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Crankshaft, 8/17/07

UH OH WATCH OUT YOU POLITICAL CRUMBUMS! IT’S BEEN A MERE TWENTY MONTHS SINCE YOUR SINISTER MEDICARE PART D WENT INTO EFFECT, AND NOW YOU’VE GOT THE ’SHAFT TO ANSWER TO! At long last, Crankshaft’s smoldering anger will be harnessed to effect progressive political change. I can see it now: just as Lisa stands up to begin her testimony about how cancer is bad, suddenly the ’Shaft bursts into the committee chamber, planting an elbow into her tumor-ridden torso, sending her tumbling to the floor. “GOD DAMN IT ALL,” Crankshaft bellows. “I’M OLD, I’M PISSED, I’M WEARING A HAT, AND I DON’T WANT TO PAY FOR MY MEDS!” Everyone stands up and applauds, Medicare is fixed, Lisa expires unnoticed under the table, and cancer remains legal.

Mary Worth, 8/17/07

All week I’ve been ignoring Santa Royale’s most eligible young medico as he romances Bachelorette #2 over lumpy grey mush and human blood at some hideously decorated restaurant, but that was before today when oh Jesus God did Vera seriously just compare Drew to her brother?? Drew, I’ll tell you how this story ought to end: with your running for the door right now. Don’t bother picking up the check, as Vera’s lonely at the top of her chosen career path and can surely afford it. Just get out now.

Spider-Man, 8/17/07

“W-we’re vibrating!! And it actually feels pretty great! Boy, this is working a lot of stress out of my deep tissues. Thanks, the Shocker!”

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Spider-Man, 8/14/07

You sort of get the feeling that the final panel is taking place in the Shocker’s tiny studio apartment, and we’re about twenty minutes into this. “Wait, hold on … ‘Look out, world — here comes the Shocker!’ Hmmm … no, I think that’s too much emphasis on the name, sounds egotistical. How about this? “Look out, world … heeeeere’s … the Shocker!’ No, God damn it, that’s derivative and corny. Stupid! So stupid! I’m never going to get this right!”

God bless faithful reader Tabby, who a while back posted a link to the Shocker’s character page at SpiderFan.org. Here are some delicious excerpts:

Real Name: Herman Schultz
Known Confidants: None
Education: Unknown, but probably a high school education
Strength Level: Normal human strength
Powers: None
Limitations: The Shocker has had severe problems with self-doubt.

Ha ha! No powers, no confidants, no super-powers, normal human strength, maybe a high-school diploma, and crippling self-doubt! Truly the creative team dipped deep into the reserves and found the perfect villain for the newspaper iteration of the Spider-Man mythos.

Mark Trail, 8/14/07

Boy, the ladies sure can’t get enough of Mark Trail! And who can blame them, what with his rugged good looks, corpse-like pallor, propensity for violence and vigilantism, disinclination to use contractions, and total disinterest in sex? Sam sure is keen to get with this hunky hunk of man-hunk: she’s even willing to go back to Lost Forest to have a three-way with his disturbing-looking wife while his hideously ugly son takes pictures.

By the way, for those of you who don’t remember the beginning of this interminable storyline, “clean up places that attract birds” is, no fooling, a euphemism for “pave over wetlands so that birds can no longer breed there.” Also, I’m reasonably sure that we’ve seen this spread-eagled squirrel before; a shiny virtual penny to whomever can discover him in the archives.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/14/07

OH MY GOD! ALAN HARRINGTON! THAT’S … wait, are we supposed to know who that is? Damn it, what was the point of introducing us to all those loser board members if the suspect wasn’t even memorable enough to remember?

Apartment 3-G, 8/14/07

COMICS COLORING COURSE, FINAL EXAM:

Q. OK, so you’ve got two characters in your soap opera strip. Both are male, white (of course! Ha ha!) 30s/40s-ish. Both are sandy-haired. So far you’ve managed to avoid having them appear in the strip at the same time, but now narrative logic demands that they meet. What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?

