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Apartment 3-G, 5/11/07

Sure, Gabriella is a cringe-inducing stereotype who babbles in a parody of Spanish that’s worse even than the Judge Parker punks’ French. She also nurtured the black, black soul of Margo in her womb for nine months. But if she manages to rescue Lu Ann where all others have failed, she’ll officially become one of the most together and interesting people in this strip, rivaling the “I’m a docent!” guy and leagues ahead of Tommie. She’s doing it with style and panache, too, saying a little prayer and then letting Satan himself know that she is on the side of good and that his infernal “locks” cannot keep her from her holy mission.

Family Circus, 5/11/07

For reasons I can’t explain, I am totally charmed by the fact that Jeffy and Dolly have thrown some pillows on the floor to relax on for their little chat, and that Jeffy is resting his chin in his hand while he contemplates the insane nonsense that his sister is spouting. If they were older, I’d say they were high (“Hey, is that old saying, like, ‘moth’ or, like, ‘moss’? And, like, what does it mean?”), but as it is they’re clearly just morons on pillows.

B.C., 5/11/07

So, for those of you not following the details: the B.C.s written before Johnny Hart’s death ended around the end of April, and for the next eight weeks or so we’ll be getting the Hart family’s favorite classic strips before we start in with the “new” strips assembled from old drawings and new jokes. The repeat strips have as near as I can tell all been from the last ten to fifteen years, which is kind of odd for a strip that had decades of storied history and a kind of terrible last ten to fifteen years.

Anyway, today’s repeat struck me as really familiar, which is an experience I have a lot, since I read newspaper comics obsessively and have a disturbingly good recall for them. If you squint at the copyright notice beneath the first panel, you’ll see that the date on this is 1996, but my memory of it was a lot fresher, so I went hunting through my archives and found this, from three months ago:

B.C., 2/5/07

Yeah. Um. The weird part is that it’s clearly not the same strip — the art is different and the wording of the punchline has been tweaked a bit. I do need to say that if you have to write a joke every day for years and years, you could actually plagiarize from yourself and not realize it — after all, if you thought it was funny once, you might think so again a few years later. Going through my archives, I’ve found that I’ve made the same joke, nearly word-for-word, in more than one post. Still and all, you’d think someone else would have noticed that and chosen not to run this rerun strip just now.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/11/07

Now, let’s cast aside our petty differences over Asian stereotypes and dumb names and unrealistic corporate governance procedure. I think we can all agree that panel three is the most awe-inspiringly beautiful depiction of a combover ever set to paper by an artist. Mary Worth team: you’ve been resting on your laurels long enough. The next time Wilbur needs a close-up, you’ve got to raise the bar.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 5/11/07

There’s much to love about today’s TDIET, including, but not limited to, “Doodleville,” “Dancing With Dorks,” “the urge to tear out her vocal cords,” Nurse Nulla using a conveniently placed stack of books as a leaning post, and “Nurse Nulla.” But I’d really like to direct your attention to the “thanx to” box. It’s as if someone held captive by substandard medical care sent a desperate message out to the only person who he knew could help: Al Scaduto.

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Family Circus, 5/9/07

You know, I’m a man of simple pleasures. I’m not a club-hopper or an aficionado of fast cars or speedboats. All I ask for in life is to be left alone with my hobbies — like, say, pretending that the Family Circus household is possessed by demons, and one of those evil spirits is starting to communicate with Dolly through her talking doll, and she’s forcing Jeffy to participate in its plans to massacre the whole town, and a terrified Jeffy runs to tell his mother while the soul-destroyed Dolly and her hellspawn plaything look on blankly, adding him to their slaughter list — and when you they essentially run this as the “joke” in the comic, well, it kills a little of the fun for me, to be honest.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/9/07

“Mrs. Avery, as Avery International’s professional sexy, subservient Asian stereotype, I’ll be easing your pain with a variety of unprintable techniques. If necessary, I will remove these chopsticks from my hair and let my long, luxurious jet-black hair cascade down my back in slow-motion. You’ll have to lead me to my seat, though, because my contract requires me to keep my eyes closed at all times — all the crackers on this board seem to think that’s what Asians look like.”

Has anyone Asian — or, hell, anyone at all — actually used chopsticks to keep their hair up, in a boardroom setting or elsewhere? Brynna Antenna doesn’t count.

