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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 Since Gabe is in the Navy, this cartoon could have featured some epically outdated uniforms and insignia, possible from World War I, but I guess that’s Beetle Bailey territory; when you’re in a TDIET, you toil away in a generic Eisenhower-era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.

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Beetle Bailey, 7/25/07

All day, people have been commenting in varying degrees of arousal about the hot, hot Miss Buxley action in today’s Beetle Bailey. All I can say is: why? The Walker oeurvre is one of the funny pages’ more stylized, and there are few less detailed or realistic looking “sexy” women in comics than General Halftrack’s oft-harassed secretary. Seriously, if this was all it took to get me worked up, I’d just draw a stick figure and slap some boobs on it and WHAM! Instant porn. Even the theoretically sexy frilly unmentionables are terribly botched, with Buxley’s brassiere seemingly wrapped around her robe, implying that either that the artist has little grasp of spatial relations and/or undergarment topography, or that she’s dressing quickly because she’s aware of the series of hidden cameras the general has stashed all over her apartment and wired up to the phone somehow.

The less said about whatever’s in her robe pocket, the better. Is it a hot glue gun? Or something more untoward There’s something about its crap-brown color that unsettles me.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/25/07

Now, Heather Avery — that’s a cartoon character whose sex appeal I can endorse. I don’t even care about those little droopy devil horn things on the front of her head, which indicate that she’s probably a succubus in addition to being a gold-digging nanny and stock-manipulating white-collar co-conspirator.

This whole encounter is more than a little porntastic. “Hugh … what is it? I’m getting dressed — and since I’m already in the process of removing my robe, surely it’s unrealistic to expect me to close it again now that it’s half-way open, since I’ll just be taking it off completely in a few minutes. Can’t it wait? The robe-closing, I mean.” Of course, since there’s no blood relation between the two of them and they’ve only met the previous day, there’s nothing untoward or incestuous about the prospect of them falling into each other’s arms for comfort in the wake of their great loss — or at least there wouldn’t be if they didn’t essentially look exactly alike. Even Von and Vera, Mary Worth’s creepy Flowers in the Attic pair, didn’t share this much of a resemblance. Of course, this has less bearing on any potential Heather-Hugh match-up and much more bearing on Milton’s now-revealed-to-be-deeply-disturbing attraction to Heather.

Dennis the Menace, 7/25/07

Lucky for Ruff the Mitchell’s floor is covered with a healthy layer of rotting organic matter! Of course, we can’t blame Alice for the unhygienic state of the house: Henry forces her to wear those killer stilettos at all times, so she can barely walk; I don’t know how you expect her to operate a vacuum cleaner.

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Shoe and Get Fuzzy, 7/22/07

If you are a subscriber to the Baltimore Sun, you saw this precise constellation of quasipolitical comics when you opened your paper this morning. Both seem to be aimed at the same problem: making a relatively gentle joke about politics that isn’t actually political, and doesn’t result in dozens of angry letters to the editor. And, while usually I go on about just about everything at great length, the most important thing I can say here is that Get Fuzzy is funny, while Shoe isn’t. Shoe falls into the typical toothless trap of just saying “THE POLITICS AREN’T THEY ANNOYING?”, literally allowing the discussion to be replaced by meaningless placeholder syllables. Get Fuzzy works with established character traits — Bucky and Satchel’s party affiliations have been frequently noted, whereas I don’t believe Shoe and the Perfesser had political beliefs until they became necessary for this cartoon. Plus Get Fuzzy contains actual political jokes that are funny. I love the third-party punchline, but I love “Well, with the proper funding…” even more.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/22/07

“I can assure you, I am not without qualities! I have a certain height, for instance, as well as a certain breadth and depth! I occupy volume in space! I have a certain skin color, and wear clothing, and inhale air and breathe out carbon dioxide! I have quantities, too, if you’d care to hear about them!”

With his constant wavering between unbearable upper-class superciliousness and desperate, raw emotional need, I’m frankly shocked that Hugh has somehow managed to remain a bachelor to this point.

Marvin, 7/22/07

Marvin celebrated its 25th anniversary this past week with a series of painfully unfunny jokes about life in that long-lost age known as “1982.” (Dallas was on TV! Ronald Reagan was president! HA HA! STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!) Today, Marvin the baby appears on the set of the Tonight Show to exchange painfully unfunny jokes with Jay Leno. The fact that Jay Leno is, in fact, painfully unfunny in real life does lead one to wonder whether the lameness on display here is meant to be a brutally realistic exploration of what it would be like if a cartoon infant were on the Tonight Show. Frankly, I wish that they had carried on with the “life in 1982” conceit and done the interview with Johnny Carson, though presumably even after his death he has too much dignity to appear in Marvin.

Extremely creepy to me is the way that Jay Leno keeps his mouth shut throughout his unfunny dialog. The fact that Marvin keeps his own mouth shut and communicates with Jay (and, presumably, the viewers at home) telepathically via thought balloons for whatever reason doesn’t faze me at all, but seeing that lantern jaw firmly shut while the usual inane patter floats next to his head in a word balloon unsettles me a great deal. I do like the fact that Marvin’s bottle has been placed completely out of reach of his stubby arms, though.

Mary Worth, 7/22/07

I can totally understand why Dawn was so nervous to offer this revelation up to Drew. After all, it’s totally possible that the good doctor was only on going on this date with her so that he could synchronize his retrochronometer onto her current form and then go back in time five years to date her past her self — wouldn’t it be disappointing if he had gone through all that trouble only to return to the present in disgust? Thank God he’s only interested in dating the beautiful swan Dawn of the here and now. Look at the lovely visage in the final panel — the octogonal face, the bright orange roots. You can see why he wants to “get into the saddle” right away!

Slylock Fox, 7/22/07

OH COME ON, SLYLOCK! We’ve moved from ludicrous acts of deduction to petty attempts to come up with ways that that Cassandra might be committing crimes despite the absence of any evidence. “Do they both have ticket stubs? They might have just torn a single ticket in half! Did they pay for those tickets with cash? They might have stolen that cash from a bank, or an old lady, or an orphanage!” I think we all know why Slylock is harassing this poor woman while she’s trying to enjoy an innocent evening out at the movies with her bovine companion. I can’t wait for the inevitable strip where Slylock uses his infallible crime-fighting skills to avoid the process server with the restraining order.