You know, I bitch about the romantic drama in Luann, but it does have this going for it: it never consists of a series of baffling and repulsive non sequiturs, like the romantic drama in certain strips I could mention.