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Curtis, 9/29/07

I’ve perversely pleased that Curtis has chosen to take on a topic so very rarely tackled in the comics: that moment in a young man’s life when his raging hormones completely overwhelm his capacity to act in a socially appropriate fashion. In Curtis’ case, he’s taken to “watching” (just watching, sure) degrading reality quasiporn right before dinner time. It’s nothing to be proud of, but we’ve all been there, right fellas? (And probably the ladies too, though I’ll let them speak for themselves.) Anyway, part of every person’s self-pleasuring education involves learning the whens and wheres, and Curtis is quickly finding out that where should probably not be “in the bedroom that you share with your brother in what is probably a none-too-large apartment” and when should definitely not be “in the early evening, when your family is in the next room and could wander in at any moment.” Patience and cunning are required while you still live at home, Curtis. You don’t want to be too obvious about it in such close proximity to your mom, lest you enter Francis territory.

If “family matters” is my new favorite euphemism for sex, then “the ‘times’” is clearly my new favorite euphemism for puberty. And I do wonder if Curtis has finally gotten his hands on the fabled “syrup chapter.”

Gil Thorp, 9/30/07

The Mudlarks have started the season 0-2 behind quarterback Tony Casey’s consistently dismal play. Some might say that he just doesn’t have the talent, but I think he’s a bit distracted … distracted by left guard Howard Gourwitz and his wholesome, aw-shucks good looks! While Tony’s the quarterback, in the aftermath of Milford’s defeat it’s Howard who’s making passes. Tony might be disappointed to “forget the Bucket”, at least this week, but I’ll be he’s looking forward to finding out exactly what act of delightful perversity “empty your mom’s fridge” might be code for.

While this romantic drama is going on the foreground, I have to wonder about football player number three in the second panel, who can’t seem to get his helmet off. Did a particularly powerful hit jam it onto his skull so tightly that he’ll be forced to wear it around school indefinitely? Meanwhile, after the inevitable disorienting jump cut, we get the promise of more vandalism-based hijinks to come. Backwards black hat dude is a master of the school-rivalry prank; he’s had a long time to acquire that mastery, since he appears to be 35 or so.

Momma, 9/29/07

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Momma plans to go out like a monarch from ancient Egypt or Sumer. When she dies, her faithful servants will kill and entomb her children with her in her enormous ziggurat so they can wait on her hand and foot in the afterlife. Good God, that smile on her sleeping face creeps the hell out of me.

Archie, 9/29/07

You can when you spend as much time huffing paint as you do, Archie!

Man, the nameless guy at the bottom center of the second panel is the saddest dude in the world. There’s someone who actually cares about his test scores and his academic future. Archie is just idly musing on his incipient dementia to pass the time until he sees something shiny.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/29/07

Yeah, and the younger one kind of looks like he’s on fire. That could explain the odor.

Pluggers, 9/29/07

A plugger’s erectile dysfunction is kind of besides the point, since the rest of his body is in such an advanced state of decay that attempting any kind of sexual encounter would be excruciatingly painful. Plus nobody really wants to have sex with him anyway.

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B.C., 9/26/07

…or like fish, right? Because the whole “tastes like chicken” joke is about exotic animals that people don’t usually eat, you see, and at root it’s based on the fact that chicken is fairly bland, as is most meat from small-ish animals, and it’s just that chicken is the kind of small-ish animal we eat the most. And fish, by contrast, actually have a really distinctive flavor … and he’s eating a fish … and the joke would have worked just as well if the punchline had been “…it sure tastes great” or something along those lines … and … and … AAAAARRRGGGH!

Ahem. To say something nice, I sort of like Clumsy’s crudely drawn but effectively harrowing look of profound horror in the final panel. I also think it’s amusing that Curls has taken his first bite of delectable Dorsellectus Illusivii out of the fish’s head. (Addendum: OH GOD I KNOW THE NAMES OF B.C. CHARACTERS WITHOUT LOOKING THEM UP PLEASE KILL ME NOW)

Hi and Lois, 9/26/07

“Now, Trixie, don’t forget, Daddy and I have decided that you will stay a perfect porcelain doll, untouched by the dangerous rays of the sun throughout your sheltered life. Don’t make me put you in the barrel again!”

