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Wizard of Id, 12/20/12

Hey, teens, I bet you think that it’s “cool” to drink alcohol! Well, your pal Frosty is pretty hip and extreme with his backwards baseball cap and such, and he thought it would be OK to get drunk like a grown-up, and look what happened: he tore his own body apart and hurled it in gory chunks at his enemies, who presumably ran away in gibbering terror. This is what’ll happen to you if you let bad kids give you a hard lemonade at a party. Just ask for a Mountain Dew instead! You’ll thank us later!

Mary Worth, 12/20/12

The Sad Tale of Dawn’s Sadness that just concluded began way back in May, so obviously we need something wacky to cleanse our palate in its wake. But even longtime Mary Worth trufans such as myself could never have predicted how wacky things would get. Mary coaching an amateur cake designer to victory in the face of smug, sneering professionals, all in an attempt to cash in on the cake decorating TV craze of four years ago? Mary finally getting to see her many rambling philosophical diatribes transformed into pastry dioramas, wowing the world with her wisdom? YES PLEASE.

Better Half, 12/20/12

Whatever, Stanley is just going to keep on doing weird sex stuff with that remote, and he doesn’t need God or society’s approval, man.

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Wizard of Id, 12/13/12

If there’s one thing I took away from my failed attempt at becoming a historian (other than a failed attempt to become a historical romance novelist), it was a tendency to overthink comics set in the past. I’ve mused at great length about the historical setting for Hagar the Horrible, but generally haven’t bothered with the Wizard of Id because it’s such a weird mishmosh of vaguely medieval tropes. I actually hadn’t given much thought until today about the co-existence of Id’s occasionally seen Catholic establishment and the Wizard’s dark magic, but I’m intrigued to learn that the Idish (Idian?) men of Christ view the Wiz’s dark magic in what’s probably a fairly historically accurate manner. Presumably Brother Whosit here sees himself like Elijah going up against the priests of Baal, or like Jesus Himself, curing a poor soul of the demons that afflict him. Little does he know that the the Wiz contains worse evil than even the foulest spawn of hell. We can only imagine the scene of insanely violent spiritual slaughter that takes place after the third panel here.

Marvin, 12/13/12

Meanwhile, Marvin has gotten all hopped on Arminianism and believes that, just because God created him complete with free will, he answers to no earthly authority. Look for him to be getting a possibly misspelled “Only God Can Judge Me” prison tattoo before his 25th birthday.

Apartment 3-G, 12/13/12

Man, this is one of the cheapest, most transparent “drag out the drama” techniques in the soap opera strip’s arsenal, and yet I’m totally drawn in by it! Arrrgh, why can’t Lu Ann go to Margo’s Christmas party? Is she a Jehovah’s Witness now? Will she be busy having her face smooched by Greg, who seemed on the verge of becoming her boyfriend but then didn’t, I don’t think? I CAN’T HANDLE THE SUSPENSE!!!

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Heathcliff, 11/23/12

Newspaper comics are an incredibly conservative art form — not in a political sense, necessarily, but in the sense that visual signifiers and little building blocks of jokes that haven’t existed in the real world for literally years are still just taken for granted in comics, because they’ve become established running gags during the strips’ decades-long run. Take, for instance, the idea that you’d put your cat or dog out at night. This was, I guess, an unremarkable aspect of pet ownership at one point; but today, anyone living in an urban or suburban area would be judged rather harshly if they just let the dog roam free at night, and while plenty of people do have indoor-outdoor cats, even in the city, plenty don’t, and those that do almost never actively kick the cat out at night. This change in attitude happened long enough ago that, when I was a child in the early ’80s, I had to have my mom explain to me why Fred Flintstone dropped Dino on his front step in the opening sequence of the Flintstones; yet here we are 30 years later, and Heathcliff is still being comically bounced across the lawn, and Dagwood’s suburban cul de sac is haunted by packs of feral dogs at night.

Wizard of Id, 11/23/12

Meanwhile, newspaper comics are apparently forbidden to use the word “hell,” even when it’s the name of a place of afterlife punishment rather than a curse word. There are probably plenty of other perfectly understandable substitutes that could have been used instead (“Hades,” “The underworld”, etc.), but heck, let’s go with “heck,” a euphemism for the swear word that’s never, ever used to refer to hell-as-a-place, just to confuse and irritate everybody.

Apartment 3-G, 11/23/12

Haha, wait, what? Greg is the new James Bond? Is he even English? Is he even attractive? Wouldn’t he be able to afford a better apartment than a third-floor walkup in a building where teachers and nurses live? I guess this does at least explain why Margo hasn’t been putting any effort into publicity, because having the new Bond in your stable of clients is probably a license to print money, assuming that the film doesn’t flop because it turns out its new star is a bland American who goes around wearing sky-blue turtlenecks.

Meanwhile, Skyler is the victim of a abrupt hair color shift, but as a young Hollywood starlet this is actually one of the more realistic instances of this typically A3Gian blip.

Gil Thorp, 11/23/12

Gil Thorp’s storyline continues to be not even interesting enough for me to bother summarizing for you, but in the interest in keeping you up to date on what’s really important, here is a sexy closeup on Gil’s sweaty face!