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The Phantom, 4/11/08

As was no doubt easily predictable, I lost interest in the current Phantom storyline rather quickly after all the hilarious Jungle Patrol! catchphrases petered out. (Not that you shouldn’t be stocking up on Jungle Patrol-themed merchandise, mind you.) Basically, our lady cop and waitress have been attempting to capture a notorious arms dealer in an attempt to prove their mettle to the male chauvinist pigs who run the Jungle Patrol; throughout the process, the Ghost Who Is Helpful has been surreptitiously doing much of the heavy lifting in the bad-guy-neutralization department. Some might think that this is unfair affirmative action on the Big Purple Guy’s part to try to get some ladies into his elite law-enforcement outfit, but since everyone in The Phantom other than the Phantom is generally pretty incompetent, I’m guessing that secret help from the Unknown Commander is par for the course on Jungle Patrol missions.

In today’s final panel, though, we learn that these ladies may be a little bloodthirsty even by Jungle Patrol standards. Sure, it’s reasonable for them to return fire, but it does seem like they were just waiting for the chance, doesn’t it? Usually the Phantom lets the baddies off with a little chin music and a Skull Mark™ as a reminder to stay on the straight and narrow, but our Swiss death merchant here looks like he’ll be as full of holes as his nation’s namesake cheese in short order.

Speaking of gunplay, while our lady cop has obviously been through weapons training, when did the waitress learn to fire off handgun rounds with such steely precision? I would have liked to have seen a Rocky-style montage sequence in which she learned the various deadly arts.

Shoe, 4/11/08

“That, plus the transceiver I attached to the bottom of your car in the parking lot, means that we’ll be seein’ a lot of each other! Haw haw!”

Since the earliest days of this blog, I have made it clear that I cannot abide the “sexy” lady birds in this strip. I dunno, there’s something about the combination of beaks and feathers with some distinctly, er, mammalian characteristics that just utterly squicks me out. The attention that’s been lavished on the glimpse we get of this barfly’s lower back isn’t helping me, either.

Spider-Man, 4/11/08

Hey, look, Simon Krandis keeps a fistful of wadded up bribe money in his tuxedo jacket at all times. The man would have made a swell governor!

The final panel is simultaneously the most hilarious and the most fetishistically unsettling image the Spider-Man newspaper strip has produced in the last three years.

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Dick Tracy, 4/5/08

Today we get an all-too-close look at Detective Tracy’s disturbingly unconstitutional M.O. Note that he’s already managed to disable his (unarmed!) opponent with a quick WUNK to the lower back, leaving him UMPing on the floor. Now would be a great time for Dick to leap onto the villain, pinning him to the floor and cuffing him; instead, since the usual next step in his arrest protocol involves pumping his prone, helpless opponent with hot lead, panel three finds him goggle-eyed with panic that he can’t find his gun. The number of Tracy collars who were shot in the back of the head “while trying to escape” must be remarkably high.

Spider-Man, 4/5/08

A handgun is really like the Swiss Army Knife of weapons; not only does it help Dick Tracy eliminate needless arrest paperwork, but gubernatorial candidate Simon Krandis can use one to open jammed car locks! He could, of course, turn it on his antagonist, but that would be exciting, so it won’t happen in this strip.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/5/08

I like the fact that, even though in the first panel Hagar seems to have proved pretty definitively that Snert doesn’t understand Old Norse, he still thought-balloons his dismissive comment in the second panel. You never know, and you don’t want to hurt the dog’s feelings. Any more than they’d already be hurt by forcing him to wear a damn miniature Viking’s helmet, anyway.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/30/08

While Rex does his best to wriggle out of any obligation he might have to fight MRSA, June, it goes without saying, knows what has to be done. Specifically, she’s preparing to protect herself and the clinic from the coming Great Plague by insulating herself behind a wall of hand sanitizer and latex. I look forward to the climax of this story, when the hideous Infected, their flesh falling off in great chunks thanks to MRSA’s ravages, are desperately clawing at the gates to June’s hermetically sealed clinic. June herself, having taken on position of God-Priestess and absolute ruler of the Surviving Clean Ones huddling inside, will be on the ramparts, clad in a hazmat suit and wielding a very large shotgun.

Shoe, 3/30/08

The Elderly, Angry Bird-Man With The Big Beak is quickly becoming my favorite Shoe character. (Admittedly, the competition for this title is not particularly intense.) Earlier this week, we saw him berate a child with nonsense in a vaguely threatening matter; today, beer in hand, he snorts derisively at the delicate sensibilities of us young folks, allowing himself to ruminate fondly on his youth, when he perpetrated acts of unspeakable carnage against the Nazis or striking Wobblies or whoever he fought Back In The Day. The throwaway panels prove that he’s still got it: he probably viciously bludgeoned that poor sap to death with the TV because he talked during Matlock or wore his hair too long or something, and Roz and the Perfersser are too terrified of him to say anything about it.

Spider-Man, 3/30/08

As I’ve frequently noted, the Spider-Man comic strip is some kind of elaborate literary experiment in narrative frustration, carefully designed to prevent anyone from drawing any kind of enjoyment from it on any level whatsoever. Its gamesmanship is all the crueler because it occasionally looks like it might become slightly engrossing, only to dash those hopes soon thereafter. For instance, you might be excited because today’s strip seems to imply that all of the major players in this painful storyline, including Spider-Man himself, are about to be killed by electrocution, thus ending the strip forever. But don’t worry: by Tuesday, the drama will have been resolved in the least interesting way imaginable, probably due to someone tripping and falling.

Family Circus, 3/30/08

Ha ha! Today’s Family Circus proves that Jeffy is dumber than a dog — dumber than a dog named Barfy.