Archive: Phantom

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Apartment 3-G, 1/30/14

Oh, man, I have to say I’m seriously disappointed that Margo has been tricked so easily into allowing a literal wild animal to roam free inside their apartment, defecating freely and infecting roommates and visitors with Lyme disease willy-nilly. Margo is not the sort who enjoys the act of breaking rules for its own sake; she merely disregards those rules that she deems inconvenient, while ruthlessly enforcing the ones that serve her interests. In fact, one would assume that Margo helped write the rules about ruminants living in their apartment building, since she and the other Apartment 3-G gals (and maybe everyone else who lives there, who knows) own the building, according to this strip from 2004 where Margo angrily imposed some worksite safety guidelines. The building’s ownership situation has literally never come up since then, but I don’t think they’ve sold it or anything?

Anyway, the only way this makes any kind of sense is if Margo is one of the very few owners of the building, and she’s going to use this deer thing as a way to establish that rules are things she imposes on other people, not things she has to obey. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Jones,” Margo says to a tenant whose beloved but lease-violating cat she had seized by animal control the previous week. “Terrible weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?” The baby deer pees on the hallway carpet right in front of them, but Margo never breaks eye contact.

Judge Parker, 1/30/14

Huh, I was really pretty sure that April’s last name was “Bowers” and her dad’s compound was in the Yucatan, but Judge Parker plots are incredibly slow, so who can even remember these things? The Atlantic/Pacific question can at least be chalked up to the slow tectonic shifts that have taken place over this storyline’s millions of years.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/30/14

Haha, Jughaid, while it is just like a woman to violate the expressly stated rules of her Creator and then browbeat her hapless man into joining her in her monstrous act of sin, I think you’ve misunderstood the parson’s question! He’s not asking about the first commandment, but rather the furst commandment — in other words, the command of the Fürst, the Germanic princeling under whose sovereignty Hootin’ Holler lies, due to quirks of feudal law. Sorry, Jughead, his Serene Highness has declared his dominions to be at war with the Count Palatine of the Rhine. To arms! Say farewell to your family and prepare for combat!

Phantom, 1/30/14

As you may or may not have been able to tell from that last bit, before I got into the go-go world of online content creation, I made an abortive attempt at an academic career, although my speciality was not early modern Germany but rather late antiquity. So, is the Phantom (the strip) attempting to catch the interest of America’s #1 comics blogger by having a plot point about manuscripts and artifacts from the early middle ages? Maybe! Unfortunately the Phantom (the character) is singularly failing to catch the interest of our snoopy reporter lady, if her facial expression in panel two is any indication. Maybe instead of erasing her mind with “Bandar medicine,” he’s just planning to bore her into a coma.

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Spider-Man, 1/23/14

Say what you will about this battle between the Amazing Spider-Man and a nefarious supervillain one of Iron Man’s obsolete and jury rigged armor suits controlled by a nefarious supervillain a local publishing magnate with the stakes being Spider-Man’s very life Spider-Man’s secret identity, but at least it represents recognizably superheroic activity, it’s lasted three weeks at this point, and Peter Parker hasn’t paused once to watch TV at any time during the process. But now it looks like 2014’s quota for action and excitement has all been used up, so Man-Bot is going to crash into that van in the most hilariously half-assedly drawn panel this strip has seen to date. Is Man-Bot suddenly as long as a van, even though previously it’s been shown as not much taller than an ordinary person? Is the metal of the van’s wall peeling outward, even though Man-Bot is punching through from the outside? Yes and yes, because why not and who cares!

Family Circus, 1/23/14

Oh, dear, it appears that Jeffy is really just asking for a good smiting from the creator God, is he not? Perhaps his family will be killed and he’ll be afflicted with boils and then God will serve up a long Book of Job style poem about how Jeffy doesn’t really know crap about creating a universe, hopefully with an sidebar about what lousy parents ostriches are. Maybe He’ll go with the ironic Twilight Zone method of enlightenment, eliminating all clouds (and therefore rain) from the Earth’s sky until everyone dies of thirst. Or maybe He’ll be more New Testament gentle, and just send an angel to patiently explain to Jeffy that without those clouds he would’ve blinded himself by pointing his telescope directly at the sun, what with it being in the middle of the day and all.

Phantom, 1/23/14

Hey, remember that time in 2005 when a blonde lady discovered the Skull Cave and then the Phantom erased her mind with mind-erasing drugs? Long story short, the Phantom is going to erase this lady’s mind with mind-erasing drugs.

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The Phantom, 1/9/14

Oh, man, the Phantom! I’ve been remiss in keeping you up to date with the Phantom, and don’t have the time/energy to fill you in on all the details about the current plot, in which a plucky journalist has hired a disreputable guide to help her find the Bandar. Mostly today I just want to point out how much the Phantom is enjoying this little spat, especially the part where the journalist calls her guide by his full name right before punching him in the face. “Mmm-hmm,” he thinks, allowing himself the faintest hint of a smile. “That’s some good punching.”

Hagar the Horrible, 1/9/14

This might seems like a joke about the kids today and/or those wacky liberals with their “fair trade” woo-woo and what is that even about amiright, but you have to keep in mind that Honi belongs to the family of a Viking noble whose entire fortune is derived from plunder and theft. In that light, this is actually a fairly saucy and defiant answer! It’s like this woman wants her entire village burned to the ground.

Better Half, 1/9/14

Were you concerned that the Better Half had used up all its medical-themed jokes in one great burst of hospital hilarity last Sunday? Don’t worry. As long as humans love the things that will eventually kill them and fear the reckoning that a visit to the doctor brings, there will always be more medical-themed jokes, to make you laugh and make you think (about death).