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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/1/12

Here is a True Story from Josh’s Real Life Events: Many years ago, when I in the midst of my failed attempt to acquire a PhD in ancient history, I discovered that getting a humanities grad degree doesn’t pay particularly well, so I used to do office temp work between semesters. So in this one temp gig, I was doing doing filing at a professional association for optometrists with a guy who was getting an MFA in poetry (AND THAT SENTENCE IS A SELF-CONTAINED CAUTIONARY TALE FOR ANYONE THINKING ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL, BY THE WAY). As people do when bored with mindless work, we started shooting the pop-culture breeze, and somehow it came up that I had alway found it amusing that Steve Miller appeared, based on the evidence of the lyrics in his smash hit song “Take The Money And Run,” to believe that “Texas,” “taxes,” “facts is,” and “justice” all rhymed with one another. And the poet-temp, whether to pull my leg or be contrary or because of genuine poetic conviction, made the case that there is a such thing as a “soft rhyme,” which has a long and honorable history in poetry, and thus Miller’s rhyme scheme was perfectly acceptable in that context.

I was already planning on bringing this anecdote up as a lens through which to discuss Mary Beth’s rhyming of “holler,” “dollar,” and “feller.” In my own speech, the first two rhyme with each other but neither with the third, and I wondered if this were an example of soft rhyme or if we were getting a glimpse of the phonology of Hootin’ Holler’s unique, isolated dialect. But then I took one last look at the throwaway panels and finally noticed that Mary Beth begins the strip by reading Emily Dickinson — the very poet my co-temp used as an example of someone who employed soft rhymes frequently. Thus I’m assuming that our young poetess, while still clinging to traditional structural forms like the limerick, is beginning to explore more advanced techniques. This is, in other words, the most cultured Barney Google and Snuffy Smith ever written, not that there’s really much competition for that title.

Blondie, 7/1/12

Speaking of academia, if you’re writing a thesis about the connection between masculinity and earning power in pop-cultural depictions of contemporary society, you could find worse examples than the next-to-last panel here, in which Dagwood, finally realizing that he’s been duped again, crouches a bit and gently protects his crotch with his briefcase.

Mary Worth, 7/1/12

I was going to write the long riff about how Mary’s response is just as vague and bloviating and self-important as the letter that prompted it, but then I got to the final panel, where we learn that Dawn can’t go anywhere without being reminded of her ex-boyfriend’s cock, and literally all other thoughts were sandblasted out of my mind.

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Herb and Jamaal, 6/30/12

I almost have to agree with Herb here? Though maybe “amazing” isn’t the word I would use. More “puzzling.” It’s puzzling to me that Jamaal is just sitting at the counter, staring wide-eyed at nothing in particular, and then suddenly chirping out fun facts about Burmese Buddhist savants. It’s not like he’s reading it from a book or anything, he just says it, as if the thought had been rolling around his skull like a marble and just now popped out. Is Jamaal high? I’m worried that Jamaal is high.

Jumble, 6/30/12

As far as Whimsical Animal Partial Nudity goes, I’ve always found Smokey the Bear’s pants-but-no-shirt look much more unsettling than Donald Duck’s shirt-but-no-pants configuration. I guess I’m just more willing to accept Donald’s sailor shirt as kind of a shorthand for a whole outfit, or maybe I’m just willingly blind to his exposed crotch. Meanwhile, Smokey really looks half-dressed to me, like a forest ranger who one day decided to go shirtless during his work in the great outdoors and show off his furry, muscular torso to the world. Admittedly, he looks classier than his friend over there in the baseball cap and too-small tank top, but still.

Ziggy, 6/30/12

Ziggy looks kind of unsettled by the prospect of someday becoming romantically involved with a dog, but, to my mind, not unsettled enough.

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Good readers! A request for you: I am thinking of doing a comedy thingie that will involve making fun of awful PowerPoint presentations, not unlike the way I make fun of comic strips. But for this to work, I need PowerPoint presentations! Do you have any that are terrible or hilarious or otherwise mockworthy that I can use? Please send ’em along if so, e-mailing them to bio at jfruh dot com! I promise to anonymize them to spare you and your employer embarrassment.

And now, your comment of the week!

“I was going to call my car ‘White Lightning’, but the more I thought about it, it’s a Subaru Forester, and I’m a grown man, so how about you just get in the car already?” –TC

And your runners up! Very amusing!

“Gravity. It isn’t just for poor people anymore.” –Poteet

“Have you ever heard Mark Trail cry to the blue corn moon? Or asked the sleeping grizzly if he can help? Can you shout with all the subtlety of a man pursued? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?” –Nate

“Good God, that final panel is chilling. Mary staring serenely at the reader, basically saying that not even the fourth wall will protect us from an untimely meddle. It’s like the octogenarian version of The Ring.” –tb4000

“Now if I could just remember how to aim a bear.” –Honey Badger, Does not give a shit

“My greatest comic wish is that at the climax of this storyline, the A3G artists decide to break their ‘nothing drawn below the waist’ rule in the most spectacular way possible: by giving us the most graphic depiction of childbirth ever seen on the comics page.” –pugfuggly

“What I love about Mark Trail is that unlike following some kind of plot, Elrod just wanders off on a journey that may or may not have anything to do with what was going on the day before and can be entirely unhinged from reality. You can totally imagine explaining any Mark Trail plot as if you were relating a weird dream to your spouse while shaving: ‘Yeah, so anyway I dreamed that Gene Johnson, you know the guy from accounting? Yeah, him. Anyway, he was convicted of murder. Weird, right? But it turns out he didn’t shoot him, his gun was borrowed to shoot the guy, but that doesn’t make any sense, so I went to the place to look for clues and there was this gum wrapper and I took it, and then I went to talk to the guy who I thought shot him and he chased me in his plane and then he and this purple woman who looks like that crazy lady who yelled at you in the dry cleaner that one time were chasing me around this island trying to shoot me, but suddenly there was this cave with this grizzly bear in it … Anyway, I don’t care what Dr. Ressler says, I am so not taking Ambien anymore.'” –geekwhisperer

“I think Dagwood is just trying to speak what he thinks is hipster jive. So, it is best to not interpret what he is saying as being literal. He is talking in what may best described as wink-winkese. As for what he is really asking for … I think Dagwood is back on the smack.” –tallyHO

“It’s official! Google won, we can all stop using Lycos now for our web searches.” –Santa Royale With Cheese

“Mary’s feeling the weight of her years as she feeds on the sadness of Wilbur’s patrons, but not to worry, she’s lopped off a few years with a youthful lower lip piercing of blasted ebon stone! Ah, the mid-life crises of the immortal and unkillable.” –Black Drazon

“Today’s Wizard of Id … it feels like there should be more, doesn’t it? Like there should be a second panel that’s just a close up of the knight’s face so you can see flames reflected in his helmet as he stoically says ‘COMMENCE THE CULLING.’ Maybe that’s just me? I’ve always thought the creative team behind the Wizard of Id gleefully write and then forlornly crumple up a vast number of Black Death comics each year while muttering ‘someday, someday.'” –Tophat

“Even if that guy doesn’t work there, he should at least tell Skeezix that the device he’s gesturing towards is not a DVD player, but his penis.” –Irrischano

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