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Apartment 3-G, 8/29/04

Apartment 3-G, like all other forms of visual entertainment, needs to please that all-important demographic of males between the ages of 18 and 54 (aka “the violent and horny years”). It can’t offer much by way of car chases and explosions, so it makes up for it with occasional cabana fantasy sequences like this one. I’m not really sure what the bizarre undergarment that Margo is wearing in the first panel is supposed to be, but once she changes, things really get started. She’s upstaged, of course, by her new boss’s bikini-clad daughter. The mention of “private school” offers us a tantalizing hint of jailbait, but because Apartment 3-G has a sketchy drawing style and a complete lack of cultural cues understandable to anybody under the age of 65, it’s impossible to tell with any degree of certainty how old she actually is; the oversized cocktail glass indicates that she probably just goes to Vassar or something. All in all, however, it’s still pretty sleazy, though nowhere near as bad as the time that the tiny-towel-wrapped trio of roommates spent an entire week sighing ecstatically in a sauna.

Actually, current plot developments may lead to car chases and explosions yet. The secluded mansion, the eccentric and domineering billionaire, the team of weirdly submissive female servants dressed in matching jumpsuits — all signs seem to indicate that Margo’s new client is some sort of James Bond-ian supervillain. This should make for a more exciting storyline than LuAnn’s studio’s ventilation problems. Hopefully the whole thing will climax with Margo battling an army of bodyguards, or possibly robots, for control of a giant death ray — while still wearing her borrowed bathing suit, naturally.

By the way, my hometown paper cuts off the first two panel of this strip on Sunday, so this is the first time I’ve seen the logo in the first panel. I have to say that the grinning, floating, disembodied heads of our heroines creep the living bejeezus out of me.