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Blondie, 12/14/07

I think I’ve made it clear that I oppose the coloring of daily comics, especially when the artists aren’t the one making the color choices. It’s particularly bad when the strips are specifically created with coloring conventions that accommodate publication in black and white and then are colored in. One of the most disconcerting examples of this is when something in a strip is supposed to be red and is colored solid black in the black-and-white version. It makes total sense in a monochrome format, but once you add color into the mix, you get bizarre results like Hi and Lois’ S&M Valentine’s Day, or Dagwood the goth Santa.

I got some fine pics from a meetup from faithful readers in greater Portland, which I’ll be running in the next day or two, but I did want to share a related anecdote from faithful reader Brown-Eyed Girl that’s relevant here:

As I was trying (and failing) to find the highway out of Portland, I stumbled across the Santacon: 600+ people dressed up like Santa Claus marching through downtown Portland. Well, staggering through downtown Portland; many of them were drunk. In honor of the black-clad Santa in Luann, I’ve sent you a picture of a black-clad Santa. “Better dead than red,” he said.

I should add that I only see Luann in black and white, and so black-suited Santas there seem totally reasonable to me. Dagwood’s hat, however, gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Gil Thorp, 12/14/07

No one is ever, ever allowed to make fun of the art in Gil Thorp again. Ever. What other strip would aim so high as to give us triple-Bill punching action? I particularly like the way that that the lead Valley Tech Vandal’s omnipresent hat is blasted off his head by Bill’s very first punch, symbolically emasculating him. It’s unclear whether he’s holding his face in panel three because he’s bleeding everywhere or because he’s ashamed of being beaten up by a dude with one leg.

Meanwhile, Cully’s sad face in panel three indicates that he’s getting no joy from this savage beatdown. Either his time in prison has shown him that the turn to violence is never any kind of victory, or he’s disappointed that he didn’t get to break these guys in half himself with his “wrestling moves.”

Curtis, 12/14/07

“Well, you were wearin’ shorts and flip-flops, I should say. I was wearing the same damn outfit I have on now, just like I do every other day of my life.”

Beetle Bailey, 12/14/07

Ha! It’s funny because the U.S. Army’s officer corps is mostly composed of desperate alcoholics!

Pluggers, 12/14/07

Pluggers know that a plastic sofa cover is a lot cheaper than fancy incontinence medication.

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Luann, 11/21/07

Pity the poor Luann creative team! In the continuing slow evolution of the strip’s characters, they’ve hit upon a potential gold mind of potential wacky plots: two young men living together, one somewhat impressionable, one somewhat scheming. Normally, you could just lie back and let the hijinks happen. But this is a comic strip that runs in mainstream family newspapers, so all the topics that you’d think of using for this setup — getting girls pregnant, hard drugs, getting into fights, having sex with girls, marijuana, hard liquor, video games, kissing girls, beer, uncleanliness, having physical contact of any sort with girls — are apparently off limits. We’re instead left with TJ’s manic holiday decorating jones, which, while potentially mildly amusing, seems a wee bit out of touch. Couldn’t Santa’s arm fly off in front of some little kids who would then wet their pants in terror at the sight? Oops, pants-wetting: also off-limits, apparently.

Blondie, 11/21/07

This is presumably supposed to be some sort of wry social commentary about how the commercial exploitation of Christmas seems to begin earlier and earlier every year with the stores and the malls and the waddyagonnadoamiright?, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that desperate food addict Dagwood Bumstead would be so in love with Thanksgiving, a holiday whose main ritual is gluttony, that he’d build a series of twisted idols to it. My only surprise is that the Thanksgiving tree isn’t being trimmed with real edible yams and turkey flesh, to be consumed once everything on the table has been crammed down Dagwood’s ravenous gullet. Elmo, who has long settled into the role of Dagwood’s enabler, wants to know how he can assist with the rampant food worship; only Daisy wordlessly questions the madness.

