Post Content

Phantom, 5/3/08

Could the JUNGLE PATROL’s longstanding no-yucky-girls-allowed policy have been based on sound policy, not mere prejudice? The men of the Jungle Patrol have for centuries cheerfully taken orders without question from a mysterious figure that they never see and who may not even exist; but these two dames have been Jungle Patrolpersons for less than a week and they’re already determined to suss out his identity — not because they find the idea of a faceless, nameless superior officer creepy and weird, of course, but because they want to have sex with him. Kay and Hawa have been yammering on in this vein for several days now, and I’ve been wondering how their tight-knit friendship would survive when the Unknown Commander has to choose only one of them to be his Unknown Commandress, but today we learn that obviously the choice will be based on racial grounds. It’s too bad the real U.C. isn’t Chinese or something, just because it would be fun to watch that blow their minds.

Apartment 3-G, 5/3/08

Thanks to the glory and pageantry of NetFlix, my wife and I tore through all five seasons of The Wire a few months ago, but this Apartment 3-G makes me realize that I still don’t fully understand the economics of the drug trade. Will Jones be pleased when he realizes that Alan is redistributing his dope, happy to move up the ladder from street-level dealer to wholesaler? Or will he conclude that the profits Alan is reaping by selling smack to desperate floozies are rightfully his own, and decide to shoot the hapless artist in the back of the head and leave his body to rot in a vacant somewhere?

The stakes would be much higher if everyone involved weren’t morons. I love Jones’s rapt expression in panel two. “Whoah — that’ll buy a lotta dope! Now where I could I find some … oh, wait, I have some right here! Turns out I don’t need your money after all, Alan.”

Dick Tracy, 5/3/08

Dick Tracy’s contempt for Deformed-Americans has never been more obvious. Hey, Liz, your “knight in shining armor” lost his gun, then stood around aimlessly in that shining armor until somebody else shot the bad guy. Your real savior was Dab Stract, who has the added bonus of not being married (I’m assuming). Go on, plant a wet one his lumpy, malformed cheek. He’s earned it!

Gasoline Alley, 5/3/08

His two-timing having been revealed to the congregation, Sturdivant is about to be dragged out of the church by the bride’s hobo relatives and stabbed to death, or possibly sodomized. Score another one for good ol’ fashioned frontier justice!

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 4/12/08

Many have complained that Chief Liz has been relegated to the typical hapless female victim role in the current insane Dick Tracy storyline, despite being, you know, the actual chief of police. Today, she gamely tries her hand at Tracy-style crime fighting by attempting to actually rip the villain’s face off of the front of his skull. She is soon neutralized by a well-place elbow to the chin, but, hey, points for giving it a go.

The Phantom, 4/12/08

Liz needs to take some tips from our lady cop/waitress pair if she really wants to know how to take down a baddie, though: pump hot lead into him, then taunt him as he lies bleeding at your feet. The Ghost Who Only Hires Sadists has a slight smile, indicating that Kay and Hawa have at last passed the callousness threshold needed to enter the Jungle Patrol.

Family Circus, 4/12/08

“Didn’t they know you were a girl, and thus should only have been educated to the extent necessary for child-rearing and food preparation?”

And a couple of fun panels for you:

Panel from Spider-Man, 4/12/08

I wish we could get to see the proceedings of New York State Superior Court, Bribery Division, in which a jury will determine if Simon Krandis can, in fact, buy his way out of prison. Certainly it would be more interesting than the three weeks of Peter Parker whining and watching TV that we’re actually going to get.

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/12/08

Among the small but very enthusiastic group holding a pretty specific fetish, today will go down in history as The Day June Morgan Ate A Cheeseburger With Her Big Sexy Teeth. Rex looks miffed that nobody wants to see a close-up of him pecking away at his spinach salad.

Post Content

The Phantom, 4/11/08

As was no doubt easily predictable, I lost interest in the current Phantom storyline rather quickly after all the hilarious Jungle Patrol! catchphrases petered out. (Not that you shouldn’t be stocking up on Jungle Patrol-themed merchandise, mind you.) Basically, our lady cop and waitress have been attempting to capture a notorious arms dealer in an attempt to prove their mettle to the male chauvinist pigs who run the Jungle Patrol; throughout the process, the Ghost Who Is Helpful has been surreptitiously doing much of the heavy lifting in the bad-guy-neutralization department. Some might think that this is unfair affirmative action on the Big Purple Guy’s part to try to get some ladies into his elite law-enforcement outfit, but since everyone in The Phantom other than the Phantom is generally pretty incompetent, I’m guessing that secret help from the Unknown Commander is par for the course on Jungle Patrol missions.

In today’s final panel, though, we learn that these ladies may be a little bloodthirsty even by Jungle Patrol standards. Sure, it’s reasonable for them to return fire, but it does seem like they were just waiting for the chance, doesn’t it? Usually the Phantom lets the baddies off with a little chin music and a Skull Mark™ as a reminder to stay on the straight and narrow, but our Swiss death merchant here looks like he’ll be as full of holes as his nation’s namesake cheese in short order.

Speaking of gunplay, while our lady cop has obviously been through weapons training, when did the waitress learn to fire off handgun rounds with such steely precision? I would have liked to have seen a Rocky-style montage sequence in which she learned the various deadly arts.

Shoe, 4/11/08

“That, plus the transceiver I attached to the bottom of your car in the parking lot, means that we’ll be seein’ a lot of each other! Haw haw!”

Since the earliest days of this blog, I have made it clear that I cannot abide the “sexy” lady birds in this strip. I dunno, there’s something about the combination of beaks and feathers with some distinctly, er, mammalian characteristics that just utterly squicks me out. The attention that’s been lavished on the glimpse we get of this barfly’s lower back isn’t helping me, either.

Spider-Man, 4/11/08

Hey, look, Simon Krandis keeps a fistful of wadded up bribe money in his tuxedo jacket at all times. The man would have made a swell governor!

The final panel is simultaneously the most hilarious and the most fetishistically unsettling image the Spider-Man newspaper strip has produced in the last three years.