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The Lockhorns, 1/7/10

Today’s Lockhorns is particularly rich in the delightful seething contempt that keeps me coming back day after day. As if the naked animosity on the principals’ faces weren’t enough to bring joy to fans of marital misanthropy everywhere, we also have the fork jabbed into Leroy’s pile of undifferentiated food-like matter to amuse us. While it’s easy to imagine Leroy leaving it there sticking upwards to serve as a sort of visual confirmation of his complaints about the meal’s unappetizing physical qualities, the angle of the utensil, with its handle pointing away from him, implies that it was actually Loretta who put it there. Perhaps she initially appeared to thrust the fork at Leroy’s doughy torso, before changing her angle of attack at the last minute and leaving it in the home-cooked meal her husband is unable to appreciate! I also note that the configuration of the Lockhorns’ dining area seems to have changed, with Loretta’s seat being replaced by a portal to some kind of ecru nothingness, into which she can stalk when inevitably provoked.

Curtis, 1/7/10

I was about to rag on this year’s Curtis Kwanzaa storyline for its less-than-lunatic plotting and all-too-zen ending when I got to today’s final panel and found out that the whole thing was actually a touching tribute to a late friend of cartoonist Ray Billingsley. So, uh, thanks a lot, Mr. Billingsley, for making me feel even more like a petty jerk than I usually do. You’ve left me with nothing to do except point out that panel two’s depiction of an adorable bunny sleeping on the back of a contented hippo is quite charming.

Mark Trail, 1/7/10

Anyway, I certainly hope that nobody involved in the production on Mark Trail is dying inside due to neglect from his or her spouse, because I’m sure as hell going to make fun of that. Today’s exchange shows that each of the Trails has their role in this terrible dysfunctional marriage down pat, with Mark openly acknowledging that leaving his wife in a desert of emotional emptiness is just what he does!

Like a sonnet, each Mark Trail storyline is built out of a strictly defined series of components, and each story must begin with Cherry being ritually humiliated. First, she herself becomes the unwitting agent of her own loneliness. Why did she even tell Mark about that phone call, when she must have known it would lead to his almost immediate departure? In truth, she had no real choice in the matter, being driven on by her universe’s remorseless narrative logic. Compare her dialogue in that earlier strip to one from several years ago, as acted out by my lovely wife in our production of Mark Trail Theater. Amber read Tuesday’s dialogue out in her best Cherry Trail voice, and the echo was uncanny. Today, Cherry completes her debasement by launching a desperate and doomed sex advance at her husband. In panel three, Mark is closing his eyes and holding absolutely still, in the hope that Cherry will eventually lose interest and go away.

Beetle Bailey, 1/7/10

Meanwhile, Beetle Bailey grows less circumspect by the day, with Beetle no longer willing to pretend that Sarge’s elaborate exercise instructions have any purpose other than to get the young private out of his uniform trousers.

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Crock, 1/6/10

I originally read the cook’s line in the opening panel as “I’ve been feeding the men dog for weeks.” This pleased me — not because I advocate dog-eating, but because I advocate the long besieging of the Crock characters in their fort by a murderous enemy, forcing them to eat first their emergency reserves of canned food, then their livestock, then their pets, then each other. If we’re only one step away from cannibalism, then we’re only one step away from the end of Crock.

Marmaduke, 1/6/10

From the stunned, disbelieving expressions on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Hitler there, not unlike those of the Wicked Witch of the West’s guards when they realized that their terrible mistress had been liquidated, I’m guessing they’re interpreting “bought it” as a variation of “bought the farm,” and that they are hoping against hope that the hated Marmaduke has expired right there in the middle of this furniture store. This seems like the most likely interpretation of the phrase, as dogs as a rule do not have access to money, and they certainly don’t have access to the kind of money necessary to buy a nice couch. But in fact Marmaduke is an immortal demon-hound and cannot die. He probably just bought the couch with their credit card, which he borrowed from them when they weren’t looking.

Blondie, 1/6/10

I love the carpoolers’ expressions of mingled fear and uncertainty in the final panel here — exactly the expressions you’d expect from people who just heard one of their associates addressed by name by the radio. It’s as if they’re realizing that they exist as minor characters in someone else’s narrative — and that someone else is the irritating guy with the bizarre hair who’s always holding up the car pool.

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/5/10

So I’ve been reading the new, retooled Funky Winkerbean long enough to distinguish amongst the various forms of creeping dread found therein, and to have preferences among them, and this here is pretty much my least favorite flavor of creeping Funky Winkerbean dread: Les’s creeping dread about his daughter’s burgeoning sexuality. Summer actually seems against all odds to be a pretty well-adjusted person, but that won’t stop Les from mapping his own awkward, fumbling adolescence onto her. (The rear-view mirror knocked askew by his helmet of hair in the flashback is a nice touch.) While Les should probably be more worried about the terrible, life-ruining car accidents the kids are prone to — just ask Becky the one-armed band leader! — the automobile instead represents to him an avenue Summer can use to escape his suffocating control, and his thoughts drift unbidden to his daughter and some faceless dude in the back seat, hands drifting south, clothes slipping off of young, athletic bodies … and … so forth.

Luann, 1/5/10

Of course, if you really want unsettling car-based sexuality in the comics, you’ve got to turn to the Brad and Toni show in Luann. It’s Toni’s hand gesture in the third panel that really puts this strip beyond the feature’s usual ribaldry, as she seems to be promising to “go under the hood” and manually pleasure Brad’s car in unspeakable ways.

Mary Worth, 1/5/10

One person whose awkward sexuality I personally can’t get enough of is Wilbur, obviously. Most of us would have a lot of conflicted emotions if we discovered that we had an adult son we had never met, of course, but Wilbur mainly seems to be having sexy intrusive thoughts about the boy’s sexy dead mother. Those huge blue eyes … that unnaturally long neck … that weird bunchy collar … who could ever forget a face like that? Well, Wilbur could, as you can see when all of his reveries about his lost love are compared:

With the different facial features and neck lengths on display here, I think you’d be hard pressed to recognize these as the same woman. The only thing they seem to have in common is a tendency to list to the right, perhaps as a result of some kind of inner ear disorder. I’m now guessing that Wilbur was such a prolific seducer in his youth that he honestly doesn’t remember who this “Abby” character was, and the “demon” he needs put to rest is his uncertainty over which of his many lovers bore the man who showed up on his doorstep.

Mark Trail, 1/5/10

Of course, Mark Trail is where we should go to escape from human sexuality of any sort. I particularly love today’s new-adventure-launching installment, as it nicely encapsulates the sort of dream state that defines most Trailian narrative. “Oh, my old friend called me earlier? I’ll just pick up this phone right here at the table and talk to him. Hello, Leonard Nimoy!” “Hi Mark! Did you know that you have an ‘outdoor reputation’? You do, and it can solve problems! Why don’t you bring you and your reputation over to out here, which is far, far away from your wife?”