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Sally Forth and Marvin, 7/26/09

Hey, guess who’s a fancy intellectual elitist book-readin’ guy in addition to the writer of a suburban middle-American comic strip? Ces Marculiano, that’s who! The opening lines of today’s Sally Forth are also the opening lines of Thomas Pynchon’s 760-page modernist classic Gravity’s Rainbow, and a tiny bit of high culture is slipped under the skin of comics readers everywhere.

But really, does Hillary’s soliloquy (good name for a band: “Hillary’s Soliloquy”) really challenge our settled, comfortable mindset the way Pynchon’s novel did? Consider this: despite the myriad kaleidescoping themes covered by the book, if you ask most people who were assigned to read it in college English what they remember about it, the first thing they’ll come up with will probably be the shit-eating. And what strip spends more time contemplating the symbolic meaning of poop than Marvin? Today’s installment is a particularly fine example, in which the title character, an absolutist on the subject of free will, insists that one can only truly demonstrate maximum personal autonomy by walking around with so much putrefying feces in one’s pants that it attracts swarms of flies. So, sorry Ces, but I think you’ll have to push the boundaries your art further if you plan to smash bourgeois sensibilities.

Mary Worth, 7/26/09

Two word-pairs you probably never anticipated seeing in juxtaposition: “Mary Worth” and “booty call.” I particularly marvel at the one-word-per-panel thought-ballooning sequence that serves as this strip’s centerpiece. Is it just an attempt to stretch limited action out over a longer Sunday strip? Does it instead represent Delilah’s grim determination to find succor in the worst way possible? Or does it simply indicate that she thinks … very … slowly?

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Shoe, 6/17/09

The thing that most unsettles me about Shoe is of course its occasional portrayal of “sexy” lady birds, but the “goggle-eyed look of horror reaction shot” is a close second, especially since the punchlines in this strip are generally good-natured jokes about everyday life and not, say, an announcement of existential crisis. For instance, going by today’s text alone, I’d guess that this is supposed to be some wry commentary on how low the resale value is for all those expensive consumer goods we buy, and what’reyagonnado, amiright? But the way that our two characters are looking at each other in undisguised shock in the final panel implies that this sale of the Perfesser’s possessions was a last-ditch effort to raise funds that they desperately needed, and that the bad men will be coming to cut off their thumbs shortly.

Family Circus, 6/17/09

Wow, this week’s “Little Billy, Age 7” cartoons sure are extra harrowing, aren’t they? I have no idea where Big Daddy Keane’s day job is supposed to be or why Billy is there with him, but the meaning of his display of violence is fairly clear. “See what I did to the machine, when it didn’t give me the bag of Funyuns that I paid for? Well, just think of what I’m going to do to you and your sister and your idiot brother if I don’t get the [kick] God [kick] damned [kick] peace and quiet [kick] I deserve [kick] once in a while!”

Sally Forth, 6/17/09

Ah, a mother’s love! It encourages us to speak in the sweet, comforting voice of LIES. Really, Sally, if Hillary always “do[es] great” on her finals, then why, after 27 years, has she still not advanced to the sixth grade?

Dennis the Menace, 6/17/09

“So I thought you might want to stab him with this, to teach him not to shoot off his big mouth.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/1/09

Admit it, all of you: you would be disappointed if Dead Lisa did not occasionally manifest herself during Les’s attempts to court Cayla. It adds an element of the macabre to an otherwise low-key and fairly dull romance between two middle-aged single parents. In fact, since romantic intrusion from the spirit plane is inevitable, let’s take it all the way. I want to see the Ghost of Lisa on every single one of Les and Cayla’s dates. I want to see her feeding him romantic lines, like in Cyrano de Bergerac, only Cyrano and Christian used to be married, and Cyrano is dead. I want to see Zombie Lisa there in the bedroom, eager to help Les with necessary corrections to his sexual techniques that she was too shy to speak up about in life, which will ironically result in his inability to maintain an erection. BRING IT ON, FUNKY WINKERBEAN.

It really is good for Les that Cayla likes Woody Allen movies, by the way, because it shows that she has a certain tolerance for exasperating neurotics.

Apartment 3-G, 5/1/09

Good lord, will this Apartment 3-G storyline ever cease handing out wonderful gifts to all of us? Today’s heart-warming moment is a cop saying “You’ve been a bad boy, Dr. Kelly” while waggling an index finger scoldingly. Is he speaking in a comical Irish brogue, as his circa 1940 uniform would suggest? God, I hope so.

Sally Forth, 5/1/09

I’m pretty sure that Ted thinks Sally said “titter.”