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Mary Worth, 4/9/07

Grandstanding oddballs? Grandstanding oddballs? OK, this … this … the people behind Mary Worth have to be in on the joke. They have to be. This is the grand calling the kettle stand. The odd calling the kettle ball. Professor Ian Cameron is without a doubt the grandstandingest oddball who ever grandstanded. I mean, come on.

Also, check out that faraway look in his eyes as he waves his hand around at nobody in particular in panel two. I know we think of him as being uptight, but he is a liberal arts professor at a groovy California state university who wears “nonconformist” facial hair and likes to bust out the burnt sienna leisure suit and get down on occasion. He’s almost certainly chemically altered right now. They can’t show it in the comics, but I’m pretty sure that throughout this whole pool party sequence, the Charterstone communal bong has been just off-camera as it gets passed around. Maybe that’s why Vera took off so quickly: over in Pacific Cliffs, that millionaire’s stomping ground where she grew up, the mind-altering substances came in little bottles and were prescribed by your private physician, and she looks down on this bourgeois tokery.

Slylock Fox, 4/9/07

I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that Cassandra Cat seems to now be a recurring character in Slylock Fox’s rogue gallery. You’ll note that she’s dyed her hair blonde since her last appearance in the strip, all the better to use her feminine wiles to slink out of a shoplifting conviction. Max Mouse is clearly besotted with a representative of the species that should by Cartoon Law be his greatest nemesis, which confirms once and for all that he’s an S&M submissive.

By the way, we also would have accepted “Because polygraphy is pseudoscience perpetrated by quacks, and Slylock’s half-assed guesses, based on equal parts induction and species prejudice, are just as likely to be accurate” as a correct solution to the puzzle.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 4/9/07

Careful TDIET readers (which category I trust includes ALL OF YOU) know that each daily panel, while a unique and brilliant masterpiece in and of itself, is often built out of a number of recurring elements and formulae, just like the epithets and set phrases that the ancient bards used to create the Homeric poems. I first encountered “the urge” in one of the very first TDIETs I commented on. Generally, the urge impels the urged to visit some horrible act of violence — usually something along the lines of skinning alive or burning to death — upon the perpetrator of whatever minor transgression is the subject of that day’s installment. Today, the urge is left unspecified: Alf is merely subject to it, and we are left to wonder just what variation upon it is rolling around his be-Kangoled head. It’s all no doubt baffling to the casual reader, but a nice treat for the true TDIET fan.

Dennis the Menace, 4/9/07

You know, as a comics reader, you sort of accept that your iconic characters are going to sport the same outfit day after day: Charlie Brown will always wear that yellow t-shirt with the raggedy black stripe, Dagwood Bumstead will always wear a tuxedo with a single dinner-plate-sized button in the middle of his chest, and Donald Duck will always wear the top half of a sailor suit, but, disturbingly, no pants or underwear. But scenes like this — where Dennis is wearing his typical red overalls and blue-and-black-striped shirt, and his mom is putting another instance of the same outfit, neatly folded, into a drawer that’s presumably full of them — make it harder to suspend your disbelief. Either Dennis has a serious undiagnosed case of OCD, or the Mitchells are very, very cheap and managed to get a deal in some kind of bulk sale on factory seconds.

Pluggers, 4/9/07

Once they quit the menial jobs that they hate, pluggers have very little reason to go anywhere or see anyone. Sometimes they just stay in bed for days.

Actually, sleeping in until noon is one of my very favorite things in the world, so, as a non-plugger, it’s disheartening to learn that I’ll be continuing to set an alarm even after I retire. I wonder what it is I’ll be doing so early in the morning? Having brunch with homosexuals where we drink mimosas and plot to undermine our commander-in-chief, no doubt.

By the way, apropos of nothing, I was checking out the Google search terms that brought people to my site today and discovered “make your boyfriend feel better when his dog dies” among them, and it really touched me. Nice lady (or perhaps fellow): just the fact that you’re trying will go a long way, honest.

