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Funky Winkerbean, 1/7/09

I have absolutely no idea why Becky the One-Armed Band Director looks so horrified in panel two when she thinks that Band Director Emeritus Harry Dinkle is about to launch into an impromptu lesson on preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. If one of my high school band practices had been interrupted by an old man rambling away on the subject (“Let me tell you the most important thing my CO told me before we hit the beach at Normandy: For God’s sake, put a rubber on it! That’s how I managed to screw my way through every French cathouse in every town we liberated without my pecker falling off!”), it would have been the best band practice ever; certainly it would have been a more useful and relevant use of our time than attempting to master yet another Andrew Lloyd Weber medley. I can only assume that, as a Funky Winkerbean authority figure, Becky is required to supervise a certain amount of misery in her charges; she’s afraid that Harry is going to head off that chlamydia epidemic that’s raging nicely through the woodwinds, along with a couple of unplanned pregnancies that she’s counting on in percussion.

Judge Parker, 1/7/09

It appears that Heidi the sexy, trigger-happy cop is going to make a final attempt on Sam’s bemused, detached charms, possibly in one of Phoenix Sky Harbor’s parking garages. You know, I’ve finally figured out what Judge Parker’s ladies-love-Sam plots remind me of: the classic Billy Wilder film The Seven Year Itch, in which the protagonist, left alone in his sweltering Manhattan apartment as his wife and son head to the country on vacation, entertains all manner of sexual fantasies about his comely neighbor Marilyn Monroe and other women — almost all of which involve him coldly rejecting them as they fling themselves at him. I remember thinking when I saw it that it was unspeakably perverse, but Sam is so dull that he sucks all the thrill out of it.

Slylock Fox, 1/7/09

4) If you see a supposed surgeon advancing on you in full clown makeup, I don’t care how sick you are, get the hell out of that hospital now. Answer: True, true, for the love of God, kid, run!

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COTW coming in a moment, but first, some items! Earlier this week I challenged you to create hilarious “FAMOUS CONSERVATIONIST RESCUES RACCOON” newspapers, and you did not disappoint! I received entries from faithful readers thatquietkid, greatbignerd (here’s his blog), mon-ma-tron, willethompson, and a faithful reader who prefers to remain anonymous. And one faithful reader (who works for a real Gazette) even offered his up on his own blog! Click and enjoy, and let me know if I left yours out.

Also! Slylock Fox cartoonist Bob Weber, Jr., wants you to know that he’s auctioning off original Slylock Fox art — featuring Cassandra Cat! — on eBay. Contact him if there’s some other Slylock panel you’re interested in!

Also also! Faithful reader the Divine O’F asks me to pass along this invite:

Crossword-loving Mudges — please join our Cryptic Crossword Group over in the Discussion Forum. We’re in the Cardinal’s Lounge section, and once a week we do a British cryptic puzzle (privately) and discuss it (publicly). It’s fun! It’s brain challenging! We’ll help you learn how to do it!

And now, at long last, the COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“With ‘Your momma sure can cook up a tasty, hot and spicy Mexican dinner!’ Herb and Jamaal has finally reached that magical milestone of 10,000 phrases no human being will ever say except as extremely bizarre euphemisms for unspeakable acts.” –GG

And the runners-up! So many, but I loved them all!

“Herb and Jamaal is always a long walk for a short joke.” –Rusty

“I hope that when Lynn is finished shredding the scarf, she takes her fingernails to Mary’s face, all the while wailing, ‘Shredded! Shredded! Like my soul!'” –Angry Kem

“You can always count on Mary Worth to have a visual perspective as forced as the characterizations.” –Lithros

“‘You only get to do that once!’ No, motherfucker, this is Crankshaft. He’ll make shitty puns a thousand times. Oh, or did you mean the smirk? He’ll do that too.” –Old Doc Yak

“I am so sick of all this endless inquiry and doubt as to whether my name is actually ‘Rabbit’! For the last time, OF COURSE NOT!!!!” –Violet

