Post Content

Spider-Man, 8/14/07

You sort of get the feeling that the final panel is taking place in the Shocker’s tiny studio apartment, and we’re about twenty minutes into this. “Wait, hold on … ‘Look out, world — here comes the Shocker!’ Hmmm … no, I think that’s too much emphasis on the name, sounds egotistical. How about this? “Look out, world … heeeeere’s … the Shocker!’ No, God damn it, that’s derivative and corny. Stupid! So stupid! I’m never going to get this right!”

God bless faithful reader Tabby, who a while back posted a link to the Shocker’s character page at SpiderFan.org. Here are some delicious excerpts:

Real Name: Herman Schultz
Known Confidants: None
Education: Unknown, but probably a high school education
Strength Level: Normal human strength
Powers: None
Limitations: The Shocker has had severe problems with self-doubt.

Ha ha! No powers, no confidants, no super-powers, normal human strength, maybe a high-school diploma, and crippling self-doubt! Truly the creative team dipped deep into the reserves and found the perfect villain for the newspaper iteration of the Spider-Man mythos.

Mark Trail, 8/14/07

Boy, the ladies sure can’t get enough of Mark Trail! And who can blame them, what with his rugged good looks, corpse-like pallor, propensity for violence and vigilantism, disinclination to use contractions, and total disinterest in sex? Sam sure is keen to get with this hunky hunk of man-hunk: she’s even willing to go back to Lost Forest to have a three-way with his disturbing-looking wife while his hideously ugly son takes pictures.

By the way, for those of you who don’t remember the beginning of this interminable storyline, “clean up places that attract birds” is, no fooling, a euphemism for “pave over wetlands so that birds can no longer breed there.” Also, I’m reasonably sure that we’ve seen this spread-eagled squirrel before; a shiny virtual penny to whomever can discover him in the archives.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/14/07

OH MY GOD! ALAN HARRINGTON! THAT’S … wait, are we supposed to know who that is? Damn it, what was the point of introducing us to all those loser board members if the suspect wasn’t even memorable enough to remember?

Apartment 3-G, 8/14/07

COMICS COLORING COURSE, FINAL EXAM:

Q. OK, so you’ve got two characters in your soap opera strip. Both are male, white (of course! Ha ha!) 30s/40s-ish. Both are sandy-haired. So far you’ve managed to avoid having them appear in the strip at the same time, but now narrative logic demands that they meet. What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?

A. Yellow! Very, very yellow!

Eric Mills obviously had the same reddish hair color as Alan as recently as two weeks ago, but it’s worth noting that, when he was introduced last summer, his hair was black. Personally, I think that the process of dating (or “dating”) Margo is slowly but surely sucking the life essence out of him. His hair will be completely white by the end of the year.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 8/11/07

WOO-HOO, ALAN’S BEATNIK BUDDY IS BACK! If you don’t remember this bad-news countercultural type, check out his first appearance, from more than a year ago. Crazy kick! I don’t know if we knew before today that his name was “Jones,” though. I wonder if this fellow is actually the Archie gang’s resident nonconformist, Jughead Jones, all grown up, who’s traded his first name and his felt crown for a soul patch and a gig dealing weed (“good”) and smack (“bad”).

Momma, 8/11/07

I was going to write a screed about how if you weren’t a dedicated Momma reader, you wouldn’t get the “joke” of today’s strip, which is that Francis doesn’t really have a steady job and so “getting up and going to work” probably means putting in applications or working at one of his various menial but otherwise not particularly stressful jobs and that based on the level of dishevelment in his hovel, you might assume that he did literally work in a salt mine, albeit one with complimentary wake-up calls, and that furthermore this meant that nobody would get the “joke” in today’s Momma because there was no such thing as a dedicated Momma reader, but then I realized that I was a dedicated Momma reader and that I got the “joke” (keeping in mind that “getting” is not the same as “being amused by”). Then I was sad.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/11/07

Good news, everyone! Hugh’s conscious and his histrionics levels are back to normal!

Judge Parker, 8/11/07

All right, Judge Parker, you’ve been waving those things around all week trying to get my attention, so here it is: boobs. BOOBS. Boobs boobily boobs boob. BOOBS. Are you happy now?

Mark Trail, 8/11/07

Speaking of boobs: You’d think that Sam, who’s been through a lot with Mark, would take the lead in thanking him for his help in saving this small-town airport, which help mostly took the form of violence and threats of the same, but it’s her dad who’s doing all the jawing here. Still, in panel three it does sort of appear that she’s about to thank him … visually.

And now, a little something for the ladies…

Gil Thorp, 8/11/07

Legitimate questions were raised about whether yesterday’s crotchtastic Gil Thorp was really as crotchy as all that, or if it was perhaps just the view through Bill Ritter’s boxing gloves. There’s really no doubt today, though. No, sir. That’s quite the crotch shot. Yep.

By the way, if Bill were holding a pack of cigarettes and wearing chaps, panel three would look uncannily like an enormous Marlboro billboard that loomed a mere two blocks from my high school when I was a kid, I swear to God.

The Lockhorns, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because Leroy has a crippling problem with alcohol! Funny!

Beetle Bailey, 8/11/07

Ha! It’s funny because General Halftrack has a crippling problem with alcohol, and is so drunk that he’s managed to intoxicate his golf ball, in defiance of all the laws of biology and physics! Funny!

Post Content

Mary Worth and Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/28/07

Maternal visit or no, I certainly could not let these two explosive comics from Saturday go unremarked. I’d urge you to try to reproduce the bizarre angles of Drew and Dawn’s approach in panel two at home, but you might then be tempted to photograph it and send me a picture, the prospect of which makes me distinctly uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure the lines of radiance represent the aura experienced by epileptics just before a seizure, because that’s the only reasonably explanation for the awkward poses and facial expressions of otherworldly detachment from reality.

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, M.D., stuff (and here I mean “stuff” U English sense to mean woolen fabric, specifically the woolen fabric in the very U Hugh’s suit) blows up. Even more exciting than that, though, is seeing June say, “Did he grovel for you like he did for me?” That very well could have triggered the explosion — the explosion of sexiness.

Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, 7/28/07

Meanwhile, although I’m usually left cold by golf jokes (and WE GET IT CARTOONISTS YOU’D RATHER BE GOLFING THAN DRAWING FUNNY PICTURES) and Beetle Bailey generally, I have to admit that Saturday’s Beetle Bailey golf joke actually made me laugh aloud. I do wonder why Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC doesn’t have team meetings once a week to prevent this kind of overlap, though.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 7/28/07

And once again TDIET is Curmudgeon-inspired! Gabe Owens is in fact faithful reader Gabe. Since Gabe is in the Navy, this cartoon could have featured some epically outdated uniforms and insignia, possible from World War I, but I guess that’s Beetle Bailey territory; when you’re in a TDIET, you toil away in a generic Eisenhower-era office and you like it, buddy. Gabe has used his real name (and rank? I thought MC2 was some variation on “Master Chief”, but I couldn’t find any evidence to that effect online; maybe it’s his rap name?), so he’d better hope that having “The Urge” isn’t a court-martialable offense.