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For Better Or For Worse, 7/21/09

Just for the record, I am attempting to maintain, both on general principles and for my own mental health, a moratorium on commenting on retread FBOFW — a foobatorium, if you will. Still, occasionally one of the new strips scattered amongst the reruns demands comment, and this is one of them. I’m not even going to comment on the weird ham-handed acknowledgement of authorial ham-handedness (although notice telling quote marks around “write,” hmmmm); rather I just want to point out that one of these ladies is a lot more enthusiastic about all this deus ex machinaing than the other.

Connie: I moved here specifically because I wanted to be close to you!
Ellie, facial expression carefully neutral: Mmm.
Connie: Lots of people totally lose touch with their college friends and never see them again!
Ellie: Um, yes, that is … what some might expect to happen … with some of their college friends.
Connie: We’re living in a magical storybook!
Ellie: STAY AWAY FROM MY KIDS YOU FEMINIST SINGLE-MOTHER CAREER-WOMAN WHORE.

Apartment 3-G, 7/21/09

Margaret Shulock took over Apartment 3-G writing duties in, I think, late 2005, and when I finally got around to noticing this the following April, I hinted, not even a little subtly, that I should have been given the job. But I can say with some degree of certainty that I would never have come up with a “disgruntled Margo has an audience with the Dalai Lama” scenario. King Features clearly made the correct choice.

Oh, and in that first link, note that Margo is talking about going to law school, a plot thread that clearly has never been heard from again, but how cool would that have been? I’m not sure if she’d be more terrifying as a prosecutor or a defense attorney; I imagine that she’d eventually be the star of her own syndicated judge show, as soon as the prudes at the FCC made it legal to show dismemberments on broadcast TV during the day.

Gil Thorp, 7/21/09

“And by ‘make a call,’ I mean ‘crush this cell phone with my mighty fist’! You see that, evil-doing stalkers? You don’t scare me! GIL SMASH!”

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Kids, we have a number of ITEMS! for you to get through before we reach the beloved COTW, but I think you will find them worth your while!

First off, long-time readers of this blog are well-acquainted with The Fart Party, one of my favoritist Web comics. But for everyone who’s been all like “Man, reading stuff on the Web is for suckers,” now you can get the second volume in book form! Julia Wertz chronicles her happy-go-lucky drunken cheese-oriented self-loathing, for your entertainment! Buy it now if you know what’s good for you, sucka!

Also! Faithful reader McManx draws my attention to this image, recently added to Wikipedia’s Mary Worth article, from the cover of a 1956 comic book compilation of our favorite meddling biddy’s adventures:

So, first, yes, Mary Worth once had its own comic book, and was identified on the cover of said book as “One of America’s great newspaper comics,” despite which obviously false claim the Comics Code Authority still deigned to grant its seal of approval. But as McManx points out, isn’t there something familiar about this scene? Angry Mary … weeping dark-haired beauty with small scrap of paper, possibly with a phone number written on it … menacing stripe-shirted figure — good lord! Could the Charley-Delilah plotline be spooling out again, decades after its origin?

Also also! Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish there were a blog that does for terrible rock lyrics what Josh’s blog does for comics?” Well, now there is, in the form of Awesomely Bad Lyrics. Go forth and enjoy!

And finally! If you would like to help a blogger who’s blogging a blogathon for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, check this out!

And now, after all that, your COMMENT OF THE WEEK!

“What’s going on? What was that loud noise? And why is blood coming out of the front of your shirt? Are these two events related? Oh, how I wish Andy were here to explain this to me!” –buckyswife

And the runners up! Many funny ones, this week…

“Now that I’ve looked at it again, I’m thinking that the jack-in-the-box is just to get Ziggy on his back, from where he is unable to rise without help. Help which, one prays to god, is never forthcoming.” –Muffaroo

“Doesn’t this panel prove once and for all that Ziggy IS, in fact, wearing pants? Footie pajama pants, to be precise. So, now can we please stop worrying about getting a glimpse of his pudenda? And start worrying that maybe he has the kind with a flap in the back that could suffer a wardrobe malfunction at any moment?” –Brett

“Joey, those people you are involved with are gangsters … they will ruin us and the company if you don’t stop them now! So, quick, talk to Mark Trail, who I know as a person who takes photographs and emphasizes words peculiarly!” –Chip Whittle

