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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/4/11

Some of my comics obsessions — like Margo Magee’s smoldering, angry sexuality, for instance, or Mark Trail’s cheerful, violent autism — are amusing. (I assume you agree because you are after all reading this site.) However, I’m the first to admit that some of my other obsessions are just weird and sad. For instance, I’m kind of fixated on how the economy of Hootin’ Holler, the setting for Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, operates. We see very little by way of economically productive activity; the women engage in some subsistence agriculture, while the men mostly laze about and occasionally steal things. Yet the characters are shown to be at least dimly aware of money as a medium of exchange, and have some access to manufactured goods. How exactly do the inhabitants gain access to this money? Do they export things? If so, what? Chickens? Moonshine? Labor? Do the more industrious Hootin’ Hollerians head down to the flatlands to work in mines or factories for a pittance, saving money by living together in dilapidated shacks and sending cash back home to keep women and layabouts alive?

Today’s strip is particularly interesting from this perspective, as we are shown an intriguing phenomenon that can happen at the fringes of a developed economy. Loweezy is planning on engaging in barter to gain access to medical services, as is traditional in her community; however, instead of trading livestock she raised herself, she uses processed foodstuff that comes from outside the zone of local production, foodstuff that can only be produced by cultures with a much higher level of economic activity than Hootin’ Holler itself can sustain. This demonstrates that a strictly linear model of economic development rarely applies in reality, as not even the poorest and least developed communities exist in total isolation from the outside world.

That having been said, I think we can all agree that this comic would have been better if Loweezy had been offering the doctor butchered pig parts, possibly still dripping gore, especially if the medico’s grin and “gimmie gimmie” gesture remained in place.

Shoe, 1/4/11

Another thing I spend too much time thinking about is the configuration of characters required to set up the jokes in Shoe. I’m assuming that the strip began with the joke, and then two characters were sought out who might plausibly offer each half of it — notorious vice addict Shoe and naive child Skyler, in this case, never mind that generally the two of them have no real reason to interact within the strip. Is Skyler doing a report for school on comparative mammalian locomotion? Does Treetops lack a public library, forcing him to head down to the local newspaper, the one source of knowledge in the town? Don’t these birds have access to the Internet? If not, the Treetops Tattler’s decision to acquire the TreetopsTattler.com domain was extremely ill-conceived.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/4/11

Yes, there’s very little more embarrassing than your mother seeing you naked, and then dragging out the photo albums to show your best friend all the naked pictures of you she still has on hand.

Apartment 3-G, 1/4/11

I’m less surprised that Margo is watching the ball drop alone than I am surprised that she’s watching it on January 4. I guess she recorded it on the TiVo that she’s got hooked up to her 13-inch black-and-white TV.

Curtis, 1/4/11

Not satisfied with ruining Kwanzaa with a depressing tale about unemployment, Curtis has upped its game: our saintly hero asked a magic mouse for world peace, and the mouse responded by wiping out all human life. Ironic genocide is, of course, the best kind of genocide.

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Shoe, 12/3/10

I’m a little embarrassed by how much information about the world of Shoe I carry around in my head, but it took today’s strip to make me notice a gaping hole in its bird-person society. The denizens of Treetops, East Virginia (that is the name of the town where the bird-people live — one of the many things I am embarrassed to know) are, as we see today, represented by an elected bird-official; their society also features dying print media, a medical system and associated pharmaceutical industry, institutions for disposing of their dead honorably, and sexually deviant auto mechanics. But where do these birds go for spiritual comfort? I can’t think of any appearance of the sort of stereotypical priest-bird-man that one might expect from the strip; the resulting need for divine guidance explains the weird sway that Madame Zoo Doo has over her customers. Look at how desperate the Senator appears for news of his soul’s fate in panel one, and how relieved he is in panel two! Yet the Madame never offers any guidelines for living, never creates the foundation for a system of ethics that might transform her superstitious mummery into a great moral belief system; instead, she merely uses her mystical connection to the “other side” as a source of power and control here on earth (or whatever the hell the freaky bird-planet these creatures live on.)

