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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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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/21/07

My biggest genuine laugh in today’s comics came in the final panel of Rex Morgan, M.D., when I saw whose names were on that bottle of pedestrian red wine. Graham Nolan likes to play around with his signature spots, but this is probably the best one yet.

Speaking of panel three, June appears to be trying her best to give Heather a run for her money when it comes to lingering stares that are both sexy and soul-destroyingly icy. Hugh just seems to bring that out in the ladies. ’Cause OH NO YOU DO NOT CALL GIRLFRIEND’S WINE SELECTION “PEDESTRIAN.”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 6/21/07

I’m not sure if “total and continuous failure to recognize one’s own inadequacies” really falls into the classic TDIET ironic-twist template. I do have to say that I kind of enjoy the cartoonish overreaction of father and son in the first panel, in which they’re literally spitting out their food all over the table. However, what really caught my eye was the submitter: could this be Mary Worth artist Joe Giella? And if so, why doesn’t the submission reflect that? “Big shot editor at the syndicate says he wants you to ‘sex up’ your older comic heroine (‘Make her younger … thinner too … baby blue eyes … great gams … etc.’) … but what happens when the letters start rolling in? (‘Deeply disturbing … not in keeping with the strip I’ve read loyally for 50 years … I want to tear out my eyes’) … OH YEAH!”

Slylock Fox, 6/21/07

I’m pretty sure that “blue” puddle under the baby has been colored wrong.

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Pluggers, 6/11/07

Plugger moms are going to kill themselves within the hour … but only after they have the satisfaction of killing their kids first.

OK, that’s horrible, but you tell me what else that facial expression could possibly lead to. This officially is the most horrifyingly depressing Pluggers ever, outpacing even the “Rhino-man plugger hocks his decades-old TV to keep the bill collectors at bay for another week” installment.

Speaking of horrible, I don’t want to take this in a direction that will lead to anyone, anywhere producing Pluggers porn (and if you do produce it I will not link to it you cannot make me) but I’m a bit confused by this plugger mom’s bustline, since I’m reasonably sure she’s supposed to be a kangaroo. Shouldn’t she have a single nipple in her pouch? And shouldn’t her kid actually be a tiny, salamander-like embryo, nestled safely in said pouch leaving both of her arms free? It sure would be a lot easier on her if that’s how it worked, I’ll tell you that.

Gil Thorp, 6/11/07

I’m sorry, I simply cannot abide the hideous claw-hands in Gil Thorp (see also here (where my prediction was totally borne out, by the way, not that it was very difficult) and here). Other than the fact that Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp looks like she’s about the scratch off her Joker-like face in panel three, though, this is pretty nifty. I particularly like the fact that Ponytailed Girl Whose Name I Forget (I Think She Works For The School Newspaper Maybe?) appears to be holding back her friends in panel one, as if they’re so enraged by their coach’s cancer-free state that they’re planning to hold her down and beat some cancer into her.

Thanks to a faithful reader (Uncle Lumpy?) for the new nickname “Yul Brynna” for the newly shaven-headed former Brynna Antenna. Unfortunately, I’m probably never going to get a chance to use it, as she appears to have fled the softball diamond, and, presumably, the greater Milford area, due to her shame.

Mark Trail, 6/11/07

The fact that Sam Hill has been blinded by a high-speed blast of shattered glass and shredded duck viscera flying right into her eyes is awfully convenient — not for her, obviously, but for Mark. This way, he’ll be able to take his new lover back to Lost Forest; because she can’t see, she won’t even notice that Mark already has a wife and adopted son. Cherry won’t notice the new order of things either, of course, because she’ll be ’luded to the gills, as always. Rusty’s electronic ankle bracelet will ensure that he never leaves the backyard pen.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/11/07

Somebody help me out here. The “joke” in this strip is supposed to be that Hagar’s supposedly fierce company of Viking warriors have fled in terror at the mere mention of Attila’s name, right? So, what’s the deal with the tall grass? Have they been killed and laid low in the grass by Attila’s short and stealthy warriors? Does the grass merely serve to evoke the limitless steppe, home to nomadic peoples like the Huns? Is it meant to make an otherwise dull panel interesting, or, conversely, to save the trouble of drawing Hagar’s disturbingly potato-like feet? What? What?

Slylock Fox, 6/11/07

You might think that being a fox detective is glamorous, that it’s all high-profile media events and fancy tea parties and exclusive nightclubs. But be warned: you will occasionally be called down to the trailer park to figure out just who is throwing rocks at whom. It’s probably a good thing that Slylock’s there to keep the peace, as Rachel Rabbit looks pissed, and I have a feeling that her screams of “You’re lucky my bunnydaddy ain’t here!”, echoing throughout the park as she kicks the thin metal side of Chez Rat, would soon be immortalized in a heavy-rotation episode of COPS.

This strip deserves kudos for not going with the classist but all-too-obvious “Reeky Rat obviously lives in filth, and thus would not under any circumstances be engaged in ‘housecleaning'” solution.