“Funky Winkerbean: We put the ‘GI’ in ‘turgid’!” –Uncle Lumpy

“So as each Phantom is named Walker for ‘the ghost who walks,’ then each Judge is named Parker, for ‘the sexless lawyer who parks carelessly’?” –Ed Dravecky

“Brad’s flirting reminds me of a bad joke I will re-work: Q: What’s long and hard on Brad? A: The third grade.” –Rusty

“Brad, Brad, you degenerate cad! Don’t think I can’t follow your eyeline in panel one, mister! Did you really think you’d get away with eyeing Toni’s collarbone like that? Her eyes are up here, thankyouverymuch. And her eyebrows are way up here, kind of floating in the abyss. See ’em?” –Joe Blevins

“I don’t see how anyone can resent the years-long, go-nowhere sexy banter between Brad and Toni. I can only hope it continues for decades to come, finally leaving Brad an old man on an unrumpled deathbed, ruminating on the fact that in the heady rush of all the double entendres, he forgot to have sex.” –Dan

“Mommy gives me a bath by dropping me in the water and then leaving and passing out with a bottle of wine on the couch.” –Rob

“Is it just me, or are Wolverine’s mutton chops getting muttoner and muttoner by the day?” –Roto13

“MJ, on the other hand, will be pleased to discover that sex with Logan involves actual penile penetration, as opposed to Peter’s ejaculating onto webs and, after a lengthy courtship dance, furtively inserting his seldom-depicted pedipalps into her vagina before running away, lest she eat him.” –Comrade Denny

“The 7/16 Mary Worth is making me want to pull a 7/16 Trixie.” –KarMann

“Isn’t that Larry King, dressed like Colonel Sanders, speaking to Margo? Is that why she looks flustered? I know I would be.” –Jumper

“To Wolverine: Sorry bub, but in this strip, shiny blue hair that shapes your face like an autobot cannot compete with Peter Parker’s gay-Elvis forelock. Chinbeards only get lovin’ in Mary Worth.” –teddytoad

“1. Protagonist is introduced. 2. Protagonist’s trivial problem is revealed. 3. Problem is blown way the hell out of proportion. 4. Anvils — a lot of anvils — are dropped on protagonist. 5. Protagonist, having seen not only stars but also good sense, obligingly dances on strings held by soulless inhuman puppetmaster. 6-29. Pastel food montage. 30. Choose one: (i) pool party, (ii) fiery death.” –One-eyed Wolfdog, on how a typical Mary Worth plot could be fit into 30 panels

“I just assumed that all characters, not only the Alzheimy ones, wanted to escape RMMD.” –Anthony

“That’s the Alzheimer’s enclosure behind us! We call it ‘Charterstone’, and nearly every one of the residents wants to escape!” –Naked Bunny With A Whip

“Better Otto pondering the Bhagavad Gita than General Halftrack’s investigations into the Kama Sutra.” –zerowolf

“Is one of Wolverine’s mutant powers his utter lack of table manners? Maybe that’s why most ‘non-mutes’ shun him — no one wants to be sprayed with bits of food as he chops up his meat and stuffs it in his mouth with both hands. For MJ, of course, anything is a change for the better from Peter’s passive-aggression and prissy neuroses.” –Lawyerbob

“Peter would shoot his webbing to pick up his own food wad, but even that little bit of excitement would overwhelm him, and he’d need to lie down on the couch.” –Steve S

“I didn’t think Margo was necessarily against human happiness, per se. I always just assumed it failed to interest her, unless it affected her plans in some way.” –boojum

“The first Spider-man panel makes sense if you consider the context. Between MJ’s direct-to-video starlet lifestyle and Peter’s utterly gutless inability to stand up to Jameson (coupled with the proportionate photographic talent of a spider), the Parkers can only afford to eat at the worst restaurants in New York. Such eateries often have insufficient flatware sets during peak hours and the pork chops are so dry and underprepared that nothing short of unbreakable adamantium combat claws can cut through them.” –Birthmark Hal

“Your desperation has led you to forget everything you know of either seagulls or Marvin. Death pecking is not a possibility. A relentless diarrhetic war of pitiless, sphincterless attrition is indicated.” –Jp

“I just like that the assassin has remembered to wear blaze orange. Safety first!” –Orange Cactus

“It would seem that the sniper in Mark Trail is using some kind of Giant Word Gun, as it appears Joey Williams is actually being knocked over by the word ‘WHAM!’” –Digger

