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Blondie, 8/29/07

Long-time Blondie readers have always marvelled at the uncanny resemblance between Dagwood’s neighbor/golf buddy/source of free tools Herb Woodley and mailman Mr. Beasley. The same face, the same bulging forehead, the same mustache. Could they be long-lost relatives? Was Herb actually the neighborhood mailman, assuming a new name and identity as he walked his route for inscrutable reasons of his own? Today, though, as his long-firmly-attached hat goes flying, we learn that, unlike Herb, Mr. Beasley in fact completely bald. It is a testament to the power of the comics and the long-running features within that this has completely blown my fucking mind. Cynic that I am, I can’t stop looking at his bare head.

For Better Or For Worse, 8/29/07

ha ha ha foolish girl no patterson is ever free

Mark Trail, 8/29/07

I’m beginning to suspect that Shirley the Duck has special powers, and I don’t just mean her stunning plumage, which has won her drag king competitions all over Lost Forest. No, first she somehow convinced the construction foreman to halt work on this extremely important mall, and now she’s working her sinister magic on the son of the big boss himself! As more and more people come within range of her mind-control rays, her army will grow larger and larger, until that mall finds itself transformed into a Shirleytarium, dedicated to her care, feeding, and worship. There will be bread crumbs. Many, many bread crumbs.

Slylock Fox, 8/29/07

Wow, that lion is pissed — and, really, can you blame him? Most doctors don’t even take their patients’ pulse themselves, and here some nosey freelance detective is getting Panthera Leo, M.D., to put his hard-earned medical skills to use to bust someone for stealing magazines from the waiting room. I think someone’s going to have some angry words with the managers of Medical Plaza. Presumably the only way to calm him down will be to allow him to eat Slick Smitty, whether he’s guilty or not.

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(I was planning to comment on the FOOBs today, but the image from gocomics.com was so ludicrously large that I thought it might cause blindness and dementia to those who looked upon it, so I’ll just say in passing BLARRRGGGH.)

Slylock Fox, 8/19/07

Pity poor Count Weirdly! It’s like a guy can’t even have a press conference atop his most scenic turret to promote his faked moon landing (like the so-called “real” ones weren’t!) without some nosey fox sticking his snout where it doesn’t belong and criticizing his Photoshop skills. If telling bald-faced lies at press conferences is illegal, I know a lot of more important venues where Slylock should be putting his patented brand of pedantic deduction to work. As it is, the only organization apparently gullible enough to accept the invitation to the Weirdly Moonshot announcement appears to be Agence France-Presse, as indicated by the reporter’s micro-miniskirt and the cameradog’s beret (and good luck getting any usable footage out of this nighttime press conference with absolutely no artificial lighting, Fideaux). In fact, this pair is probably more likely to be filming for the series Les Hommes Les Plus Étranges Au Monde than they are to be taken in by the idea of air-tight Chuck Taylors.

Mary Worth, 8/19/07

Man, that Dr. Drew is one smooth operator, isn’t he? One date’s worth of his bland, slick-backed handsomeness and Mary-style aphorisms and Vera is literally throwing herself at him! And of course we can see why Drew would be so eager to draw Vera into his web of love. “Ha .. ha .. I’ve decided to go out in public in shoes that I have no idea how to walk in! I belong in a sideshow like the circus freak that I am! AARRGH, I just fell over! Did I mention all the sexual tension with my brother?”

Apartment 3-G, 8/19/07

So I have to admit that when I joked about Alan being an addict and Jones the beatnik being his dealer, I didn’t actually think it was true. I guess I have a lot to learn about the soap opera comics’ willingness to obliquely take on tough themes! Alan’s commitment to sobriety ought to be obvious from his deeply square sartorial choices, as his white dress shirt/black vest combo would get him laughed out of any drug den in the five boroughs. Still, the years of chemical abuse of his brain have taken their toll; he’s undoubtedly spending this entire strip trying to keep his shit together despite the fact that events keep repeating themselves, and his and Eric’s hair keep swapping colors.

Crock, 8/19/07

And speaking of drugs … the combination of misplaced geography (Inca pottery in North Africa?) and garden-variety stupidity is all too typical for this feature, but the final panel pushes today’s Crock into the realm of peyote-addled nightmare. A little boy named Otis in the middle of the sun-blighted wasteland, chatting with a vulture who’s sporting a baseball cap? And where are they going to get the toilets, huh? Where are they going to get the toilets? Ye gods.