A. Yellow! Very, very yellow!

Eric Mills obviously had the same reddish hair color as Alan as recently as two weeks ago, but it’s worth noting that, when he was introduced last summer, his hair was black. Personally, I think that the process of dating (or “dating”) Margo is slowly but surely sucking the life essence out of him. His hair will be completely white by the end of the year.

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Judge Parker, 8/5/07

Wha … buh … WHO IS THAT DISTINGUISHED-LOOKING OLDER GENTLEMAN LURKING BENEATH THE STRIP’S LOGO? Why, that’s Judge Parker, natch, just like the label says! Hizzoner has appeared in this strip exactly twice in the three years or so that I’ve been reading it, but I like the way he’s staked out his position in panel one here so that he can still claim proprietorship. “I may not jet off to find lost treasures in Mexico, or to tussle with punks in Paris, or get involved in high-stakes real estate deals in the Napa Valley — but I’m still Judge Parker, damn it! Without me the rest of you losers are nothing, do you hear me? Nothing!” Presumably he’ll remain in the first panel of the Sunday strips, glowering manfully, until his totally-not-gay son Randy cruises to an easy election win and becomes a judge himself. Then Judge Parker the Senior, no longer needed for his one current duty of justifying the name of the strip, can drop dead post-haste.

In the ostensible “action” of today’s strip, Sam and Trudi are doing a little dance around the patio or balcony or wherever the hell it is they are. Sam’s presumably ducking and weaving because he’s afraid of losing an eye to one of Trudi’s pointy, bullet-like breasts. Still, leaping up on the railing and striking a pose out of the Cosmo’s sexiest male comic characters feature may have been a little much.

Spider-Man, 8/5/07

Speaking of breasts, I wish — oh, how I wish — I had time to hunt through the Spider-Man archives to prove this, but I’m pretty sure that Mary Jane’s “Oh, I’m so tired, I think I’ll stand up and stretch in a way that is advantageous to the display of my unusually large chest” in panel five is a fairly regular occurrence in this feature. Today’s is more blatant than most because she’s wearing the skin-tight pink fuzzy belly sweater that’s all the rage with the movie stars this season.

Meanwhile, in the final panel we’re introduced to the Shocker, who, based on what generally goes on in this strip, I must assume is an eccentrically dressed network programming executive who plans on picking up a number of shows that will annoy Spider-Man now that he’s turned the TV off.

Curtis, 8/5/07

For those who believe in a more or less literal interpretation of the Genesis creation story, the question of whether Adam and Eve had navels — and, for that matter, whether the trees in the Garden of Eden had growth rings, or whether anything that was created by God in the beginning carried evidence of age — has been a subject of theological discussion since at least the time of Saint Augustine. There’s actually an Answers in Genesis pamphlet on the subject, and the philosophical issues arising from the question gave rise to the so-called omphalos hypothesis. Thus, Rev. Caldwell ought not to have been reduced to weeping, sputtering incoherence by Curtis’s question, like a computer in the original Star Trek series presented with some elementary paradox. One can only assume that Caldwell had a sudden panic attack because his claimed divinity degree is a fraud that he purchased online for $10, and that he’s afraid that his theologically curious congregation, led by young Mr. Wilkins, will soon discover that he’s been skimming off the collection plate for years and plans to decamp to the Cayman Islands very soon.

Speaking of theological conundra, I’m a little disturbed that Barry is both so convinced that Curtis will be condemned to an eternity of torture in hell and that he’s so smug about it. On the other hand, Curtis does wear that damn hat with his church clothes, which can’t be pleasing to the Almighty.

Mark Trail, 8/5/07

Jesus, the final panel of this strip — aka Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Bloodhounds” — is going to haunt my dreams for weeks. Mark is all very upbeat about bloodhounds not mauling your children to death despite the breed having the word “blood” in its name, but you notice he doesn’t say anything about the emotional scars of seeing melting dogface every morning when they wake up.