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Blondie, 6/13/09

Oh look, it’s yet another Blondie where I’m left wondering exactly how I’m supposed to assemble the various elements into a pleasing joke-like whole. Does Dagwood refer to the order-taker as a “clown” because of the semi-conscious association resulting from his giving his order into a molded-plastic clown head? Are we supposed to think that Dagwood is so dumb that he believes that a literal clown is taking his order? Or is a literal clown in fact taking his order — some poor bastard with clowning experience who was willing to answer any job ad, any job ad at all, only to find himself shackled and put into some kind of stocks and forced to hawk greasy food to folks in their cars? It would certainly explain the desperation he exhibits at being unable to move sufficient quantities of product.

I have already expressed my admiration for Clown Burger’s “Say — then pay!” motto. Few corporations are as willing to explain how a simple economic transaction works on such a basic level: “First you must tell us what it is you wish to purchase, through a speech act of some sort; then you must supply some medium of exchange to us.”

Family Circus, 6/13/09

Uh-oh, it looks like Billy has discovered philosophy, or perhaps has been listening in to the conversations of stoned college students! Either way, the blank, expressionless faces of his siblings shows just how well fancy brain-thinkin’ goes down in the Keane Kompound. A swift but brutal beating will soon teach him that the only kind of utterances permitted here are prayers or adorable malapropisms.

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Mark Trail, 6/12/09

Oh ho! It looks like this Mark Trail dialogue will be serving up some crackling dialogue and verbal jousting covering up underlying sexual tension, just like the best screwball comedies of the ’30s! If, once you’ve forced your way into the head office of a major corporation, there’s a better opening gambit than “I live on a wildlife preserve called Lost Forest!” then I don’t want to know about. And frankly I’d like to see virtually every insane, improperly emphasized sentence out of Mark’s mouth dismissed with a quick “Good for you.”

Gil Thorp, 6/12/09

Hey there Mr. Fancy Artist Man, it’s just Gil Thorp, and within Gil Thorp it’s just Shep Trumbo, so there’s no need to bust out the super-emphasized perspective as you have in panel one, mmmkay? What with the bobble lines around Shep’s head and his severe foreshortening, it looks like he’s going through some kind of mutant-growth spurt that will leave him twenty feet tall, a monstrously huge prankster jerk. The splayed fingers poking out of the left side of the panel look like a floppy mass of tentacles, adding to the freakishness. Meanwhile, panel two features more nostril than anyone wants out of this feature.

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Funky Winkerbean, 6/11/09

You know, as this week goes on, I’m really starting to feel a sort of admiration for Funky Winkerbean for really distilling its core mood of grim whimsy (or “grimsy,” as I like to think of it) into as pure and concentrated a form as possible. Let’s do a quick review of each day’s themes:

• Monday: “I miss my dead wife so much. Sometimes I fantasize that she’s still here, talking to me, in the places that were meaningful to us while she was alive.”
• Tuesday: “I used to think that I could choose my destiny, but as I age, I realize that the events that most shape my life are those that I cannot control or anticipate.”
• Wednesday: “My wife died.” “My father is dying.”
• Thursday: “My body is falling apart.”

In fact, it’s gotten so intense that it’s spread (“metastasized,” some might say”) to other comic strips!

Wizard of Id, 6/11/09

Life is one vast prison cell, my friends! Those who are actually in jail at least have the advantage of knowing that they are in chains. The rest of us stumble through this existence, shackled by ennui, feeling that there must be something more than this but unable to imagine what that might be — and the only release from this prison is death.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/11/09

Of course, we all know that whining ponderously about one’s mortality is a luxury of the comfortable elites. Those hard-working real Americans in Hootin’ Holler don’t got time for none of that! Here we see that local coot “Grandpaw” just uses the looming specter of death as an incentive for thrift.

Herb and Jamaal, 6/11/09

But it’s Herb and Jamaal that really shows us the way to cheeriness. “I may be getting old, but I don’t feel old, and do you know why? Because I’m young enough to keep doing it! That’s right, you don’t have time to dwell on the aging process when you’re gettin’ it regular. Truly, a steady stream of casual sexual partners is a veritable fountain of youth!”

(Seriously, can anyone tell me what the punchline of this strip is actually supposed to mean? Because, much as I would approve, I don’t think “doing it” means “doing it.”)