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Beetle Bailey, 10/11/09

This is a pretty sad demonstration of how Beetle’s half-century stuck in the timeless limbo of Camp Swampy will make it impossible for him to reintegrate into normal society upon his release. Like the hero of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Private Bailey will leave the military and find a civilian world with mores and values outside of his understanding. For instance, he’ll find his clothes to be laughably out of date, and discover that the whimsical pastimes of his native 1950s, such as tree-sitting and breath-holding contests, are no longer relevant in the age of reality TV and Internet pornography. However, he will be pleased to find that the competitive eating scene is still alive and well, and moreover that revolutionary new technologies allow hot dogs to be cooked without being blackened to a crisp.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/11/09

Remember the classic narrative switcheroo at the climax of Silence of the Lambs, when the scene edits make you think that the FBI team is assembling outside the serial killer’s house, but it turns out that they’re in the wrong place and Jodie Foster is ringing his doorbell instead? Well, that’s sort of what happened here, without the tension or excitement. Becka and Tim have been heroically driving through a sodden golf course looking for his runaway mom, whom we’ve been led to believe is holed up in the pro shop there — when in fact they’ve broken and entered into some punk rocker’s trailer, perhaps miles away! Everything about this punk rocker — his piercings, his shaved head, his use of “street” slang like “crib” — is supposed to be terrifying and menacing to us, the solid middle-American comic-reading audience, but I feel obliged to point out that it is, in fact, his crib, and he has a right to protest random old people breaking in and attempting to hold golf lessons there.

Sally Forth, 10/11/09

Oooh, contest — what terrible habit is causing Ted to drain the Forth family finances? Keep in mind that Ted is pure of heart, so all the sleazy things you sickos are thinking of (cocaine, roulette, 15-year-old Thai male prostitutes) are out. I’m thinking that the basement shelves are groaning under the weight of his collection of first-edition GoBots, or that every time he PayPals someone on Craigslist who claims to have a copy of the Star Wars Christmas Special, he’s convinced that this is the time he won’t be disappointed.

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Hi everybody! I am back and EXTREMELY grateful to all of you who gave so generously in the fall fundraiser! Many of you have already received your What Would Margo Do bracelets (I promise a bevy of pics tomorrow), and hopefully the rest will arrive soon; you’ll all be getting email thanks from me as well. And huge thanks go to Uncle Lumpy both for his money-soliciting and comics-mocking prowess, though really he got a reward of his own … with the greatest week in Mary Worth history! Oh, how I envy the man who got first crack at this panel:

Instead, I’m just left with the aftermath:

Mary Worth, 9/27/09

Scott has been shot in violent shoot-out … the best kind, as any aficionado of shoot-outs will tell you. Is he in serious condition, or is he the one who didn’t make it? More importantly, are the seriously wounded cop and the corpse of the other cop just sort of flopping around in the back of this paddy wagon, which appears neither to be an ambulance nor to be staffed by actual paramedics? Will Adrian be able to tell the living from the dead, amid the carnage? STAY TUNED!

Apartment 3-G, 9/27/09

Apartment 3-G, meanwhile, is taking a much sexier path, assuming that you find it sexy when pill fiends offer up their sweet middle-aged bodies to head-shrinking quacks in exchange for pills, which Dr. Papagoras obviously does. Ruby finds the whole thing just plain tawdry, even if it is happening at the Ritz-Carlton, which just goes to show that she’ll never be a real New Yorker.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/27/09

And Rex Morgan managed to combine impending doom and sexytimes with a sly aside out of this bespectacled lothario! “I’m a lover, Becka, not a violent person! Specifically, I’m an extremely skilled lover. Say, you know, I just thought of a clever way we can track down my mother. When I was a teenager, she always had this uncanny knack for coming home right when my girlfriend and I were starting to fool around. What if…” Remember, Becka, it’s not cheating if your husband’s infidelity, or your suspicions thereof, are tearing you up inside!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/27/09

Ha ha, it’s funny because Snuffy is an unletter’d heathen! Wait, those actually are his most appealing qualities.

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Oddly coincident with my stewardship here at The Comics Curmudgeon, the Sunday comics are rolling out their B-Teams. Let’s take a look.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/20/09

OK, Rex Morgan, M.D. usually disappoints by dishing out endless observational chit-chat between Rex and June followed by a lot of talking on phones, and then, once everyone has lost interest, annihilating some minor character in a hail of gunfire or whatnot. Josh cites this as one factor in The Rex Morgan Problem, and I will not say him nay. But here’s a new and disturbing development — after weeks of observational chit-chat between secondary character Becka and assorted walk-ons, one of them (wildlife writer Tim Howard, and there’s fifteen minutes of my life I won’t get back) flies into an incandescent rage over a minor procedural issue in the organization of search parties. By the time we reach the final panel, we envy poor, wet, demented Pearl and Henry (oh God why me), feeling that the story that’s tormented us since June is fresh and new.

Also: “A@#SS“!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/20/09

Passing by the fact that Snuffy is himself a replacement for long-departed Barney Google, what’s with poor Micah? This is the first we hear of him — yet, as the only gainfully-employed resident of Hootin’ Holler, he must’ve been the centerpiece of the Gazette‘s business section for years. I mean, it’s not like violence and murder are going to crowd him out of the paper — the Gazette puts the Police Blotter, casualty list, and obits in agate type behind the classifieds.

Apartment 3-G, 9/20/09

Oh, and here’s Aristotle Papagoras, newly emblondened and ready for his closeup. This charlatan pusher absent-mindedly bilks disease-addled Dr. “Skully” Bryant out of his lucrative Upper East Side psychiatric practice, while thought-babbling obsessively about his junkie skank “patient.” This better end in murder, and I don’t much care who.

Crock, 9/20/09

Yes, for quite a few years now, as a matter of fact!

— Uncle Lumpy