“Slowest. News. Day. Ever.” –Eli

“RABBIT: What can I do for you, Mister? CHARLIE: Is your name Rabbit? RABBIT: Yeah, what about it? CHARLIE: Can you grow some facial hair and join me in villainy?” –Phred22

“Obviously it was a bad move for Sally to invite her idiot sister to visit. This will probably be what drives Ted to have the hot sex with Aria. Actually, the sex will likely only be lukewarm since it’s bound to be frequently interrupted with obscure sci-fi references and crossword clues.” –Digger

“I like the Winkerbean principal’s strategically greying hair. It’s like his own personal dark cloud of doom looming over him at all times.” –Mischief Maker

“Rabbit is becoming my favorite character in Mark Trail — not that there is stiff competition for that dubious honor. He already had me at ‘You got to be kidding’ and now comes ‘Yeah, what about it?’ I think this guy should be re-cast from MT villain to Mark’s curmudgeonly sidekick. Every time Mark utters some awkward bon mot as he punches someone, Rabbit can stand to the side, commenting: ‘Give me a break.’ ‘Jesus Christ.’ ‘For the love of Pete.’ ‘Blow it out your gas-hole.'” –Kevin Moore

“She didn’t say ‘You only get to do that once’ to Crankshaft, but to one of his fellow drivers. She was only speaking a fact, which translates to: ‘You are a minor character. You only get one punchline. Ever. The rest of your existence will be as a non-speaking character who gets to agree wordlessly with the strip’s star once in a while.’ And he’ll think ‘You mean, a nodding acquaintance.’ — and he won’t even be allowed to say it.” –Muffaroo [almost back]

“Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. You only have to say one word to get Mark Trail to leave town: commitment.” –Dingo

“Bourbon for Tommie? Not likely. Tommie is the type who finds warm milk too thrilling to be a sleep aid. She’ll take her milk room temperature, thank you very much.” –Whippersnapper

“Charlie wishes Trail would stop writing about the wetlands as he reads the front page article of today’s Gazette. Conclusion: Mark Trail wrote his own raccoon-saving hero article, dubbed himself a famous conservationist, and went on down to Sears Portrait Studio to get a shot with him and Sneaky. He chose the classic blue background with clouds for the article, but made sure to get a few with the neon lasers background for his scrapbook.” –Bootis

“Rabbit can never tell when people are kidding. He must have a faulty sarcasm detector, which goes a long way towards explaining his haircut.” –Joe Blevins

“Isn’t ‘Conservationist saves animal’ the ultimate ‘Dog bites man’ headline? Why is it the top story in a newspaper? ‘Famous conservationist skins raccoon alive’, now that’s a headline.” –Ginger Yellow

“For as much as Margo complains about being left behind ‘dealing with the aftershocks,’ it’s not like she’d be happier in South Dakota. Just two minutes of standing around that crappy tiny airport would have had her ready to rip off Cody Stiles’ head with his own sassy neckerchief before he even managed to offer her a ride in his old pickup truck. ‘Hang on,’ you say, ‘that sounds like Margo’s dream vacation.’ And that’s a fair point, but there’s no bar at an airport that small, so trust me, it really would be hell for her.” –Trilobite

“‘Marty harps on an old one’ may be the most obscure euphemism for masturbation since ‘boat wrestling.'” –Pozzo

“I’m pretty sure Moon’s vampire fangs are a Twilight homage, to appease all the thirteen-year-old girls who read Gil Thorp.” –fancywabs

“Goatee so soft, so silky … must stroke …. yeeeeeeees that’s nice.” –Li’l Bunnë FooFoo

“Tommie is merely making homage to her namesake — U.S. Sprinter Tommie Smith — who in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics raised a black-gloved fist in the air during his gold medal ceremony to protest the treatment of blacks in America. Of course, she’s representing an altogether different, but equally discriminated minority … that is, virgins.” –Lettuce

“I like to think that Ned has married to find a stepmother for his 12 children from his first wife, who finally left him to pursue a doctorate in sociology in whatever mid-sized city she could reach first. The new wife, likewise, has quickly realized that it would have been better to remain alone, thereby suffering all the stings aimed at unmarried women in this community, than to tie herself to Ned and his demon brood. She has therefore decided to slowly poison him. Good for her.” –A New Day