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Family Circus, 4/6/07

I’m not a Christian, but even I know how theologically troubling this Good Friday installment of the supposedly Jesus-friendly Family Circus is. Hey Dolly, they don’t say “Jesus was an adorable baby wrapped in swaddling clothes surrounded by cute animals for your sins,” you know what I’m saying?

Several commentors have suggested that Ma Keane is attempting to exorcize the demons out of Dolly, but I think it’s instructive to compare this panel with Tuesday’s installment. The visual echoes imply that Dolly is about to get smacked with that crucifix; we might assume that its religious meaning is incidental, and that it was merely the closest heavy object to hand.

Gil Thorp, 4/6/07

The first panel of today’s Gil Thorp is just evidence of how far this strip (and by extension America) has slipped from the good old days, as “the doc” is some touch-feely psychotherapist who’s helping Tyler get in touch with his emotions and discover the reasons why he felt a need to hit himself in the back of the head with a stick until he bled; obviously his coach should be telling him to man up, push all those troubling “feelings” deep down inside, and hit other people with sticks instead. The third panel is completely incomprehensible to me. But I like panel two. I like the fact that Assistant Coach Kaz spends his spare time lifting free weights in … well, I don’t know where he’s supposed to be, exactly; it looks like he’s in the exercise yard in prison. I also like the fact that it’s totally obvious that Kaz has had some eye work done.

Apartment 3-G, 4/6/07

The “Lu Ann is being possessed or dying or something and nobody cares or even remembers she exists” bit is now becoming actively hilarious to me. And do we need any more proof that the Professor’s years of “paternal” attentions to the girls in 3G were basically driven by a desire to get into the pants of one or all of them? Now that he’s managed to somehow snag a babe even younger than them, his interest in their sordid paint-huffing adventures has vanished.

The Lockhorns, 4/6/07

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. But it is true that, thanks to Leroy’s listlessness and inattention, Loretta is like El Niño in that she comes once every three to eight years.

Slylock Fox, 4/6/07

Wow, for someone who in the next few minutes is going to die either from suffocation or from a trip through a walrus digestive system, that fish sure is looking pretty darn cheery.

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Slylock Fox, 3/19/07

Another day, another insanely dementedly wonderful Slylock Fox. While it’s usually the visuals that wow me in this strip, I have to admit that what I most love here is the phrase “transfer the brilliant mind of Slylock Fox to the soft innards of a ripe eggplant.” Not that the visuals aren’t awesome, of course: you’ve got Slylock’s usual sang-froid cracking just a little as he contemplates the purple prison that will soon entrap his very soul; you’ve got Max Mouse hiding out in what appears to be a mouse-sized coffin; you’ve got the slavering vulture, no doubt giddy in anticipation of feasting on Slylock’s empty husk; and, most poignantly, you’ve got the earlier results of the same fiendish procedure, languishing in a jar and, in what seems to me to be an insult added to injury, submerged in water.

Shoe, 3/19/07

Another sad example of the problems with working backwards from the punchline. Clearly this “joke” was thought up in advance, and the “healthcare plan” was shoehorned in later as a generic phrase that stands in for “Senator stuff.” Because honestly, while healthcare policy can cause a great deal of heated political debate, the only way his healthcare plan would actually cause havoc and pandemonium would be if it could boiled down to “free amphetamines for everybody.”

Marmaduke, 3/19/07

Ha ha! Marmaduke ate something that wasn’t edible, and now can’t pass it through his digestive tract! He’s ill and might die! Ha ha!

Normally I hate cartoons that depict animals in pain, but I might be willing to make an exception for Marmaduke.

Crankshaft, 3/19/07

Is it wrong of me want something terrible to happen to this child, whom Crankshaft is apparently throwing off of his bus onto the side of the road in the middle of nowhere? Perhaps if he gets kidnapped, just for a little while, before being found (unharmed, of course) in the trailer of some drifter on the outskirts of town, then Crankshaft will finally be seen as the monster that he is, with the ensuing media circus forcing him to leave town along with his resentful family.

Normally you get bumped off of an airplane because it’s full. By kicking this kid off of what appears to be an empty bus, Crankshaft earns extra asshole points. Not that he needs them.