Family Circus, 11/21/07

A good way to keep Dolly in line is to keep her ignorant of actual theology and just tell her that things that annoy you are sins that will damn her soul to hell for all eternity. Other sins in the Keane household: running in the house, staying up past eight o’clock, talking while mommy and daddy are trying to watch TV, and singing Christmas carols at any time.

Pluggers, 11/21/07

“Wait a minute!” I’m sure you said when you saw Pluggers this morning. “Canada? They don’t have pluggers in Canada! How can pluggers live in the land of Hillarycare and a marriage between a dog-man and a rhino-man? Admittedly, this submission came not from the hot-shot big city of Toronto but rather from some little town called ‘Torono’ that I’ve never heard of, but still … Canada?” Well, fear not for your sense of sanity: Idris Mercer is actually faithful Comics Curmudgeon reader Skullturf Q. Beavispants! I actually remember him mentioning this as a potential Pluggers entry in the comments some months back; I’m sure he’s gratified to see his idea acted out by an obese, flannel-clad semihuman. Not that I don’t fully encourage all of you to keep sending your petty gripes to TDIET (and we have plenty coming up in the next couple of months) but the Pluggers code has been harder to crack, and we must salute Mr. Beavispants as a result.

Unlike those who had their entries employed by TDIET, Skullturf was not contacted and told that his idea would be run, nor was he sent a suitable-for-framing copy of the cartoon, because pluggers don’t expect or deserve that sort of consideration.

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Gil Thorp, 11/14/07

Oh, Gil, Gil, Gil. I know that your desperate need to salvage some shred of dignity out of this season has lead to radical measures, like actually coaching, but surely you know that the reason your team is in this mess in the first place is because they’re not only athletically untalented, but incredibly dim. Building an offense around trickery and cleverness is doomed to failure in too many ways to even begin to describe. You’ll be lucky if the team hasn’t accidentally set itself on fire by the end of the first quarter. Gil’s fear that any other team might be trying to find out about the Mudlarks’ top secret plans is hilariously misplaced as indicated by the sadly deserted hall outside of LOCKER LOCKER, completely devoid of spies from rival high schools or snoopy reporters looking for a scoop.

There are so many more interesting phrases that could have followed “those years” in panel two. “Picking pockets,” for one. Or maybe “working as a magician at children’s parties.”

Mark Trail, 11/14/07

Today’s Mark Trail is yet another example of a recurring phenomenon in which I think the chatter of commentors has prepared me for the action in a strip, only to still be blown away when confronted with the reality. As so many of you noted, Johnny clearly isn’t punching Malone; he’s rubbing his fist in the cigar-smoking cad’s face, forcing his nemesis to smell whatever foul-smelling substance he’s smeared across his knuckles (don’t think about what that might be don’t think about what that might be).

The depiction of that saucy, arrogant Malone in panels one and two is actually quite charming. He looks like he just strode off of some Merchant Marine freighter, circa 1943, and if the Nazis tried their best to send him to the bottom of the Atlantic and failed, he’s not going to let some pissy little French Canadian discombobulate him with his stinky hand.

Mary Worth, 11/14/07

WAIT WHAT MARY DIDN’T CHECK THE CONDO BYLAWS BEFORE BRINGING HOME A DOG? HAS SHE GONE COMPLETELY INSANE? The condo bylaws are like sacred scriptures to Mary (as indicated by the fact that she keeps them in the upper drawer of her dresser, as if they were a Gideon’s Bible) and now she’s throwing ALL THAT AWAY because of some yapping pooping little mutt? Oh, Mary, the other condo-dwellers will be right to chase you out of Charterstone with torches and pitchforks — not because you’ve violated the condo codes, but because you’re obviously some kind of reverse pod person impostor who actually has normal human emotions.

B.C., 11/14/07

Today’s B.C. took on a current event in a weird, loopy, mushy way that didn’t make much sense and also wasn’t funny. Somewhere, Johnny Hart must be so proud.

Pluggers, 11/14/07

Pluggers hate foreign food almost as much as they hate actual foreigners.