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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/16/08

I am sadly far removed from the good, honest, manly work that goes on aboard boats, so the only association I have with the phrase “cabin boy” is “teenage sexual plaything for lonely sailors.” Presumably there’s something nautical that a cabin boy would be making himself useful for, but if thirtysomething landlubber jerkface Rex Morgan could actually do something productive on board other than show off his manly chest so that Lenore and/or her crew can get their jollies, I’d love to hear it.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/16/08

Oh, also, Grandpa Jim is dying or something. I’m going to pass over the tiresome melodrama here for the moment (if he really didn’t want to spoil her day, then why did he go and have a heart attack in the middle of it?); I mostly want to comment on Uncle Phil’s creepy, glowing eyes in the next-to-last panel. Though it’s not entirely clear what they’re supposed to denote, this is a very striking effect, so much so that I immediately remembered the last time I saw it in this strip: the day that Liz and Anthony half-assedly got engaged. One can only assume that it denotes the imminent death of something wonderful and precious (e.g., Liz’s grandfather, Liz’s carefree existence as a human being who thinks and feels).

Marvin, 8/16/08

Here’s a question that has puzzled generations of professional humorists. Imagine that you have a terrible, terrible joke. This joke has nothing to do with the interests or concerns of babies. If that joke were stretched out over three panels, and thought-ballooned by three near-identical drawings of a heavy-lidded, sullen, unlikeable infant, would it become funny, or at least less unfunny? Thanks to the bravery of this Marvin, we now know that the answer is a resounding “no”!

Dick Tracy, 8/16/08

Another philosophical conundrum: Is depicting a mangled human being, his flesh torn to ribbons by his own savage dogs, somehow acceptable for the comics pages if an onlooker makes some half-assed wordplay comparing the poor soul to a pork chop or t-bone steak of the sort that you’d see for sale in your local supermarket? Based on the absence of outraged letters demanding the removal of Dick Tracy from all newspapers everywhere, the answer is apparently “yes”!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/13/08

I’ve been having a pretty good day so far, and coming home to find out that Rex kicked off today’s installment of his namesake comic strip by saying “Speaking of cruising…” just made it that much better. Even though the plot being expositioned up seems to involve less sex with anonymous 18-year-olds in the park and more yacht-related high society hijinks, I’m still pretty excited about it. Rex’s shifty-eyed look in the final panel would seem to indicate that he’s Lenore Foster’s connection for banned performance-enhancing drugs before each year’s regatta; of course, this calls into question which drugs might enhance yachting performance. Gin?

Curtis, 8/13/08

Oh, look, Ms. Honeystump’s emblackenation has spread to his classmate Venus!

If I may talk seriously for a moment: some readers have speculated that these mysterious racial shifts have been designed to accommodate editorial grumbles about the merest hint of miscegenation. Truly, I think you’re giving the comics coloring world far too much credit, in terms of thinking that weird things actually happen for reasons. The online versions of the King Features strips are not colored by the artists, nor do the artists offer guidance for same. The colorists can only use the internal context of the strip to help them make their choices. When you realize that they often ignore explicit in-strip cues to product howlers like this and this, well, do you really expect some sort of multi-week trans-strip consistency?

For Better Or For Worse, 8/13/08

“I’ve known you both for a long time. I’ve seen you guys through a lot of crazy circumstances. You know, like when you were transparently lusting after her even though you were married and passive-aggressively browbeating your wife into having a child she didn’t want! And when you were still married and propositioned her right after she was nearly raped! And when she moved back to Millborough specifically because she heard you were getting divorced, but continued to string along her boyfriend! I gotta say … this feels like it’s gonna work. I say that because I’m a terrible, terrible person.”

Crankshaft, 8/13/08

Oh, that Crankshaft! Trying to warm up to his new housemate, he offered to “take [her] on [his] favorite ride!” By which he almost certainly means his penis! Ha ha, I have to go lie down and weep now because I thought of that.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/11/08

Due to Beetle’s all-too-typical incompetence, the fragging of Sgt. Snorkel is not going as planned.

Dick Tracy, 8/11/08

I have managed to avoid talking about the current Dick Tracy storyline, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it appears to be concluding with a woman being torn to bits by vicious dogs.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/08

Yes, the dramatic shadowing seems to indicate less “pleasantly surprised” and more “contemplating murder-suicide.”

Slylock Fox, 8/11/08

Then Slylock instructed Max to hand over the God-damned cake, ’cause it looks fucking delicious.