Poor Charlie Brown. Once, he was a global icon, the Everyman incarnate, beloved staple of holiday television traditions and cute birthday cards everywhere. Now in the wake of the Animalpocalypse he's forgotten, his iconic shirt hanging forlorn on thrift store rack among the detritus of the civilization that bore him. Good grief.
Apartment 3-G, 4/23/08
Margo has mysteriously settled on Colonel Sanders as a sartorial role model.
B.C., 4/23/08
B.C. has ill-advisedly decided to feature a joke involving eating rat feces.
For Better Or For Worse, 4/23/08
For Better Or For Worse has chosen to reinforce the common bigoted belief that chronic masturbators never achieve anything in this life.
Hey, it seems like a lot of the comics put out by King Features did an Earth Day tribute today! Let’s take a look at three of the strips that took this very nice day when we should be thinking about the environment and made it sick and wrong.
Mary Worth, 4/22/08
Mary Worth may actually be the strip that most successfully incorporated the holiday into its inner milieu, since it provides a perfect platform for Mary’s suffocating sanctimony. “So, what did you do, Toby? Oh, had dinner with some friends? Breathing the precious oxygen that the tree I planted is putting out? Well, that sounds nice, if frivolous.”
Beetle Bailey, 4/22/08
Beetle Bailey willfully and horrifyingly misconstrues the concept of tree-hugging, which is nothing new for this strip. Today we’re forced to contemplate repulsive man-on-tree sex of the sort usually reserved for the most depraved hentai comics.
Dennis the Menace, 4/22/08
Dennis the Menace actually just added a new, Earth Day-friendly caption to a pre-existing comic in which Dennis takes Joey to secluded forest clearing and forces him to dig a shallow grave for himself.
Hey kids, do you know what time it is? It’s COTW TIME!
“Ah, Margo, that’s how I love you. Rapacious, egotistical, and safe on the comics page where you won’t have any access to my emotions or my checking account.” –Donald The Anarchist
And, of course, it’s also COTW RUNNERS-UP TIME!
“I must admire the way the gesture of the man behind the podium in panel 3 echoes the gesture of the fellow talking to Gil. It looks like a church fresco, with the saint in the foreground pointing toward Christ, who points calmly toward himself. ‘Check out the tie, Gil,’ he seems to say. ‘How it should be done, indeed.’” –Mollie
“Yay, unfocused hostility! Next I look forward to a demonstration with signs that say ‘Down With Death!’ and ‘We Demand Life Eternal!'” –Poteet
“You can’t spell ‘explOitinG bRAin daMage’ without M-A-R-G-O.” –The Spectacular Spider-Brick
“I’m glad to see that A3G alerts us to the fact that ‘Margo speaks,’ for comics readers not yet familiar with the speech bubble paradigm.” –Nekrotzar
“Oh, Rex. You don’t even wanna know where I have staph growing!” –Naked Bunny with a Whip
“Ah, eavesdropping on an argument — the old biddy’s meddling equivalent of a doctor scrubbing in for surgery. Alas, Donna and sons, you cannot simply count backward from 100 and wake up when it’s all over. Mary’s meddling is more like surgery during the Civil War: you will be awake and screaming in agony the whole time.” –Whippersnapper
“I don’t know what kind of actress Mary Jane is, but I’m really impressed by the expressiveness of her bangs: When she’s concerned, they curl into question marks. When she’s appalled, they stand bone-straight in exclamation. It seems a shame that such talent should be delegated to the DVD rack. Meanwhile, Peter’s lone spitcurl hangs ever thus, flaccid and useless.” –RaJ
“[Gabriella] knows from experience what comes next: that Lu Ann is about to get the beating of a lifetime as Margo freaks out completely. ‘I told you! Never touch me! Never! Never! Never! Touch! Me!’ Probably Gabriella’s afraid of becoming collateral damage.” –mcmc
“I guess if Dagwood is in such a state of serfdom or slavery that his boss is entitled to search for him in the bath in his home, then he doesn’t have many secrets from his boss regarding any aspect of his life. In short, the junk is nothing the boss hasn’t seen before.” –Les of the Jungle Patrol
“I hate the throwaway panels in Marvin. They never contribute anything, but simply give us more Marvin, which no one anywhere has ever wanted.” –Corkey
“Slylock has been watching way too much Battlestar Galactica. Futuristic robot technology? Count Weirdly has yet to comprehend the secret of pants.” –Master Mahan
And it’s also the time when we give a big thanks to everyone who put a bit of scratch in my tip jar this week, and when we thank our fabulous advertisers:
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