Mark Trail, 12/3/10

Oh my goodness, the hilarious sitcom-style misunderstanding hijinks are already getting underway, and Mark’s not even out of the shower. Kelly playing idly with the phone cord in panel three is a delight — is in fact so delightful that it almost seems to indicate that the strip is becoming aware of its own ludicrousness, which would of course ruin everything. But Kelly’s weird innocence salvages things. She’s not trying to scheme here; her spoken motivations in panel two are completely honest (and why wouldn’t they be, as they’re spoken aloud to no one in particular?). She really does want to make sure Mark doesn’t miss an important call! She’s helping!

Marvin, 12/3/10

I’m not sure why Marvin and Marvin’s dad (Jeff, Marvin’s dad’s name is Jeff, another thing I’m embarrassed to know) have such looks of numb horror in panel three. Maybe Roy’s misjudged modern mores and “you bet your sweet bippy” is still an incredibly shocking and profane thing to say. “Who is this monster,” thinks Jeff, “and how can I keep my poor son away from him?”

Mary Worth, 12/3/10

Dr. Jeff is usually closely aligned with Mary on Team Destroy Anyone Acting Even Slightly At Variance With Acceptable Norms, so it’s rather touching that he’s showing a little softness towards Jill’s human frailty here. “It happens, Mary! I mean, in my day I occasionally got blotto and lunged at someone inappropriate; if I hadn’t, Adrian wouldn’t be here today! Whoops, I’ve said too much.”

Adrian is taking good care of her boozy friend; based on the look of Jill’s hair, I’m guessing that the bride-to-be dunked her bridesmaid’s hair in a bucket of ice water, to shock the drunk out of her. I’d say that Scott is being awful kind to allow Jill to take his seat at the sweetheart table, but I’ve seen no evidence so far that the future groom even bothered to show up for his own rehearsal dinner.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/3/10

Oh, right, Rex Morgan, remember that? As usual, a promisingly hilarious storyline has wrapped up dumbly, with everyone loving Mayor Dalton because they read about his prostate on Pacebook, and with the mayor convincing his rival to drop out of the election by agreeing to give the man’s wife a volunteer job at the museum. Still, I’m amused by today’s strip, in which Dalton decides that unsolicited cheer from a middle-aged mustachioed gentleman is a good opportunity to talk “street.” “Thanks, man! Wait up! That’s how the kids talk on the Pacebook, right?”

Hi and Lois, 12/3/10

Cyclists often set up white-painted ghost bikes as memorials on the spot where someone riding a bicycle was killed by a car, which makes Ditto’s spectral white bicycle extremely creepy to me. Perhaps Lois ran over Ditto months ago on that very spot; driven mad with grief, she can’t remember that her youngest son is dead, and every evening she comes home from work, expecting him to come out and move the bike-memorial out of the way. Dot can no longer bring herself to shatter her mother anew every day, and now just feeds her comforting lies. “Ditto’s, um, not here right now, but he wants a new bike, mom! I’m sure you’re going to give him one, real soon, and he’ll be so happy!”

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Curtis, 11/30/10

Though we may mock Curtis for the eternal clockwork-like return of its eight or so plots, in truth there is more than a little comfort that can be derived from this nonthreatening reliability; in this sense, the strip serves as a stand-in for the the newspaper comics section as a whole. So it’s a bit discombobulating when a new character is introduced, and even more so when an old character shows up in different circumstances. All Curtis trufans know that Derrick is always accompanied by his bullying partner “Onion,” and that when Curtis spots them, his thought balloon inevitably reads, “Oh no! Derrick and ‘Onion’!” But today we see that Derrick has put away childish things like friendship and has now entered the grown-up world of romance. And while it’s nice to see that he’s met someone who shares his core interests and horse-like laugh, it’s a little sad imagining “Onion” sitting somewhere with his hood cinched tightly around his face, bitter tears of abandonment running down his comically oversized nose.

Mary Worth, 11/30/10

Oh, God, this week is going to be all I hoped for and more, as a drunken, predatory Jill decides that she’s going to forcibly dance with any man who comes within arm’s reach. All reactions in soap opera strips are of course ludicrously overplayed, but I’m not sure why exactly Jeff’s face in panel two is framed by a nimbus of sheer panic. “Oh my God, Mary’s going to see me touching another woman! She’ll never agree to marry me now!”

Shoe, 11/30/10

I’m not sure what’s worse: the suggestion that the Perfesser’s car might have sexual needs, or the downright lascivious look the mechanic is sporting as he relays this fact. “Bet you never knew that cars had sex, did you? I’ve got some instructional videos on the subject around here … why don’t we watch them, and what happens, happens?”