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Baldo, 3/29/07

As part of my program of occasionally saying something unmitigatedly nice, I’ll say that I really like this technique that Baldo does occasionally, where normally cartoonish characters suddenly become lifelike, if romantically idealized. For reference for those of you who don’t read the strip, this is what Tia Carmen usually looks like:

Since Baldo is about a Latino family, it’s tempting to call these installments comic-page telenovellas, but their real antecedents are soap strips like Mary Worth or Rex Morgan, I think. I like them because I think they represent the idealized way the characters see themselves, rather than the cartoonish way in which we usually look at them.

Ziggy, 3/29/07

Hmm! Say there, Ziggy seems to be saying something to the mice about something that we, the audience, can’t see! Doesn’t this seem a bit familiar? Let’s turn the wayback machine to November 15, 2006:

Ziggy, 11/15/06

At the time, I said this:

You know what would have made this cartoon marginally funnier? If we could actually see the mice making off with Ziggy’s cell phone. Or see the antenna sticking out of the mousehole. Or see Ziggy holding an empty cell-phone holder. Or really see anything that would indicate that this wasn’t one of hundreds of photocopies of a single pre-drawn “Ziggy talks to the mice” panel, all awaiting only the addition of “hilarious” dialogue and published at reasonable intervals so as not to be glaringly obvious.

(Note for libel purposes: I’m not saying that Ziggy actually uses photocopied panels instead of coming up with a new one every day. I’m just saying that it would save a lot of work if it did.)

Well, it sadly looks like I was right. Despite the fact that today’s Ziggy could have just used the November panel with different dialogue, it seems that the artist has gone through all the trouble of making an entirely new drawing for what’s essentially the same mice-using-wireless-communications-technology joke. To his credit, he managed to make it even less interesting visually this time around.

Spider-Man, 3/29/07

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed that Spider-Man getting hit in the head with a brick would cause amnesia and mistaken-wife-identity hijinks. It was a moronic idea for a storyline, I thought, but hey, this is Spider-Man. Of course, I failed to account for the fact that the Spider-Man strip will do whatever it takes to prevent you from deriving enjoyment of any kind from it. Today, it becomes obvious that Spidey getting bonked in the head and stumbling about woozily for the better part of a week wasn’t meant to set up any ludicrous narrative shenanigans; in fact, it actually served absolutely no narrative purpose at all. As I should have known since this enraging sequence a couple years back, this strip exists entirely as some elaborate bit of storytelling gamesmanship, in which all reader expectations of excitement or at least a vague sense of involvement are continually and gleefully thwarted.

Pluggers, 3/29/07

What I love best about today’s Pluggers is how damn smug Grandpa McCheapskate looks. “Yeah, I’m trying to teach you the value of a dollar … specifically, that it’s four times greater than the value of a quarter. Now go get a job, you little ingrate.”

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Gil Thorp, 3/20/07

Some days, when I’m having a busy day, like I did today (I’m guest-blogging at Wonkette all week, by the way, and trying to get Mary Worth restored to the Washington Post in the process), I see dozens of comments come in about a particular strip before I see the strip itself. Sometimes all the build-up is more than a strip can bear, but panel two of today’s Gil Thorp was all I had been led to hope for and more. The sight of Tyler beating himself in the back of the head in some suburban alley — with the baffling motion lines turning the scene into an Escher-esque impossibility, and with the tiny moon floating behind him, making it look like he’s dislodged one of his own eyeballs — well, it’s pretty much the best thing I’ve seen today. I’d like to think that we’re seeing smack number four here.

Mary Worth, 3/20/07

Mary Worth was of course almost as entertaining, with her creepy finger-touching. It’s like she’s measuring Vera to make sure she’ll fit in the apartment. Or, actually, it’s like she’s Judy Davis in a straight-to-Showtime movie called “Suburban Madame,” and she’s checking out the new meat to arrive at her peaceful condo complex/brothel.

Apartment 3-G, 3/20/07

This is why Tommie and Margo need Lu Ann back so badly: it’s her well-meaning idiocy that holds the trio together. Never has the contrast between the two been so apparent as in the last panel: Margo, very, very high, vibrating like a tuning fork and popping out nonsensical questions because she can scarcely be bothered to focus enough to have an actual conversation, and Tommie, collapsing inward into her mopey core, looking like she’d be glad to slit her wrists if the prospect of failing even to do that right wasn’t so embarrassing.

Pluggers, 3/20/07

The plugger’s number two rule: Oh, just buy the semi-rotted fruit. You don’t deserve any better.

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Crankshaft, 3/14/07

All these PTA moms are looking a little too dementedly excited about Crankshaft suddenly not being a moving target. Presumably they’ll all gather at the winner’s house, and when Crankshaft’s bus stops, they’ll get on board and tear him to pieces with their bare hands.

Pluggers, 3/14/07

Well, know we know why pluggers prefer fast food restaurants: The lack of personalized service there fits in nicely with their crippling shyness.

Spider-Man, 3/14/07

There are two or three different Spider-Man plots going on at the moment, but today Spidey takes a break to demonstrate that he is both less agile and less powerful than a brick. Nobody is surprised.

Wait … wait … is Spider-Man going to have amnesia? And believe that the woman on TV claiming to be his wife really is his wife? OMG MOST AWESOMELY STUPID SPIDER-MAN PLOT EVER! Better than Gown-Man even! BRING IT, SPIDEY!