Pluggers, 9/26/07

Pluggers … let their children play in feces? Wow, there’s really not much I can add to this one. I would like to point out, though, that cats like to shit in sandboxes generally. Brightly colored sandboxes in the postage-stamp-sized backyards of yuppie-hipster rowhouses in Park Slope; huge, multi-level sand-based environments in the acres behind McMansions in Northern Virginia; or sand-filled tires in the trash-strewn lots of Pluggerville, USA: cats will do their business in any of them. Thus, I can only assume that the poop angle was added here to give someone a perverse thrill. You are sick, sir or madam, sick!

Shoe, 9/26/07

OK, if you’ve worked for a newspaper for years and frequently cover political stories and still don’t know the length of your town’s mayoral term, you no longer get to call yourself “Perfesser.” I don’t care if it’s whimsically misspelled. This sort of thing quite frankly makes me rethink my opinions on media consolidation. If Gannett bought the Treetops Tribune (or whatever the hell it’s called; I’M NOT LOOKING IT UP YOU CAN’T MAKE ME) and outsourced all of the local reporting to a journalism compound in Bangalore, at least those guys would know how to look up the answer on Wikipedia.

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Ahh, a new week stretches before us! And what better way to avoid the degradation and sleaze that’s oozed into every corner of American life than to spend a little time with those good, old-fashioned entertainments: the soap opera comic strips! Let’s check out the narration box in today’s Judge Parker! It certainly won’t be a series of thinly veiled innuendos.

Er. Well, uh, how about Mary Worth? The chances of some seemingly random object in the background being carefully placed so that one of the characters will appear to have an enormous erection are pretty slim, right?

Jesus, for once I’m really glad I read this feature in color.

Well, what about Rex Morgan, that handsome, upright representative of all that is good about American manhood?

Wow. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds … it sounds very, very wrong. OK, screw you, soap opera comic strips!

Dick Tracy, 9/24/07

Boy, this sure is an exciting episode in the adventures of America’s toughest crime fighter! There’s something naggingly familiar about it, though…

Dick Tracy, 9/22/07

See, this is another thing that I have grown sort of fascinated with in Dick Tracy. I wouldn’t say I like it per se, but it also doesn’t anger me as much as you might think it would. I’m pretty sure that continuity strips by mandate must include some repeated information for the benefit of those who only tune in every third day or so. You could take the Gil Thorp hackery route and just use this as an excuse to repeat panels from the previous day. Or you could do what Dick Tracy does, which is to recreate the same basic sequence of events that occurred in the previous strip, with all newly drawn panels featuring slightly different dialog and “camera” angles. It gives the strip a dreamlike quality in which the narrative thread slips backwards and forwards in time, sometimes echoing back at us slightly different versions of the same moment for days or even weeks, and sometimes lurching violently forward into action that seems to violate all laws of logic and continuity. In something of a bravura performance, today’s strip actually manages to leave the plot less advanced than it was at the end of Friday; fortunately, the Baron will probably manage to mention sotto voce that he’s already set the fuse for at least two of the next four days.

Dennis the Menace, 9/24/07

Dennis is actually a being a lot more menacing here than you might think at first: he’s essentially telling the good reverend that he’d make a better savior than Jesus. And since the combination of peanut butter, jelly, and fish would taste vile beyond imagining, we get a good look at the sadistic impulses that underlie his fantasies of omnipotence. Imagine the multitude sitting around on the grass, choking down the weird combination of fish and jam and peanut butter, while Dennis the Messiah glares down at them saying, “Whassamatter, you don’t like the feast I’ve prepared for you? Are you a bunch of ingrates?” They’d have no choice but to avoid his gaze and say “It’s good that you did that, Dennis.”

For Better Or For Worse, 9/24/07

Today’s Foob flashback reveals the most harrowing aspect of Grandpa Jim’s stroke-induced aphasia: it renders him incapable of bending his grandchildren to his will with threats of violence, as is his wont.

Pluggers, 9/24/07

Thanks to their court-mandated rehab program, pluggers have had their one pleasure in life taken away from them. Also, they’re badly constipated.