Post Content

Shoe, 10/28/10

No, my friend, your eyes do not fail you! That is a genuine URL medallion floating above Shoe’s head in panel two of Shoe, directing you to treetopstattler.com! One would assume that it was intended to be understood as having been affixed to the wall of the newsroom of the Treetops Tattler, the in-Shoe-universe newspaper for which most of the main characters toil, except that I think we’re also meant to understand that the Tattler newsroom is not a room as such but rather a bunch of office furniture balanced precariously on tree limbs, and thus does not actually have walls. Maybe the URL medallion is suspended from the branches that are obscured by Shoe’s word balloon? Anyway, treettopstattler.com just redirects you to the main Shoe site, which, in addition to Shoe strips, also features some fake Treetops Tattler news items that are mildly amusing. I mainly just want to praise the strip for recognizing that this “Internet” thing exists and perhaps should be taken advantage of in some way, which is an attitude largely foreign to the newspaper comics world.

In other word, the entire Tatter staff appears to have fallen asleep and, if I’m understanding the implication of Shoe’s statement, soiled themselves.

Marvin, 10/28/10

Ha ha, the erotic bond that once linked Marvin and his mother is now broken, maybe because he now recognizes how freakishly out of proportion her head is to her body, or maybe because HE IS A BABY AND SHE IS HIS MOTHER OH MY GOD THIS IS MONSTROUS.

Apartment 3-G, 10/28/10

“We both think you’re a boring lame-o!”

I find it interesting that both Tommie and Lu Ann are supposed to have distant and uninterested parents. This explains why both of them are drawn to Margo — both because she offers the combination of vague affection and soul-scraping disdain that they have come to associate with parental love, and because her own parental situation (lying, philandering dad; histrionic ethnic stereotype mom; pill-crazed, gun-toting stepmom) reminds them that, you know, you could do a lot worse than “distant and uninterested.”

Post Content

Crock, 10/27/10

Here is today’s Crock! It is about frolicking about in feces.

Wizard of Id, 10/27/10

Here is today’s Wizard of Id! It is about pretending to have terrible diarrhea, as a cover for plans for vandalism.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/27/10

Here is today’s Rex Morgan, M.D.! It’s about a cancerous prostate with its own Facebook fan page — oh, wait, I’m sorry, Pacebook fan page. This is actually the funniest thing on the comics page today (Rex’s gobsmacked facial expression in particular, as dumb social networking ephemera of all things finally shatters his sangfroid) but good lord I find cutesy fake product names distracting. Even Mary Worth, the squarest strip on the comics page, dares to say Facebook’s name aloud. What are you afraid of, Rex Morgan?

Post Content

Mary Worth, 10/26/10

I have to admit that the current Mary Worth plotline, in which Jill is cartoonishly cruel to Adrian and Adrian laughs it off and Mary seethes, hasn’t really done a lot for me. The only thing of real interest is the intensity of the aforementioned Mary-seething. The face she makes today is particularly delightful!

I assume that today will begin the story’s turn, on the logic that the self-loathing Adrian will absorb any amount of abuse without complaint, but you can’t criticize her sainted bullet-ridden fiance. Watch out, Jill! Adrian’s feeble, ineffectual rage will soon be turned against you!

Gasoline Alley, 10/26/10

I haven’t really been paying attention to this Gasoline Alley comical-misunderstandings-leading-to-accusations-of-adultery plot and neither have you, but here, enjoy the denouement, in which Hoogy’s attempts to be poetic and sweet are met with only a grunt of dull-eyed incomprehension.

Family Circus, 10/26/10

Jeffy knows it’s important to determine which animals are patriotic Americans and which are filthy foreigners.