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B.C., 9/26/07

…or like fish, right? Because the whole “tastes like chicken” joke is about exotic animals that people don’t usually eat, you see, and at root it’s based on the fact that chicken is fairly bland, as is most meat from small-ish animals, and it’s just that chicken is the kind of small-ish animal we eat the most. And fish, by contrast, actually have a really distinctive flavor … and he’s eating a fish … and the joke would have worked just as well if the punchline had been “…it sure tastes great” or something along those lines … and … and … AAAAARRRGGGH!

Ahem. To say something nice, I sort of like Clumsy’s crudely drawn but effectively harrowing look of profound horror in the final panel. I also think it’s amusing that Curls has taken his first bite of delectable Dorsellectus Illusivii out of the fish’s head. (Addendum: OH GOD I KNOW THE NAMES OF B.C. CHARACTERS WITHOUT LOOKING THEM UP PLEASE KILL ME NOW)

Hi and Lois, 9/26/07

“Now, Trixie, don’t forget, Daddy and I have decided that you will stay a perfect porcelain doll, untouched by the dangerous rays of the sun throughout your sheltered life. Don’t make me put you in the barrel again!”

Pluggers, 9/26/07

Pluggers … let their children play in feces? Wow, there’s really not much I can add to this one. I would like to point out, though, that cats like to shit in sandboxes generally. Brightly colored sandboxes in the postage-stamp-sized backyards of yuppie-hipster rowhouses in Park Slope; huge, multi-level sand-based environments in the acres behind McMansions in Northern Virginia; or sand-filled tires in the trash-strewn lots of Pluggerville, USA: cats will do their business in any of them. Thus, I can only assume that the poop angle was added here to give someone a perverse thrill. You are sick, sir or madam, sick!

Shoe, 9/26/07

OK, if you’ve worked for a newspaper for years and frequently cover political stories and still don’t know the length of your town’s mayoral term, you no longer get to call yourself “Perfesser.” I don’t care if it’s whimsically misspelled. This sort of thing quite frankly makes me rethink my opinions on media consolidation. If Gannett bought the Treetops Tribune (or whatever the hell it’s called; I’M NOT LOOKING IT UP YOU CAN’T MAKE ME) and outsourced all of the local reporting to a journalism compound in Bangalore, at least those guys would know how to look up the answer on Wikipedia.

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Herb and Jamaal, Shoe, and Six Chix, 8/15/07

Oh, hey, everybody! Did you hear that it’s iPhone day in the syndicated funny pages? No? Well, fortunately, these three team players did. Yes, there’s nothing that will help make the comics relevant to young people like jokes about a hot piece of electronic gear that was released to great fanfare and media hype eight and a half weeks ago. Actually, that’s close enough to what I imagine the comics lead time to be that it makes me think that someone got a look at gadget-hungry types waiting camped out in the streets outside Apple Stores and thought “comedy gold!” And thank goodness we’ve finally got to see the results.

Herb and Jamaal has worked its cutting-edge cell phone joke into a storyline involving a hip young priest who’s been sent to clear out the clerical deadwood from the diocese of wherever the hell it is that Herb and Jamaal takes place. This might be interesting, except that nothing that ever happens in this strip is remotely interesting, so this won’t be interesting either. I like the way that “hip” is signified by the earring and the indoors sunglasses — he’s like Herb and Jamaal’s Coach Kaz! Though with less propensity for violence, hopefully. The strip is pandering to the newspaper comics’ core audience of angry old people by making this fellow as unlikable as possible; presumably he’ll be shuffled off to another diocese in disgrace soon enough, once the altar boys start complaining.

Shoe, meanwhile, manages to make no sense at all in its particulars, though it does manage to reflect the higher truth of its characters’ well-established personalities, since the Perfesser is well known for his food addiction. Six Chix thinks that the “a seashell is like a cell phone” joke somehow becomes funny when transformed into an “a seashell is like a particular, much-hyped kind of cell phone that was recently released” joke. For the record, it doesn’t.

B.C., 8/15/07

Just in case anyone’s wondering, the new, post-Johnny Hart’s death, assembled-from-existing-drawings B.C. is terrible. I’ve never been a huge fan of the feature, and I sort of have been waiting for the new team to find its bearings, but it’s kind of shocking how much worse it’s become. Today’s strip practically boggles my attempts to enumerate criticisms of it; I’ll start with the weird, mangled look of the figures in panel one (is this what happens when the new team deviates from pre-drawn templates?), the actively crude looking baseball and blimp, and the bizarre orthographic choice to end “Lookie, the blimp” with a period rather than an exclamation point. The saddest thing, as I’ve noted before, is that zombie B.C. is occupying space in hundreds of papers that could be used by someone trying to break into the comics business, or, failing that, by a nice ad for an auto dealership that would help the newspaper afford to buy more comics, or pay its copy editors.

Mark Trail, 8/15/07

Check out where Andy’s paw is going in panel three! Ha ha, Cherry, you’ve been rude-synonym-for-vagina-blocked! She knew that her one chance to have relations with her husband for the fifth time since their wedding was to hop on him the moment he got out of the car, while he was still disoriented; fortunately, Mark’s trained his faithful St. Bernard well to save him from the unpleasantness of physical love. Looks like Cherry’s got another night of furious masturbation in store while Mark blathers on about duck innards to her father!

The Lockhorns, 8/15/07

Actually, “Leroy” is French for … oh, you know what, just forget it.

Oh! And! Faithful reader Flipper earned that virtual penny and more with this utterly amazing Mark Trail squirrel montage. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

Also, faithful reader loudfan shares this evidence that Spider-Man is whoring himself out for the postal service. Thrill as he runs errands for Aunt May! Gasp as he surfs the Internet! Boggle as he puts a cold compress over his eyes, for some reason!

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Shoe, 8/12/07

Sunday’s Shoe is the latest in an occasional series I like to call “Jokes that hint distastefully at the Perfesser’s sex life.” The throwaway panel features a pointless statement about “eyes being well-rested” (one usually only talks about resting one’s eyes if one is a late-middle-aged uncle claiming not to be napping) that only serves to set up a punchline making hay from the Perfesser’s tendency to ogle women so blatantly that it makes them uncomfortable. Later, we get an extended riff that hints broadly at impotence, always a non-stop laugh riot, and then goes further by drawing a connection between the ability to achieve an erection and the ability to sit passively on the couch and receive hundreds of channels of mind-numbing, lowest-common-denominator entertainment. At least panel four can be enjoyed on its own because it looks looks like the Perfesser is contemplating jumping to his death.

Hi and Lois, 8/12/07

Gosh, Lois, those are good questions! Why is it that when it comes to this vacation, all the “good” parts for your kids involved “suffering” or “pain” or “humiliation”? Or “all of the above”? What would make them “enjoy” those sorts of experiences? Let’s ask someone who might have an “idea” about that:

Ouch, the truth hurts! Which is just how the Flagston kids like it.

Finally, Sunday’s Crock’s throwaway panel tells you pretty much all you need to know about the strip’s politics:

Equal rights, you say? Oh..oh indeed!