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Shoe, 1/12/10

Now here’s a lovely example of how a single word balloon can transform a comic from boring and pedestrian and vaguely insulting to completely bonkers. I’m referring, of course, to the balloon emerging from Roz’s sundae. What could have been a sub-Cathyism — hee hee, the ladies, they like eating fatty food and are awash in body image self-hate! — instead becomes a rapid descent into madness. This descent takes one of two paths. Roz may have gone insane, and is now hearing voices emitting from ordinary inanimate objects; it’s also possible that this is in fact a sentient, talking dessert. The latter possibility is pretty strange, but is it really any stranger than talking birds who use their wing-hands to eat ice cream? In this scenario, Roz’s admonishment to keep her gluttony a secret from her thighs isn’t a mere whimsical joke, since there’s no reason to think that those thighs can’t think and speak as well.

Either way, I like the fact that the ice cream sundae is neither cheerfully declaring its desire to be consumed (as one might expect in the “Roz is nuts” scenario) nor screaming in terror as the instrument of its murder approaches (as you’d guess a self-aware ice cream sundae would react in this situation); instead, it just gives Roz a standoffish “Uh … okay,” as if waiting to see where this is all going.

Mary Worth, 1/12/10

Today’s Mary Worth demonstrates the limits of Mary’s memory self-modification techniques. Jill urges everyone to purge from their minds the image of her making a drunken scene and being forcibly removed from the rehearsal dinner; and yet panel one demonstrates with its complete awesome hilariousness that we can never, ever let such good times vanish from our recollections. Is Jill sticking her tongue out? Is Dr. Jeff raising his upper lip in a tough-guy sneer? Never forget, I say. Never forget.

Gil Thorp, 1/12/10

Oh, hey, remember Gil Thorp’s new extremely thinly veiled gay character? Turns out he’s Gil Thorp’s new extremely thinly veiled gay basketball prodigy! Also, he really, really likes vests, for some reason.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/10

Ha ha, looks like somebody stopped just talking about it and actually had Snuffy brutally assaulted!

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Beetle Bailey, 1/8/11

I’m pretty sure that the Halftrack Hatefest Follies are my very least favorite Beetle Baileys, and today’s strip is a good example of why. I mean, Jesus. I’m pretty sure there isn’t even a joke here. Mrs. Halftrack: “I’m married to you and I hate you so God-damn much and I don’t know what else to do so I’m just going to yell at you, literally from the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep at night.” General Halftrack: “[Unspoken thoughts of rage and anguish and murder and suicide.]”

Shoe, 1/8/11

Today’s Shoe is marginally better; at least there’s something identifiable as a punchline on offer. But the half-dozen empties in front of the senator and the tremble lines around him are perhaps a bit much for larfs. I do like the way Shoe’s sly enabler’s smile gives way to horror when he hears that Belfrey has actually managed to injure himself due to drink. Even Shoe has limits to the depravity in others in which he takes delight!

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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.