Post Content

Ziggy, 12/5/08

OK, a confession to get out of the way right off the bat: I laughed, more or less involuntarily, at today’s Ziggy. There, I said it. Not being accustomed to such a reaction, I lingered over the panel for a bit and noticed that “such as it is” on the punchline-sign is in a very different style of handwriting than the text above it — it’s scrawled in a slapdash fashion. Is this mean to indicate that “THIS IS YOUR PARK” is an official notice from Ziggy’s municipality, but “such as it is” is meant to be a graffito of some sort? If so, this reduces the humor content of the strip considerably, as insulting and/or aggressive placards issued by some faceless authority are about the only recurring element in Ziggy that I find tolerable. But then I thought up another scenario: what if the space below “THIS IS YOUR PARK” had originally been left blank by the strip’s artist, who couldn’t think of the right joke put in there, and then he went on some kind of day-long drinking binge, and stumbled back to his drawing board, and at last had an epiphany that yes, “such as it is” was perfect, it would even make the Comics Curmudgeon laugh, that smug asshole, what does he know? And sure, what with the booze the writing came out kind of wonky, but it was true, it did make the Comics Curmudgeon laugh, huzzah! Huzzah for alcohol!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/5/08

Snuffy has bludgeoned one of his many rivals in the lucrative Hootin’ Holler meth trade to death with a frozen chicken. As in the Roald Dahl short story “Lamb to the Slaughter,” he disposes of the gruesome evidence by cooking it up for dinner. However, whereas Dahl’s story traffics in simple irony (the murder weapon is fed to the police investigating the crime), Barney Google and Snuffy Smith goes deeper (not that you would expect anything less): the killer chicken is fed to the local man of God, who is moreover told after the fact of his complicity in the terrible crime. How will the parson keep preaching the good word from the pulpit, knowing the atrocities that he’s participated in?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/5/08

Who’s up for another several weeks of June Morgan being sexily cruel to the help? [Raises hand] Me! Me! I am!

Pluggers, 12/5/08

Pluggers will make up a lot of crazy nonsense sayings to justify the fact that they’re generally too hung over to get to work on time.

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 11/11/08

Every long-running narrative form drifts towards its own extremes, which explains how Funky Winkerbean went from being an occasionally melancholy strip about high school hijinks to a charnel house. Hopefully today’s near-wordless installment is about to take things to the next level: instead of being struck down by alcoholism or cancer or garden-variety despair, Montoni is going to be devoured by the rampaging Tyrannosaurus Rex that has escaped from a secret underground genetics lab, and is now eating everything in sight. Hopefully, the new accelerated pace of death will kill off all the strip’s characters in short order, opening us up for a new, happier beginning, or at least three blank panels a day in which nobody weeps openly.

Crankshaft, 11/11/08

Meanwhile, over in the “fun” Funkyverse strip, the complex issue of Afghan poppy cultivation — which is the only means that many impoverished Afghan farmers have to make a living, but which fuels terrorism and religious extremism in the region and desperate addiction in the United States — provides the source material for a terrible joke about pastries for Crankshaft to squint angrily at. Crankshaft is irritated by this news report, naturally, because it promises that the smack that makes his life bearable will be more expensive in the coming months.

Apartment 3-G, 11/11/08

The third-stringers continue to stink up the field here in Apartment 3-G, as Gary, completely rattled by a little razzing from Dr. Kelly, flails emotionally at Tommie for no reason. “You two work together. Is he always a little … ODD???? Hey, don’t walk so far away when I’m shouting paranoid nonsense at you!” It’s just as well that Tommie found out that Gary can’t deal with difficult people now, before she took him home to be terrified by Margo.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/11/08

“Seriously, no more! Your heterosexual shenanigans repulse me.”

Marmaduke, 11/11/08

“Guess who’s got rabies! Me, soon enough.”

Pluggers, 11/11/08

OH FOR THE LOVE GOD NO PLUGGERS AND GARAGE CLEANING NOOOOOO

(For you Johnny- and Janey-come-latelies who don’t know what “garage cleaning” is code for, travel back in time.)

Post Content

Spider-Man, 11/8/08

Spider-Man has posed one vaguely interesting super-hero-esque narrative dilemma this week: How will Spidey get out of those nutty handcuffs? Naturally, this is resolved just below the bottom of panel two, where we can’t see it, while the storyline is endlessly rehashed by characters nobody likes.

Gasoline Alley, 11/8/08

Will Slim and Clovia loot what little cash is left in their business’s accounts, then high-tail it across American on the run from their creditors and unpaid employees? I’d love to see it, if only because Slim is such a spectacular failure that he’d inevitably end up in debtors’ prison.

Pluggers, 11/8/08

Pluggers have nowhere in particular to go and nobody who wants to see them, so they might as well just sit at the barber’s for twenty minutes, or an hour, who the hell cares, at least they have old magazines to read, God, why is life so empty and meaningless.