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Popeye, 6/27/07

So it’s been seven months and two plotlines since I’ve deigned to comment on Popeye’s spinach- and/or mescaline-fueled antics. If you’re not following along at home, I’m not going to give you any context for this, because it’s just all the more delightful as a surreal and horrifying standalone vignette. Olive Oyl laughing so hard that her jaw nearly unhinges as she presses the barrel of the gun to her temple, her breast-sporting doppelgänger laughingly urging her to blow her brains out as she slams her bracelets together with a hearty CLANK!, Wimpy ignoring the horrifying drama to demand more food — WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT IN A COMIC? In three panels, Popeye has managed to be more unsettling that the last 18 months of Zippy the Pinhead.

Six Chix, 6/27/07

On a day that didn’t feature a beloved Popeye character cheerfully threatening suicide, this would surely be the funny pages’ most disturbing comic. “Oops, terrible mixup, we meant to order tanning beds but we bought cremators instead! Wondered why they were so big! Ha ha! So, yeah, we burned your wife to death.”

Mark Trail, 6/27/07

Wow, Crooked County Commissioner #1 sure is looking … distinguished, isn’t he? There’s just something about him that says, “Gosh, this handsome and paternal figure would never do anything illicit; rather, he would be an excellent person with whom to negotiate a delicate land deal involving public funds. And he just might be the right person to be the highly paid head of the county’s new airport authority! I wonder why I feel so simultaneously drawn to and respectful towards him now?”

And, in the first panel … he also seems to be super cool as well! I know, mature and distinguished and super cool in one package? I don’t pretend to understand how he does it. All I know is that the new airport’s gonna be the best airport ever!

Marvin, 6/27/07

Perhaps you’re right, Marvin. But we can pass legislation that forces freaks like your mother — with their grotesquely oversized heads tottering atop their reedy, stick-like bodies in a most stomach-turning fashion — to live out their days in closed institutions where normal people can’t see them. And we will, if the letter I’m about to write to my Congressman has anything to say about it.

Slylock Fox, 6/27/07

The heroine seems a little young to play the part, but everything in this cartoon — the meal of canned tuna and toast eaten right out of the can and toaster, respectively; the filthy house, crawling with rodents; and, of course, the dozens of hungry, hungry felines — screams “crazy cat lady.” But you know what? Once you realize the role you’re born to play in this life, I say, why wait?

Mary Worth, 6/27/07

Wait, what? “Yawnfest?” “Beyond boring?” I think somebody needs to turn around. CANNONBALL! CANNONBAAAAAAALLLLL! It’s never a boring party when people are doing the cannonball. CANNONBAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!

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Gil Thorp, 10/16/06

You might have noticed that i haven’t really been paying attention to Gil Thorp lately. That’s because it stopped being about homoerotic love channeled through chainsaw work and more about Sean Pettibone, everybody’s least favorite goody-goody. You may remember Sean from last season, when he scored the winning touchdown in the final game of the season but then negated his team’s victory by admitting unprompted that he had stepped out of bounds on the play; later, he broke cultural barriers by dating one of Milford’s token African-American students and alternately amused and horrified her parents with his well-meaning cracker antics. This year he’s voluntarily dropped out the student body vice-presidential race in order to placate student strife, and today he has single handedly pulled this unconscious fellow from flaming disaster and appears to be supplying the “breath of life” through his left nipple. Presumably soon he will come up with a plan to rescue Social Security, bring peace to the Middle East, and lead the Mudlarks to victory in the football playdowns. Everyone will still hate him.

The question remains: who or what is responsible for reducing this once-mighty light utility vehicle to a pile of flaming wreckage? Maybe these two punks have graduated from cherry bombs to roadside IEDs. “Mail call, SUV-boy!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/16/06

Aw man, see, this is why you gotta have a roommate like Margo. She tells it like it is! And by “tells it like it is,” I mean “puts the spin on things most likely to negate whatever positive emotions you might be experiencing at any given moment.” And by “gotta have a roommate like,” I mean “must change the locks while she’s out.”

For Better Or For Worse, 10/16/06

As noted, it’s been a while since Phil’s appeared in the strip, but I really don’t remember him being so, um, mustachtic. No wonder his own father doesn’t recognize him. Jim probably thinks he’s the dude from the Pringles can. “Did you bring the sour cream and onion kind? I love those!”

Six Chix, 10/16/06

I’m pretty sure that this is about monkey sex somehow, and I’m pretty sure that I don’t approve.

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For Better Or For Worse, 10/13/06

As the Liz-Anthony storyline grinds on to its terrifying and seemingly inevitable conclusion, all of North America can only look on in horror.

I was physically unable to bring myself to comment on yesterday’s foobery, in which Liz, who up until fairly recently had an exciting and adventurous life, declared herself “unaccomplished” compared to Anthony because he had a child and owned property. While clearly parenthood and ownership of a bland suburban box is the height of human achievement in Foobonia, the sad truth is that the house was no doubt purchased largely with the money from Thérèse’s unspecified-but-implied-to-be-high-powered job, and as for the baby, well, if you’re married, for most people it actually takes more planning and effort to not have a baby than it does to have one. I suppose it’s an “accomplishment” that Anthony convinced his wife to have sex with him despite their obvious mutual dislike. Of course, now Thérèse has left both home and baby behind because she’s a totally unrealistic straw-woman character designed to make us feel sorry for Anthony totally evil, nonmaternal, career-focused bitch, leaving Liz an opportunity to get closer to her dream guy, who likes to hang out in his basement office with his caged toddler.

All this aside, though, this morning I had a brainstorm about why the Liz-Anthony pairing is so perfect. See, motherhood is a necessary component to a woman’s life, unless she decides she’d rather not be a parent is a totally evil, nonmaternal, career-focused bitch like Thérèse. If Liz weds Anthony, she’ll get to experience the soul-completing joy of being a mommy without having to have icky sex.

Apartment 3-G, 10/13/06

OK, so this wacky Lu Ann adventure, with the lights turning on and off and the odd instant falling asleep and the sepia-toned dream sequences … it’s really … weird, right? It’s not just me? It’s OK that I’m creeped out by the command in the last panel here? Who’s going to keep her safe, dammit? Who?

Six Chix, 10/13/06

You’re one to talk about addictive behavior, lady. You’re the one who appears to be sitting at a bar in the middle of your house.

Family Circus, 10/13/06

Actually, Jeffy, that’s how we know that Dolly’s sick. Very, very sick.