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Gasoline Alley, Dennis the Menace, Blondie, and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/24/08

Hey, remember a while back when Blondie hit its 75th birthday party and the whole comics page was forced, apparently at gunpoint, to celebrate that achievement of inertia? Well, today is the 90th anniversary of the launch of Gasoline Alley, and its longevity is being celebrated by the entire industry these three insanely long-running legacy strip: Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (almost as old at 89, though Snuffy Smith himself did not appear until 1934), Blondie (now 78 years old, showing itself still classy with this reach-around), and Dennis the Menace (a relative baby at 57).

The Gasoline Alley strip itself rather nicely gives us a look at the first three men who worked on the feature; we shall know current artist Jim Scancarelli only as a enormous and terrifying disembodied hand, at least until the strip’s 120th anniversary in 2038. Of the tributes, Blondie wonders if it will be on top of its game, with side-splitting joke after side-splitting joke about giant sandwiches and workplace abuse, fifteen years from now; Barney Google transforms beloved Gasoline Alley patriarch Walt into some kind of pinheaded monster from the depths of your worst nightmares; and Dennis the Menace is too boring to merit further typing on my part, so I’ll stop right here.

Mark Trail, 11/24/08

Say, remember last year when Mark had some kind of extremely half-assed flirtation with Sam Hill, sexy biologist, that was entirely one-sided (and not on Mark’s side) and led to absolutely nothing? Well, apparently it elicited lots of angry letters to Mark Trail headquarters about the sanctity of marriage and whatnot, because now every time we get even a glimpse of what I guess is supposed to be the quarter-assed flirtation between Mark and Sue the Confused Industrialist, one or both of them reflexively start blathering on about his joyless, asexual marriage. Today Jack Elrod has decided to dedicate his artistic skill to one of those awesome crabs with one freakishly large claw, and who can blame him when his other option is to draw these two dopes totally not coming on to one another?

Aren’t those giant crab-claws the result of sexual selection? Perhaps this symbolizes something about this slow-motion love triangle — like, maybe Cherry is about to show up and bludgeon Sue to death with her enormous forearm.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/24/08

Well, our long-promised Morgan Family Cruise Boat Adventure is finally here, after a brief interlude for yachting hijinks (this being Rex Morgan, three and a half months really does count as “brief”). Anyway, we’ll soon find out what sort of nautical medical drama Rex will have to deal with on this dreadful voyage — Legionnaires’ disease? nausea? boredom? — but for the moment, I’d just like to point out that in the world Rex Morgan, M.D., the taxicab industry is dominated by Rastafarians, or at least by dudes in rasta hats.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/24/08

Ha ha! It’s funny because Mexican food makes defecating uncomfortable!

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Mary Worth, 11/23/08

When I was a kid, my dad told me stories about his high school health teacher, who in turn told my dad a set of entirely fanciful “facts” in the course of his education, the most prominent and horrifying of which was that a gila monster could bite on to your hand and become attached so firmly that the only way to get it off would be through surgery. Though this was explicitly presented to me as not reflecting the true nature of that gentle if venomous desert lizard, it was nevertheless an extremely vivid image that my younger self spent far too much time dwelling upon.

I bring this up now because the usual metaphors used to illustrate a tenacious, unyielding grip — a vise, say, or a bear trap, or a pit bull — are wholly inadequate to describe just how tightly Mary is clinging to the dark secret Lynn hinted at earlier this week. There’s only one way to put this: Mary has locked her jaw around the thin limb of Lynn’s hidden scandal like the nonexistent gila monster of my father’s health teacher’s fevered imagination. She will remain just within Lynn’s earshot indefinitely, hissing orders that she give up the goods, until we finally learn just what dark stain on the poor young woman’s soul is making her so very unhappy. PREDICTION: It will turn out to not be particularly interesting.

Judge Parker, 11/23/08

Judge Parker has played the sexy lady card in this storyline particularly hard, in that the main guest stars are a sexy lady detective wearing leather pants and a sexy lady stripper wearing very little. But as we see illustrated today, the only thing more exciting than a sexy lady is a deadly, stab-happy sexy lady (though perhaps that’s a shade less exciting than a sexy lady wired with explosives.) Anyway, this will no doubt very quickly devolve into some sort of terrible pit of Mike Hammer-style faux-noir misogyny, with the only question being whether Sam trots out his detached monologue about dames gone wrong and the men they drag down with them at central booking or the morgue.

Slylock Fox, 8/23/08

There is no doubt that comics reflect the essential zeitgeist of their age. For instance, when Slylock Fox was launched in 1987, I’m sure most of the crimes Sly was called on to solve involved muggings, petty thefts, break-ins — the sort of threats that obsess the middle classes when they fear that the violence of the proletariat is on the verge of boiling over. Today, though, as our economy begins to unravel and we are told that the culprits are the captains of industry and financial instruments that we can’t begin to understand, our fox detective is more and more frequently being called on to prevent corporate flim-flam jobs and, as we can see here, shady real estate deals. If only Slylock were appointed to head the SEC, maybe we’d be able to get to the bottom of our financial woes, through careful and deliberate ratiocination and/or information that we aren’t actually privy to.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/22/08

Tommie’s long period of non-dating is showing, I’m afraid. I don’t consider Gary’s baffling panic at the prospect of his love for Tommie going public to be typically male or typically anything other than typically baffling. Still, I’m glad Tommie has reached this emotional point, because it means that we get to see her delightful rage in the third panel of today’s strip. Tommie’s fist wobbling menacingly at the end of her skinny forearm must be just one manifestation of the anger radiating out through the neighborhood; her foul mood is also causing the temperature in the air to drop, prompting Margo to clutch her collar closed, lest she catch a chill.

Gil Thorp, 11/22/08

Marty Moon is right! People keep tuning in when I tee off on Gil Thorp, so I don’t see why things should be any different for his crappy basement-studio TV sports show. Just a word of advice, Marty: you probably don’t want to focus on Gil every day, as that territory is already well-covered for the Thorp fanatics by the superb This Week In Milford.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/22/08

“No, really! My new marriage is already a joyless hell! Why … why do you keep laughing? For the love of God, why?”