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Spider-Man, 7/17/09

God bless the newspaper Spider-Man strip; it’s more powerful than even I could have imagined. Its ability to suck the drama and excitement out of any storyline it touches and replace it with its own imperatives — cheesy jokes, endless domestic scenes, and totally pointless, neurotic fretting about the revealing of secret identities — is truly impressive. So overwhelming is this anti-dramatic forcefield that here we have Marvel Entertainment, Inc. uber-badass Wolverine sitting with Peter and MJ at some terrible no-star restaurant and making his first-ever friends.

I seem to recall a bit in the first X-Men movie where Wolverine admitted, in an emo but manly way, that every time his claws popped out, it was painful, so naturally he’s using them here to manipulate the brown globby food slabs that he’s ordered. Look at MJ, Logan! You should cut your slabs up into blobs and eat them with a shrimp fork.

Ziggy, 7/17/09

You might think that the joke here is that a toaster is not, in fact, fun for the whole family, and thus the sign is deeply misguided. But it goes deeper: Since Ziggy has no family, and nobody loves him or ever has, he has no context for what might constitute family fun. Thus, he stares at the window display, expressionless. Is this the sort of device that families use, to enjoy themselves? He may buy it just to find out; when it fails to alleviate his soul-rending lonliness, he’ll just take it into the bathtub in an attempt to end it all that will end up failing, furthering his humiliation.

Marvin, 7/17/09

Ha ha, Marvin is going to be pecked to death, by seagulls! I take back everything bad I ever said about birds.

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Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, 7/16/09

Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois may share the same offices over at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC (in a low-slung business park, just off the interstate), but that doesn’t mean that they march in creative lockstep! That’s particularly clear today. Beetle Bailey uses Otto, the strip’s most intelligent and self-reflective character, to contemplate serious philosophical questions. Since he’s a dog, one could say that he was put into this world to bark; yet, like so many of us, he suffers a crisis of identity, a belief that even the actions that reflect his innermost nature are ultimately unrewarding and unrewarded. One is reminded of Arjuna expressing his doubts in the Bhagavad Gita, before going into battle; however, whereas Arjuna had Krishna to explain to him the spiritual importance of fulfilling one’s dharma, or duty, Otto has no teacher or framework to show him the essential value of barking. In this way he is like us, who toil away in alienated post-capitalism, unsure of the larger connection between what we do and the world we would like ideally to help build.

Hi and Lois, meanwhile, takes a different tack. Did you know that vomiting is funny, and that babies are prone to vomiting? The first panel is a little crude artistically, but seeing as it’s probably the first point-of-view depiction in a nationally syndicated comic strip of what it’s like to have someone puke into your face, we should probably cut it a little slack.

Phantom, 7/16/09

Oh, hey, what’s going on over in the Phantom, where we’re being shown how the first two lady Jungle Patrolpersons are fitting in to this elite paramilitary unit? Well, the lady cop patrolhuman has been enlisted for her helicoptering skills, and has picked up the Unknown Commander from an urban location, from whence he had unceremoniously nabbed a suspect out of his own home. Now she’s dropped them off in an isolated rural area, where, without any wimpy liberal niceties like a trial, he will presumably be viciously attacked by a wolf or just shot in the back of the head. And our heroine’s main goal throughout has been to get a look at this human rights abuser’s handsome face. Ha ha, women, am I right, people?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/16/09

Hey, remember how the new Rex Morgan, M.D., plot was going to be some sexy story about adultery? In classic bait-and-switch fashion, it turns out that the promise of extramarital relations and the drama they cause was just to lure you into reading about something much more important, and depressing, namely the poor care that people with Alzheimer’s receive. Becka has been shocked — shocked! — to find that a private clinic is interested in cutting costs, even if that means lowering the quality of medical attention given to its paying customers! As we learn in today’s strips, the clinic’s revenue-generating ideas push the boundaries of medical ethics: they’ve set up an “Alzheimer’s enclosure” at the zoo, near the primate house, where members of the public can buy tickets to come and gawk.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/15/09

CONFUSING TIMES IN APARTMENT 3-G! It seems that Tim Mills, brother to Margo’s touch piece/maybe future fiance Eric Mills, is the American whom the Dalai Lama has trotted out in this Dharamsala press conference/dog-and-pony show. Last we saw of Eric, he was leading a younger lama to freedom over the Himalayas. Where is Eric now? Who is shouting “TIM” with three exclamation points of loudness off-panel? And, crucially, what is it that has blown Margo’s mind so completely and utterly? Surely it can’t be Tim’s rescue, or even his reunion with his wife, who is no doubt the “TIM!!!”-shouter, as those people are not Margo, nor people from whom Margo wants something. My guess is she has spotted some gorgeous trinkets on sale in a local market stall, which she intends to buy in bulk on her father’s credit card and resell back in New York at a healthy markup.

Spider-Man, 7/15/09

Meanwhile, Wolverine snuck backstage after Mary Jane’s terrible play to attempt to mack on her, then backed off as soon as Peter Parker showed up in his bad-ass leather jacket. Now, after some showy poor-lonely-me-ing, it appears he’s at least going to get a three-way out of it; his look of self-loathing in the final panel shows that he never really expected this maneuver to work, and now isn’t sure if he can go through with it. Was this how X-Men Origins: Wolverine went? Because I’m beginning to see why it didn’t meet ticket sales expectations.

Blondie, 7/15/09

Oh, Blondie, when you’ve been married to someone for 72 years or whatever, you no longer have to say ludicrous self-esteem-boosting things that neither you nor your partner believe to have a shred of a basis in reality, such as your proposal that Dagwood might have “a shot at being a V.P. some day.” Driving an car shaped like an enormous phallus and shilling for nitrate-lousy grade F meat is pretty much the apex of what dignity he’s capable of achieving, so why not let him run with his dream?

Family Circus, 7/15/09

Out of curiosity, legally speaking, what age is the boundary between “cute li’l tyke running around naked” and “pervert who can be arrested for indecent exposure”? Can we lower it to whatever age Jeffy is supposed to be, retroactively?

Marmaduke, 7/15/09

Oh, look, a “topical” reference to the water landing of US Airways flight 1549, a mere six months after the fact! Of course, no lives were lost in that miraculous incident; I doubt we’ll be able to say the same for the aftermath of Marmaduke’s splashdown into this pool full of delicious children.