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So many items of interest to you, the faithful reader, have built up over the past few days that I have bundled them together into a maga-metapost! Perhaps most important: I remind everyone who lives in, or who will be near to, the Tucson, AZ, area on March 7 that you will have an opportunity to meet me! And the lovely and talented Mrs. C.! And Bob Weber, Jr.! We’ll be meeting up at the Kon Tiki lounge at 6 pm (an hour earlier than my initial announcement). (UPDATE: Mrs. C. wanted me to make it clear that we’ll be having dinner.) Here’s the thing: I’m going to be making reservations, so if you plan on meeting up with us, it is imperative that you let me know so that I can make the reservation for the correct number of people! I’m going to make the reservations on Monday, so please e-mail me at bio@jfruh.com before then! Please? Pretty please?

Now, on to the other random bits o’ info!

• Most of you are familiar with the outrageously awesome Reynard Noir, which reimagines Slylock Fox as an ongoing old-school noir film. The site’s creator, Rob MacArthur, was recently interviewed by Kittysneezes.com. A fascinating look behind the scenes! The second part of the interview is where he starts really talking about his site.
• Speaking of Slylock Fox, Bob Weber, Jr., now has his own store at CafePress! I don’t get a cut of any of this stuff, but you should check it out anyway!
• I’ve been hearing rumblings for some time about the coming Luann-based musical, but it all seems to be coming to fruition; apparently there’s going to be a staged reading at San Diego’s New Village Arts Theatre this coming Monday. (Does a “reading” of a musical actually involve singing?) Any faithful readers in the area are desperately begged to attend and report!
• Finally, I’ve been meaning to share this picture and note for a while. Faithful reader Barry encountered Mark Trail himself in the comic strip section of Universal’s Islands of Adventure!

  

  

  “It felt blasphemous to turn Mark Trail’s mighty fist of justice against him,” Barry reports, “but the only way to pose the shot in its rightful Mark-Trail-beatdown-handing-out context would be to have him punching me in the crotch, and Mark keeps his punches above the belt. As any good naturalist should.” Barry also notes that “just up the street was the Spider-Man ride. I tried to stage something there, but couldn’t find any bricks or TV sets handy.”

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Herb and Jamaal, 2/22/08

Yeah, Herb! Those jeans are much beloved by people Ezekial’s age! You know, people younger than 18! People who are still in school, and live at home, and aren’t yet legal adults! If only there were some kind of handy word that could describe people who fall into that category … but what could it be?

Actually, this weird circumlocution is yet another instance of Herb and Jamaal’s quest for total timeliness. When I watched It’s A Wonderful Life again this Christmas, I was struck by just how damn high up Jimmy Stewart wore his the waistband of his pants in the scenes where he’s supposed to be in his early 20s — just like old men puttering around nursing homes wear them today. It made me realize that the ludicrous styles your parents make fun of when you’re 16 are the exact same ludicrous styles your grandchildren will be making fun of when you’re 75. In other words, come 2050 or so, all the legacy Herb and Jamaal artist will need to do is erase the mustache on Herb and add it to Ezekial and WHAM! Instant up-to-the-minute relevance, with all the dialog the same!

Mary Worth, 2/22/08

It’s a good thing Mary is such a master meddler, as no mere tyro could have possibly pulled off this awesomely convoluted platitude. Seriously, it took two panels to execute in full. I’d love to see it in cross-stitch.

Dick Tracy, 2/22/08

Ha ha, Louise Brooks, the jig is up! You should have known that by selling supplies to so-called “artists,” you’d eventually attract the attention of an honest lawman like Dick Tracy! He’ll make you pay for enabling the depiction of the human form in somewhat abstract ways!

Six Chix, 2/22/08

Most pointless second panel ever. That … that’s pretty much how a frequent buyer card works. Yup.

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Pluggers, 2/21/08

But … pluggers … are … dogs and cats … [head explodes]

OK, let’s pass over for the moment the obvious fact that the Pluggers staff have been “plugging” away at this hell-comic for so long that they’re completely blind to the fact that their characters are animal-headed beast-men and tackle the meat of the issue. The core assertion of today’s panel, stripped of its cutesy word-play, is that plugger neighborhoods are safe and idyllic and no crime ever happens there so the only wanted posters you’re likely to see are really “lost pet” flyers. Do people who live in peaceful, crime-free paradises like, um, Dallas believe that we decadent city dwellers festoon our our lightposts and mailboxes with wanted posters of actual criminals? Because I live in Baltimore, a town with
a bit of a crime problem, and I can tell you that the lightposts in our neighborhoods mostly sport … lost pet notices. And, admittedly, ads for yoga studios.

I may be completely misreading this, though. It’s possible that wanted posters in plugger neighborhoods have pictures of dogs and cats on them because pluggers are, in fact, dogs and cats.

Mary Worth, 2/21/08

Like most of Mary Worth, panel one of today’s strip is more enjoyable if you spend time thinking about the passive-aggressive subtext. “Yeah, dad, after, what, fifteen minutes spent actually helping people in country, you’ve spent a lot of weeks sitting on your ass in your minty green sweater trying to raise money — how’s that been going, huh? Oh, you found one generous sponsor? I’m sure those little kids with the deformed limbs are soooo happy about that.”

Like most of Mary Worth, panel two of today’s strip is more enjoyable if you spend time thinking about the perverse sexual subtext. “I’m most proud of the hand’s-on work I did there last year” [wink wink] … “I need to feel that” [wink wink; slip of paper with the addresses of several Hanoi brothels is exchanged].

Crankshaft, 2/21/08

“Yeah, I’ve got some problems keeping certain things sealed properly … when I’ve got some hot young plumber bent over in front of me … certain things like … my pants …” [funky bass-driven groove begins]

Just for the record, I’d be totally in favor of Crankshaft switching over to an all gay porn, all the time format. At least some of the characters would look happy once in a while.