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Apartment 3-G, 5/6/07

Yesterday, we saw Lu Ann’s oxygen-starved brain conjuring up images of everyone who had singularly failed to rescue her from her sinister spectral captivity, leaving open the question: who will save her, since actually killing her off would be unthinkable? Today, we get the surprising answer: It’s Margo’s comical immigrant mother, Gabriella! There’s a certain justice to this; she’s the one who essentially told Lu Ann that ghosts were awesome in the first place, so now she’s going to have to knock down that door in her bathrobe, babbling in fake-o Spanish and wielding a fistful of protective charms from the Old Country to save our dim blonde heroine. Remember: do not rely on WASPs to fight against the forces of the Other World. Only ethnics can do so, and the Professor has become far too assimilated to help.

Slylock Fox, 5/6/07

Ah ha! Our oft-harassed beaver, previously seen being victimized by loose women in discos and harassed by humans in airports, at last has an alliterative name of his own: Brendan! He’s also upgraded his wardrobe, sporting a pimpalicious chartreuse suit with matching befeathered fedora. And of course, he’s as hilariously outraged and quick to tattle to Slylock as ever.

By the way, I know it’s almost impossible to read the solution in this graphic, but Count Weirdly is about to be hauled off for the entirely victimless crime of jamming Brendan’s TV so that it only receives the Chess Channel, and the only evidence of wrongdoing is that he’s eating his broth with a fork. Does a little eccentric behavior make you automatically guilty in Slylock Fox’s police state? The man’s name is “Weirdly,” for God’s sake; you can’t expect him to consume soup like a normal person.

I do like the vicious attack stork in the “How To Draw” feature at the bottom of the page. As for the six differences, the most prominent one that I could find is that the kid in the top panel will eventually go on to a successful career as an illustrator and graphic novelist, while the other boy will take “practical” courses in school and go on to a soul-sapping life of quiet desperation as he toils away in a job he despises.

Mary Worth, 5/6/07

If panel three demonstrates a typical battle in the war for the elder Sheilds’ love, I think Vera’s a bit to quick to blame sexism for her low state. Note that her brother is pouring the old man a tasty flute of the finest champagne, while Vera is thrusting a plate bearing two lumpy, shapeless brown things at him. Advantage: Von.

The grammatical set-up Vera uses in panel seven (“when my father’s death occurred”) is quite revealing. Usually people do that sort of thing when they’re trying to deny their own agency in the matter. She’s not explicitly lying, but she knows she won’t keep Mary on her side if she says “Years later, the situation changed when I bludgeoned my father to death.”

Funky Winkerbean, 5/6/07

Oh, Les, you cut-up! There’s nothing that helps your pedagogical strategies like a little public humiliation. We’ll all have a good laugh, at least until the inevitable HIPAA lawsuit.

Zits, 5/6/07

Desperate to extend a moment of happy camaraderie with his son but unfamiliar with the concept of the fist bump, in panel five Walt crosses a line that can never be uncrossed.

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Zits and Sally Forth, 4/7/07

On Saturday, we reach the logical conclusion of the set-up from earlier this week. This may look like further disaster for the Forths, but all the pieces are actually falling neatly into place: Sally’s mother is left isolated in her hateful splendor to sleep on a futon, Jackie can spend two weeks baby-sitting Hilary, with her permissive lifestyle opening all sorts of new experiences up to her that her hyper-controlling parents would never allow, and Ted and Sally will finally get to take that trip to Paris. Connie and Walt, meanwhile, can just do it like bunnies, God bless ’em.

For Better Or For Worse, 4/7/07

See, now, here’s a mature attitude about marriage, you hedonists. It’s something to be endured and withstood with great suffering, something that will force you to move out of the comforting womb of your parents house no matter how hard to try to stay there, and, of course, something that should not include any yucky sex once you’re managed to produce the required pair of children. I hope you’re sufficiently shamed, Forths and Duncans!