“Also, ‘let it go, Mary?’ I’m always impressed by how often the characters in Mary Worth overestimate Mary’s ability to not be a completely terrible person.” –Tats

“BTW, I admire how swiftly Rex pockets the bag of weed he has just purchased from the Rastafarian dude.” –tbell61

“At first, I couldn’t imagine why someone would use the phrase ‘tasty, hot, and spicy Mexican dinner,’ but then I realized that Herb is probably reading from a Zagat review. As they would say: this ‘annoyingly bland’ strip ‘excels’ at creating ‘distractingly unnatural’ dialogue.” –ratnerstar

“Of course Sue hasn’t met anyone like Mark in business. HR puts out an annual ‘Face Punching: Don’t Do It!’ pamphlet to discourage the Fists of Harassment.” –Patrick

“Hi, I’m Kromarr, the giant mutated fiddler crab. A nuclear accident may have given me my giant stature and ability to speak, but I was born hating stilted dialogue. That’s why I’m bearing down on Mark Trail and his latest bimboid. After I snip them in half, it’s back to Lost Forest to slaughter and devour Cherry and Rusty. Don’t bother to thank me, America. The knowledge that one less legacy strip will be left to vomit its utterly inhuman blather across your funny pages is thanks enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get all the killing done before my lunch date with King Ghidorah.” –ouranosaurus

Also many are the thanks go out to everyone put some change in my tip jar! And our advertisers too are worthy or praise:

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Mary Worth, 11/23/08

When I was a kid, my dad told me stories about his high school health teacher, who in turn told my dad a set of entirely fanciful “facts” in the course of his education, the most prominent and horrifying of which was that a gila monster could bite on to your hand and become attached so firmly that the only way to get it off would be through surgery. Though this was explicitly presented to me as not reflecting the true nature of that gentle if venomous desert lizard, it was nevertheless an extremely vivid image that my younger self spent far too much time dwelling upon.

I bring this up now because the usual metaphors used to illustrate a tenacious, unyielding grip — a vise, say, or a bear trap, or a pit bull — are wholly inadequate to describe just how tightly Mary is clinging to the dark secret Lynn hinted at earlier this week. There’s only one way to put this: Mary has locked her jaw around the thin limb of Lynn’s hidden scandal like the nonexistent gila monster of my father’s health teacher’s fevered imagination. She will remain just within Lynn’s earshot indefinitely, hissing orders that she give up the goods, until we finally learn just what dark stain on the poor young woman’s soul is making her so very unhappy. PREDICTION: It will turn out to not be particularly interesting.

Judge Parker, 11/23/08

Judge Parker has played the sexy lady card in this storyline particularly hard, in that the main guest stars are a sexy lady detective wearing leather pants and a sexy lady stripper wearing very little. But as we see illustrated today, the only thing more exciting than a sexy lady is a deadly, stab-happy sexy lady (though perhaps that’s a shade less exciting than a sexy lady wired with explosives.) Anyway, this will no doubt very quickly devolve into some sort of terrible pit of Mike Hammer-style faux-noir misogyny, with the only question being whether Sam trots out his detached monologue about dames gone wrong and the men they drag down with them at central booking or the morgue.

Slylock Fox, 8/23/08

There is no doubt that comics reflect the essential zeitgeist of their age. For instance, when Slylock Fox was launched in 1987, I’m sure most of the crimes Sly was called on to solve involved muggings, petty thefts, break-ins — the sort of threats that obsess the middle classes when they fear that the violence of the proletariat is on the verge of boiling over. Today, though, as our economy begins to unravel and we are told that the culprits are the captains of industry and financial instruments that we can’t begin to understand, our fox detective is more and more frequently being called on to prevent corporate flim-flam jobs and, as we can see here, shady real estate deals. If only Slylock were appointed to head the SEC, maybe we’d be able to get to the bottom of our financial woes, through careful and deliberate ratiocination and/or information that we aren’t actually privy to.