Dennis the Menace, 8/19/07

There is no reason why Dennis shouldn’t have unloaded that ball directly into Henry’s nuts in the third-to-last panel. None. They even set it up with the whole “waist high” thing. Still, this’ll keep dad from attempting to spend any quality time with his kid for the rest of both of their lives, leaving Dennis with more time to get into extremely low-level unsupervised hijinks.

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Shoe and Get Fuzzy, 7/22/07

If you are a subscriber to the Baltimore Sun, you saw this precise constellation of quasipolitical comics when you opened your paper this morning. Both seem to be aimed at the same problem: making a relatively gentle joke about politics that isn’t actually political, and doesn’t result in dozens of angry letters to the editor. And, while usually I go on about just about everything at great length, the most important thing I can say here is that Get Fuzzy is funny, while Shoe isn’t. Shoe falls into the typical toothless trap of just saying “THE POLITICS AREN’T THEY ANNOYING?”, literally allowing the discussion to be replaced by meaningless placeholder syllables. Get Fuzzy works with established character traits — Bucky and Satchel’s party affiliations have been frequently noted, whereas I don’t believe Shoe and the Perfesser had political beliefs until they became necessary for this cartoon. Plus Get Fuzzy contains actual political jokes that are funny. I love the third-party punchline, but I love “Well, with the proper funding…” even more.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/22/07

“I can assure you, I am not without qualities! I have a certain height, for instance, as well as a certain breadth and depth! I occupy volume in space! I have a certain skin color, and wear clothing, and inhale air and breathe out carbon dioxide! I have quantities, too, if you’d care to hear about them!”

With his constant wavering between unbearable upper-class superciliousness and desperate, raw emotional need, I’m frankly shocked that Hugh has somehow managed to remain a bachelor to this point.

Marvin, 7/22/07

Marvin celebrated its 25th anniversary this past week with a series of painfully unfunny jokes about life in that long-lost age known as “1982.” (Dallas was on TV! Ronald Reagan was president! HA HA! STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!) Today, Marvin the baby appears on the set of the Tonight Show to exchange painfully unfunny jokes with Jay Leno. The fact that Jay Leno is, in fact, painfully unfunny in real life does lead one to wonder whether the lameness on display here is meant to be a brutally realistic exploration of what it would be like if a cartoon infant were on the Tonight Show. Frankly, I wish that they had carried on with the “life in 1982” conceit and done the interview with Johnny Carson, though presumably even after his death he has too much dignity to appear in Marvin.

Extremely creepy to me is the way that Jay Leno keeps his mouth shut throughout his unfunny dialog. The fact that Marvin keeps his own mouth shut and communicates with Jay (and, presumably, the viewers at home) telepathically via thought balloons for whatever reason doesn’t faze me at all, but seeing that lantern jaw firmly shut while the usual inane patter floats next to his head in a word balloon unsettles me a great deal. I do like the fact that Marvin’s bottle has been placed completely out of reach of his stubby arms, though.

Mary Worth, 7/22/07

I can totally understand why Dawn was so nervous to offer this revelation up to Drew. After all, it’s totally possible that the good doctor was only on going on this date with her so that he could synchronize his retrochronometer onto her current form and then go back in time five years to date her past her self — wouldn’t it be disappointing if he had gone through all that trouble only to return to the present in disgust? Thank God he’s only interested in dating the beautiful swan Dawn of the here and now. Look at the lovely visage in the final panel — the octogonal face, the bright orange roots. You can see why he wants to “get into the saddle” right away!

Slylock Fox, 7/22/07

OH COME ON, SLYLOCK! We’ve moved from ludicrous acts of deduction to petty attempts to come up with ways that that Cassandra might be committing crimes despite the absence of any evidence. “Do they both have ticket stubs? They might have just torn a single ticket in half! Did they pay for those tickets with cash? They might have stolen that cash from a bank, or an old lady, or an orphanage!” I think we all know why Slylock is harassing this poor woman while she’s trying to enjoy an innocent evening out at the movies with her bovine companion. I can’t wait for the inevitable strip where Slylock uses his infallible crime-fighting skills to avoid the process server with the restraining order.