Shoe, 4/7/07

Ha ha, it’s funny because … oh, wait, it’s not funny at all. “She’s actually outside right now, waiting for me to get some food. For the love of God, call the police! She’s insane!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/7/07

“Yes! Rex will engage him in thinly veiled homoerotic banter for days! We’ll have plenty of time to come up with an action plan!”

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Sally Forth and Zits, 4/4/07

Man, I guess the liberal media really is determined to undermine the traditional American family. First, Disney insists on churning out movie after movie featuring single parents, and now Sally and Ted and Connie and Walt have dropped any pretense of wanting to spend time with their offspring. The Duncans have at least waited until their son was legal to work in some dead-end job before abandoning him to his fate; the Forths apparently don’t care whether Hilary forth ends up as a child prostitute or in some kind of Dickensian pickpocket ring, as long as they’re left alone to screw.

Gil Thorp, 4/4/07

Typically, Gil Thorp storylines come to a screeching halt as soon as each team is eliminated in the playdowns. (Can anyone remember the last time that any Mudlark team actually won a championship? That’s the sort of hard-hitting question Marty Moon would ask Coach Thorp if he weren’t so drunk.) After each season ends in shame and defeat, a new one begins, full of hope and new difficult-to-follow drama. That’s why I’m so pleased to see that the lady jocks of Milford are moving from basketball to softball and still buzzing over l’affaire autoclub, as the French punks in Judge Parker would say. I’m dying to know exactly what it is that Tyler is going to say to the softball team that’s going to get Brynna Antenna back into their good graces. I hope that he stands there in the outfield for a minute while they all stare at him, then clubs himself in the back of the head a few times and runs off.

On the self-clubbing tip (ew), why haven’t more of you entered the Self-Clubbing Tyler lookalike contest? I mean, how hard is it to look like this?

Well, actually, it’s really quite hard, but the lure of fortune and glory should overcome that. I’ve gotten a few entries so far — and to be frank they’re all quite strong — but nowhere near the numbers we saw for the Finger-Quotin’ Margo contest. So send in those pictures, damn it!

For Better Or For Worse, 4/4/07

I really have no desire whatsoever to wade into the twisted swamp of teenage gender politics here. Really. None. Whatsoever. But I did want to feature this strip because it contains my new hero. I speak, of course, of the dude at the far right in panel two, the one with the gap in his teeth and the eyes the size of dinner plates who’s saying “Hoooo!” I shall call him “Gap-Toothed Starey ‘Hoooo!’ Guy.” It’s clear that he needs to be brought front and center in this feature right away, and possibly given his own spinoff strip. What makes Gap-Toothed Starey “Hoooo!” Guy tick? What’s his home life like? What, other than risque gossip with his buds, makes him say “Hoooo!”? Will he be going to university? Now I can’t wait until next month’s letters are up on the Foob site on May 1; I’m really looking forward to his missive, which will be entitled “Hoooo!”

Archie, 4/4/07

Man, right up until that last panel, I was convince that the Archie-Joke-Generating-Laugh-Unit 3000 had discovered absurdist whimsy. Replace Archie and his dad with Griffy and Zippy and it would make a great deal of sense. Sadly, it all gets very bourgeois in the last panel.

Archie himself has never looked more like a baffled and angry lowland gorilla than he does in panel two.

Beetle Bailey, 4/4/07

Ignoring the ostensible joke of this strip (remarkably easy to do, since it doesn’t make a lick of sense), I have to say that there’s something unspeakably creepy about the way that all of the assembled soldiery at the ostensible celebration in the second panel is completely lacking in any indication of joy or excitement or any other normal human emotion. The affectless Beetle handing a balloon solemnly to General Halftrack is just the icing on the cake. If you told me that all of these people were about to unholster their sidearms, blast their commanding officer to bits as he stands on his makeshift podium, and then walk away in silence, I honestly wouldn’t be a bit surprised.