“I love how that second MW panel is labeled ‘Meanwhile’ but there’s nothing going on. ‘Meanwhile … Delilah exists.’ ‘Meanwhile … Delilah walks.’ ‘Meanwhile … bamboo slowly crowds out all other flora in Charterstone and begins plans to go after the fauna.'” –the angry black woman

“Mark Trail: even when a long-hair wants to go straight, he still has to die.” –Ktrout

“It is hard to watch Bill degenerate into senility, hollowly shouting disjointed passages from a comic book, insensible to the fact that his children have left his side long ago. His mental degeneration has progressed so aggressively that he is no longer able to support his family; poor Thel has obviously been forced in her middle age to moonlight as a hotel maid while nursing and patronizing her doddering husband. ‘HOW’S YOUR BOOK?'” –Greenbrastic

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Crankshaft, 7/20/09

Oh ho. Oh HO HO HO. Remember a few years ago, when beloved comic strip Funky Winkerbean killed off one of its main characters and then leapt pell-mell a decade into the future (of internal narrative space, not of absolute time)? Of course you do, because you’re all comics obsessives, but even if you weren’t, chances are you might have heard of it because there was actual coverage of this event by the legitimate media. And here today, in Funkyverse sister strip Crankshaft, we appear to have the exact same chronological discontinuity happening, which, as near as the Google can tell, has been mentioned exactly nowhere. Ha ha, Crankshaft, nobody likes you, just like nobody likes your title character!

You’ll forgive me for chortling just a little at the sight of Crankshaft’s slumped, broken form slouching semi-consciously in a wheelchair, kept alive by machines and underpaid but still perky nurse’s aides. Normally I’d only have the deepest sympathy for someone whose body and mind have been ravaged by time until they’re only a shell of their former self, but since Crankshaft is (a) a fictional character and (b) a colossal dick, I’m not feeling too guilty about my terrible glee.

Anyway, in the absence of any sort of Big Event-style coverage, I’m guessing that this is a temporary thing, a brief glimpse into the ’Shaft’s terrible future — or, if the middle panel is any indication, his future and his past, like Slaughterhouse Five with less firebombing and more groan-inducing puns. Eventually we’ll settle back on the present, in which Crankshaft is old and cranky but not senile or wheelchair-ridden. The journey will have made him more sympathetic to us, right up to the first time that he opens his mouth.

Gil Thorp, 7/20/09

Wait, are we sure that Shep Trumbo isn’t behind this? Because the sinister message on that baseball appears to be written in text-speak, and if there’s one thing I remember about the Shep Trumbo storyline despite my best efforts to purge it from my memory, it’s that it involved texting in some way. (Though I guess a full-on text-stalker-ball would read “U O M3.”)

Anyway, I just thought of someone else from the past who could be sinisterly stalking Gil: Brent Raptor! Or, better yet, Brent Raptor’s mom! Brent was a pudgy white kid who played baseball for Gil a few years ago and loved the rap music, thus earning the nickname “Rap-Dog,” which was probably meant to be insulting and/or ironic but he adopted it because it was the only affection anyone ever showed him. Brent’s life was made a living hell by his trashy, overbearing mother, out from under whose thumb Gil tried very hard to extract Brent, eventually succeeding by arranging for her to take a trip to Phoenix (really!). Anyway, since obviously nobody has ever done anything in return for a trip to Phoenix, I’m guessing Gil made a dark, secret promise to Mrs. Raptor, and now she’s come to collect … in blood. Or in off-brand corn chips and menthol cigarettes, which would seem more her style.

Mark Trail, 7/20/09

Jack Elrod knew he’d come under fire from religious and cultural conservatives for his latest work, Virgin Mar(k/y): Pieta. Fortunately, his editors at the syndicate knew that the newspaper comics were the last venue where uncompromising art like this could be showcased, and published it without fear of the consequences.

Archie, 7/20/09

The funniest thing about this Archie — other than Reggie getting punched in the face, obviously — is the lava lamp decorating the floor of Archie’s makeshift ashram in the first panel. Because meditation = the ’70s = lava lamps, obviously! Ha ha, the AJGLU 3000 has no idea what year it is.

Slylock Fox, 7/20/09

More proof that Shady Shrew is an unlovable loser: as his yellow bandana indicates, he was considered insufficiently cool to join either the Bloods or the Crips, and instead had to affiliate himself with a lesser gang, the “7th Avenue Insectivore Crew.”

Beetle Bailey, 7/20/09

Oh, Beetle, we know you yearn for Sarge’s abusive attentions, but you should really try being at least a little subtle about it.