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For Better Or For Worse, 5/25/06

Now, I’m not one to wish ill on a sweet, innocent young girl, even if said girl is a cartoon character … oh, who am I kidding. Seriously, something pretty bad better have happened to Liz since we last saw her moping, because if she thinks having an important job in an exciting place far away from the stifling omnipresence of her family, as well as two hot guys competing for her affection, constitutes her life falling apart, then I for one will … um … think less of her.

Meanwhile, I’ll bet that Finger Quotin’ Margo has something to say about your use of quotes in your e-mail, April!

Ha, ha, that crazy finger-quotin’ dame! Could you ever get tired of her?

Seriously, I’d like to know. I’d use her every day if I didn’t think it would get boring after a while. I love her that much.

The Phantom, 5/25/06

Meanwhile, in the Phantom, a bunch of guys are getting machine-gunned to death. To which I say: rockin’! But, um, can you actually show people being gunned down by wave after wave of hot lead in the funnies? Those of you who read Scott Adams’ blog may remember that he was forced by his editors to have a cop shooting a donut instead of a pistol so as to keep gunplay out of the comics pages. To, you know, protect the children. And while it seems unlikely to me that lots of children read the Phantom, it seems even less likely that they read Dilbert, so I’m a bit confused.

Finally, some of you have already noted that the Houston Chronicle’s invaluable comics site is down. This appears to be because the site has gone to stripped-down, low-graphics “high traffic” mode because people around the world want to read about how former Enron execs (and local Houston boys) Skilling and Lay are guilty guilty GUILTY. And really, who can blame them? But it means that we comic lovers have to suffer. First they plunge huge swaths of California into darkness and screw over their own employees so that they could have hot-and-cold running Courvoisier in their walled compounds, and now this? When will their reign of evil finally end? Anyway, thanks to the outage, I haven’t read a good chunk of the comics I usually read daily, so if there are any particular gems I missed, I’ll put up a supplemental post.

Update: Well, of course, it came back up five minutes after I put up this post. Anyway, only one really jumped out at me:

Pluggers, 5/25/06

Normally Pluggers is all about kind-heartedness and good feelings, but … check out the look on Mrs. Plugger there. “I’m going to put your tools in the garbage, you over-cholesteroled lump … after you die. Oh, please, God, why won’t he die?”

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Mary Worth, 5/7/06

STIRLING VS. STIRLING! BATTLE ROYALE! WHO WILL BE THE WINNER? As near as I can tell, it will be whoever can point the most vigorously. Kelly got into an early lead in panel two, with a triumphant index finger nearly poking out of the frame, but Lou comes back strong in panel seven with a point so powerful it leaves motion-line streaks behind it at two different angles. The sheer rage of this emotional combat is in fact reflect by the motion lines everywhere — trailing Lou’s hands, radiating from Kel’s spoon, and smearing off of the sides of her eyes as even nature takes sides against her.

That’s a pretty nice rant Lou’s worked himself up into by the final panel. “And I can’t follow you where you want to go with this!” Jesus, man, she’s not planning on murdering schoolchildren and then selling their organs for crystal meth money; she just wants to take a walk once in a while. Chill!

In other news, I’m going to have to revisit something I said last month. I claimed that a recent Phantom that featured Mrs. Phantom changing in a moonlit mountain clearing was one of the most gratuitous moments in newspaper comics history. But I clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word gratuitous until today:

The Phantom, 5/7/06

“There’s something out there, Kit … I’d better expose my breasts to it!” But just in case you get so hot and bothered that you forget that you’re reading the Phantom, panel five reminds you: it may be the first instance of comics erotica to feature this strip’s trademark interrobang.

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Before I take on today’s comics, I must briefly touch on two things I shamefully neglected yesterday. First off, it looks as if the new Sunday Phantom storyline is going to be moving in on Mark Trail’s environmentalism turf, since the latter is focusing its energy on a two-fisted libertarian crusade against eminent domain:

I’m looking forward to teasers like “Next: Peak oil!” and “Next: Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne are tools of the logging industry!” But what really strikes me is the fact that not 24 hours after this comic appeared, Wikipedia presented Retreat of glaciers since 1850 as its feature article. Behold the power and influence of the Ghost-Who-Supports-The-Swift-Implementation-Of-The-Kyoto-Protocol!

In other news, Rex Morgan allowed his big brown eyes and pretty little mouth to get dangerously close to Dr. Troy’s crotch.

Moving on to today’s funnies:

Gil Thorp, 4/17/06

You know how Disney has this digitally animated film called The Wild, about some zoo animals that escape and have to deal with the real wilderness, and between this, that, and the other thing it took them, like, nine years to make, and then a year before they released it Dreamworks put out Madagascar, which had essentially the same plot, and then Disney was all like, “Hey! We had that idea first!” but it didn’t matter because Madagascar came out first and by all accounts was better anyway? Well, Gil Thorp can try all it wants to say, “We’ve been setting up the Brent-‘Rap Dog’-has-his-attempts-to-lose-weight-get-undermined-by-his-scary-white-trash-mother” storyline set up since last March!” but the truth is that this psychodrama is already underway over in Mary Worth, so y’all were a little late to pull the trigger.

Meanwhile, if Allen Ginsberg is condemned to haunt Judge Parker, then from the look of things Divine is trapped in Gil Thorp for all eternity. I know this is applies to every episode of this strip ever, but that hair is whack.

Apartment 3-G, 4/17/06

So, before she can leave on her vacation, Tommie has to euthanize this old lady for Hillary Clinton?