Judge Parker, 5/9/07

Barney Google began to slowly and inexorably become Snuffy Smith the day that Barney went down for a vacation in the hill country. Similarly, comics historians will mark May 9, 2007, as the day that Judge Parker began its transformation into Mullet Love, the ongoing story of two star-crossed lovers with gorgeous Kentucky Waterfalls of hair — one bright yellow, one manic panic red — pouring down the backs of their heads. Together, they fight crime, avoid their spurned spouses, and travel the world, occasionally falling on each other in episodes of passionate lovemaking that cause their hockey hair to spin around their faces and tangle together.

Apartment 3-G, 5/9/07

“Yep, coffee’s not helping; time to switch to bourbon. And if that doesn’t work, it’s on to whippits.”

Archie, 5/9/07

I just want to say that I honestly think “Mustard” would be a really cute name for a dog. Also, someone is clearly thinking about boning someone else in that third panel.

Finally, I can’t even bring myself to contemplate the fresh Funky horror, but the Chron has the inside scoop on the roller-coaster of metastasis that we have in store for us. (Thanks to faithful reader Cobra for the tip.)

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Archie, 5/8/07

From today’s comments, I’m glad to see that the bulk of you share my horror at the Archie-Joke-Generating-Laugh-Unit 3000’s attempt to understand the human soul. The AJGLU 3000, having been programmed with the main motivations for everyone in Riverdale, apparently believes that it would be amusing to see these three running eternally after their hearts’ desires (Jughead: a White Castle slider; Reggie: a dollar sign written on a piece of paper; Archie: Betty’s severed head), never getting closer, their numb faces reflecting their dawning awareness of the Sisyphean nature of their task.

One sometimes wonders to what degree human beings intervene in the AJGLU 3000’s workflow. On the one hand, Coach No-Name, despite his boasts about the track team’s prowess, has a thousand-mile stare in panel two; clearly he knows just what an awful thing he’s done to his innocent charges, and expects retribution, either from a merciful God or in a lawsuit for emotional distress. That moment of self-awareness could never have come from a computer. On the other hand, if people edited this strip, you think they’d have noticed that all three runners have had their left arms hacked off, or that Archie is about to stomp on a puppy.

Gil Thorp, 5/8/07

Hey, does that middle panel of inscrutably drawn young women staring silently confuse you and creep you out as much as it does me? You’re actually supposed to be seeing things through Branden’s eyes as her attempt to rally her teammates into a world of harmony and goodness flops terribly. You’ll note that the two girls the back of whose heads you can see in panel one are facing forward in panel two — Paris, who God only knows why I remember her name, and stripy-tank-top-girl, who I think might be the nosey newspaper reporter maybe? And then there are some blondes. Anyway, even to get this far into understanding what’s going on, you have to have read this damn thing every day and take a minute or two to connect the dots, which means that only I and twelve other people in America have done so. The artists would be better off making all of their panels look like panel two: wordless collections of random people staring at you with dead eyes.

Speaking of dead eyes, Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp is horning into Funky Winkerbean territory, waiting to hear back on the results of some chronic and inspiring illness that she’s been so busy dealing with that she can’t beat some sense into her feuding softball team. Evidentially she doesn’t want to hear what the doctor has to say, as she’s put the earpiece of her phone outside her hair and halfway back her skull.

Luann, 5/8/07

I don’t want to say that Luann’s plots should feature explicit, hardcore, toon-on-toon sex, but … wait, do I want to say that? No, no, I don’t. But I do want them to stop acting like the characters are screwing or fooling around or kissing or having meaningful non-platonic relationships when they so clearly are not. If you had seen this strip out of context, you’d assume that Tiffany had come down to the fire station and hurled herself at Brad, and that they had gotten it on in the back of the ambulance, or at least made out for a while. Instead, what actually happened is that she ran her fingers up his tie and made several double entendres. The end. And now, Luann is going to freak. Because she’s in the Taliban or something and Tiffany has polluted her brother with her harlot fingers. It makes no God damned sense at all.

Also, Brad made some reference to previously having a girlfriend, by which he could only be referring to his totally pretend not-relationship with Toni Daytona. Which means that Brad has no idea what a “girlfriend” actually is, which I do find kind of plausible, now that I think about it.

On a different subject, many of you cruelly mocked recent maybe-widow and smooth corporate operator Heather Avery for having a pig nose in today’s Rex Morgan, M.D. But faithful reader bobbaloo (aka bob byrd) took a more charitable view: he thinks her nose just became detached from its moorings and accidentally flipped upside-down. Behold his correction! (The original is on the right.)