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Gasoline Alley, 5/26/08

Can I confide to you that I actually find the concept of a heavily-accented, curly-mustachioed French pitchcat named “Chef Meowrice” pretty funny, if deranged? I’m guessing the name is supposed to be a pun on famous French-accent-haver Maurice Chevalier. However, I am firmly, firmly opposed to “Tabby Wynette,” mostly because she should be be belting out country tunes full of hard-earned sadness and loss, rather than just standing around in some kind of creepy cat S&M get-up and cozying up to some Frenchie for pulverized mouse bits.

Popeye, 5/26/08

In other news, Popeye has come ’round again to Olive Oyl’s suicide, as is its wont.

Apartment 3-G, 5/26/08

Meanwhile, across the world in Tibet, we’ve been given a respite from Alan’s zany drug antics. Eric and Tenzin have been making the long trudge to Lhasa on foot, apparently unaware that you can actually take the train there now. You can tell that they’ve been on a long journey because Eric has grown a neatly trimmed beard, while Tenzin has become a blond-haired Caucasian. Seeing the fabled city in the distance, Eric muses that it would have been better for the place to have been destroyed and all its people killed than to have any contact with modernity.

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Judge Parker, 1/26/08

So the big interview with No-Legged War Hero Mama’s Boy Works-For-Nothing Steve is over, and it’s becoming more and more obvious that Gloria likes what she sees! Likes it so much, in fact, that she’s got to close her eyes in the final panel, because if she has to look at that hot hunk of filial piety for even one more minute, she can’t be held responsible for her actions.

I do think it’s kind of curious that, since one of Steve’s major characteristics is that he lost his legs in Iraq, we’ve never actually gotten a good look at his prosthetics. Not that we should let his disability and define him and I’m sure most people with artificial legs actually wear pants that cover them up, but it almost seems that the artist has gone out of his way to arrange the panel composition such that his legs are just out of view. Could this be one of the problems of a comics strip that’s a collaboration between an artist and a writer — could the artist have gotten the scripts and cried “Argh! Prosthetic limbs! My greatest weakness!”

Popeye, 1/26/08

Popeye is in the midst of some completely uninteresting plot about Sweet Pea’s allowance, but I have to pose this question to those readers who are part of the nautical division of the Jungle Patrol: What the hell does “typical fat-armed sailor” mean? I always assumed that Popeye’s bizarre physique was a result of artistic whimsy and/or steroid abuse, but are we to understand that his pencil-thin biceps and unnaturally bulging forearms are somehow representative of his profession — and are also somehow related to the cheapness endemic to seamen? I’m obviously way behind on my sailor stereotyping.

Dick Tracy, 1/26/08

In our upcoming storyline, Dick Tracy will drop any pretense about being a frank cheerleader for fascism as Dick is ordered to go break up a local showing of “degenerate art.”

Marmaduke, 1/26/08

For “lost,” read “ate,” obviously.

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Mary Worth, 11/20/07

Ah ha! Chester’s real owner! Here at last is the conflict, the drama that has eluded this storyline for so long! Mary will be confronted with some sad-eyed waif who’s so happy to be reunited with her very special Prince Snuffles or whatever the dog’s real name is. She’ll be all torn up inside about letting go of the dog she’s come to love in a short time. Will she be able to do it? Will she do the right thing and return the dog to his rightful owner? Or will she find some way to rationalize keeping the dog, leaving the child heartbroken? Action! Excitement!

Or, you know, it could play out like the damn condo rules feint. “I’d better find out if Chester has a real owner. Oh, he doesn’t! Hooray! I’m so great!” Damn you, Mary Worth, I don’t need another strip that sets up dilemmas only to summarily dispatch them with no effort on the part of the characters. I have Spider-Man for that.

You’ll note that Chester himself has given up on anything fun happening in this strip and has decided to just hump Mary’s leg until her shin goes numb.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/20/07

Ah, yes, “that sappy chick flick.” Thank God US law only allows one of those to be in theaters at any given time so that we don’t have to sully our lips with its name.

Judge Parker, 11/20/07

Things that might be going through Abbey’s shocked and horrified mind in panel three:

• “Oh my God, my husband kissed another woman!”
• “Oh my God, my husband kissed a woman!”
• “Oh my God, my husband broke several rules in the Bar Association’s ethics code!”
• “Oh my God, my husband thinks that ‘a big wet smacker on the lips’ is some kind of acceptable phrase to use in conversation!”

And here’s a couple of amusing standalone panels for today:

Panel from Gil Thorp, 11/20/07

We all know how pathetic and basically lonely Coach Thorp is, but today, with Gil giving a pep talk to the shrubbery outside his house, really brings it home.

Panel from Popeye, 11/20/07

There’s context for this, sort of, but I like it best in hilariously inappropriate isolation.