Post Content

From Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/24/05

Only the throwaway front-matter gag is worth commenting on in Sunday’s BB & SS, and it’s only worth commenting on to the extent that it enrages me. But boy, does it enrage me. Here’s a tip: when you make jokes that emphasize the weird, Depression-era limbo in which these hill folks seem to live most of the time, sometimes the strip is amusing. When you take transient catchphrases from the late ’90s and try to play them off as “cool,” it just feeds my rage … rage … RAGE!

Anyway, since I have nothing to say about these panels except that I hate them, I thought I’d turn to more pleasant matters and point out that I am slowly but surely falling in love with the “next” teasers that come at the end of Sunday editions of Spider-Man. They’re ludicrously overblown, no doubt on purpose. There’s this:

And this:

And, my personal favorite, this:

Yes, who does have the rhino? I’m sure there are versions of these that you can come up with for other comic strips, which exercise I leave to you, my eager commenting minions of humorous evil.

Post Content

Spider-Man, 4/5/05

City boy that I am, I don’t have much experience with large odd-toed ungulates; so, when the Rhino announced that he’s “got the speed of a rhino,” I had to laugh. Rhinos are huge, lumbering animals! This boast is like claiming to have “the strength of a hamster” or “the intelligence of a brick!” But I figured that before I scoffed at this claim here, I ought to do a little research on ye olde Internet; and sure enough, rhinos can rumble forward at thirty miles an hour, which, if you parse the fourth-grade-math-word-problem construction of the Rhino’s monologue, you’ll realize is how fast he’s claiming to run here. I’m a little dubious that either a rhino or the Rhino can actually sustain this speed for a whole hour, but I preemptively retract my mockery in any case.

I’m still bitter at the Rhino for making learn stuff, though. (Don’t you know that if I wanted to find out interesting facts about animal life, I’d read Mark Trail?) That’s why I’m going to make fun of his retarded outfit. Hey, the Rhino: That’s the lamest supervillain outfit I’ve ever seen! Kraven looks like Sigfried or Roy’s just-a-smidge-less-fabulous back-up; you look like you got kicked off of a furry sex commune because your mom did such a crappy job on your costume! Plus, everyone knows that actual rhinos have one horn, not two! Jerk.

Post Content

Spider-Man, 1/13/05

When I did my first Spider-Man comic, almost a month ago now, I said, “Presumably the ass-kicking will begin in due time.” Oh, how naive I was! How, bitterly, bitterly wrong I have been proved to be! In that time we’ve had marital spats, a little aimless Web slinging, a press conference to announce the opening of new theme restaurant, and the firing of an incompetent waiter. The closest we came to ass-kicking was when Kraven brushed aside some no-doubt trained crocodiles. And now … this! “Cage of loneliness?” I have to sit through some camped-up supervillain’s attempts to flirt via ham-handed metaphors?

I tell you, there’d better be some damn ass-kicking soon, or Stan Lee will be getting a very nasty note.