Post Content

Shoe, 8/16/10

Upon first glance, you probably found this Shoe comic pretty depressing! After all, it reveals the fact that our hero Cosmo is such a slob that he spilled enough spaghetti sauce on himself to soak through his clothes, or maybe that he simply sits around eating spaghetti with no shirt on, to make cleanup easier; furthermore, it appears that he was so numb to his own slovenliness that the resulting mess went unnoticed for hours or perhaps even days. However, I would argue that he still clings to a shred of dignity, in the form of that towel around his waist. Someone who had totally given up on life would just stand there in the nude while rambling to his doctor on his cell phone, but some feeble sense of modesty causes him to cover his lower bird bits, despite the fact that, given that he’s describing his symptoms verbally, he is presumably not speaking on some kind of advanced picture phone.

Crock, 8/16/10

I first saw this comic as a somewhat smaller graphic, and in that form the Desert Sage’s eyes looked sad to me, and the strip seemed quite poignant: the Sage knew he had to clear the bats from his sand-cave home, but he had grown to love them, and would thus do them one last kindness before euthanizing them. But in this larger version of the graphic, his eyes look downright sadistic, as if he’s cackling with delight at the prospect of drawing the bats’ last days out as long and as cruelly as possible. Then I realized the real tragedy, which was that I was trying mightily to discern human emotions from the meaningless scribbles that make up a typical Crock strip.

Marmaduke, 8/16/10

Ha ha, don’t be silly: nothing resembling “democracy” could possibly be happening in a pack of dogs surrounding by Marmaduke. No, those dogs are raising their paws because they’re pledging their allegiance to their Dark Lord, who will soon lead them in an assault on the poor townsfolk that will leave rivers of gore in its wake.

Post Content

Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/15/10

Poor Slylock! He’s an expert at fancy deduction and ratiocination, and a savant at picking out seemingly insignificant details from a crime scene that may be important, but it appears he’s not cut out for the rough and tumble of real crime-fighting. For instance, some member of the strip’s rogues gallery — Harry Ape? Slick Smitty? Reeky Rat? — has trashed Slylock’s home, sending a message that he’s not safe anywhere. And yet all Sly can do is obsessively try to figure out the exact time when this act of intimidation took place. Do you think whatever thug wakes you up tomorrow with a well-placed fist to the snout is going to be impressed by this, detective? You’re officially in over your head.

Apartment 3-G, 8/15/10

Oh, dear, we appear to have reached the point in the storyline that I most feared, when the makeover would reveal the limitations of Frank Bolle’s ability or willingness to depict clothes worn by human females in the year 2010. The dress Margo is holding up in panel four would in fact make Lu Ann look old, and not cute, if by “old” we mean “a reanimated zombie of a woman from the 1910s in her burial dress.” And speaking of age, Tommie’s dress in the final panel looks more to me like “overdramatic prom dress” than “sophisticated thirtysomething professional.” At least her facial expression of forced sultriness barely masking profound discomfort is pretty accurate.

Blondie, 8/15/10

Here again is an instance of a Sunday strip whose top row of throwaway panels changes the narrative’s entire complexion. In those papers where the strip appears without the throwaway panels, it’s just a dumb joke about Dagwood getting a bowling ball stuck on his hand. With the throwaway panels, it’s a poignant story about a man whose best friend doesn’t remember his birthday, and tries to make up for it by just giving him some bowling ball he found in his basement, the finger holes clearly drilled for somebody else.

Post Content

Blondie, 8/14/10

As is often the case, I find some of the incidental details in this Blondie to be much more amusing than the supposed punchline. For instance, although this establishment has the extremely generic name “Ice Cream Parlor,” we can see that the management has not only made the clever decision of outfitting a child in a banana suit to harass passersby, but has given this mascot a name, “Banana Bob,” establishing a brand identity that can be leveraged across media platforms. (Could they be behind the locked Bananabob Twitter?) Even better, the store’s flagship product is something called a “Sundae Maniac,” which really strikes me more as a description of someone who likes to eat sundaes (or possibly garnish sundaes with the blood of their victims), rather than a good name for a sundae proper; still, I always root for any commercially sold product with the word “maniac” in the name.

Apartment 3-G, 8/14/10

People have been doubting Margo because she refuses to engage her enemies Kat and Kitty directly, but like any crafty warrior, she knows how to win a fight against a more powerful opponent. Here we can see that she’s engaging in guerilla warfare, draining her enemies’ coffers until they can no longer afford to imprison her in a fancy midtown hotel. Do not underestimate the Margo! In panel two her eyes are crossing in delight as she contemplates her cleverness.