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Mary Worth, 1/18/08

All in favor of relegating Mary Worth to Barney Google-esque irrelevance in her own strip so we can spend more time enjoying Dr. Drew’s egotastic ramblings, say “aye!” This guy is a non-stop laugh riot. “Hey, check out that thirtysomething guy with a haircut out of the ’50s wearing a baby blue shirt and an identically colored t-shirt underneath! I totally want to have sex with him!” “No way, blondie, I saw him first! He’s all mine!” “I know! Let’s both take him home and have a three-way!” “Sure, sounds fun!” That’s what it’s like inside Dr. Drew’s head. Then it sort of goes like “WHIRR WHIRR WHIRR WHIRRR” for a while, followed by “OOOH SHINY!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/18/08

“I mean, obviously I’m going to use it to buy meth. The hard part is, do I share it with you? You’re a little young for that sort of thing, but you did steal the cash fair and square, so it seems wrong to keep all the drugs I buy with it for myself.”

Apartment 3-G, 1/18/08

Oh, Lu Ann, you poor pathetic victim, can you seriously be aching for a kiss from Alan at this point? HE’S STILL GOT THAT OTHER WOMAN’S COOTIES ALL OVER HIS MOUTH! This is the part where we’d root for Lu Ann to stumble tearfully into the apartment, and, confused and emotionally vulnerable, and end up making out with Tommie — if either of them had an ounce of sex appeal, that is.

Pluggers, 1/18/08

AAAH EXTREME CLOSEUP ON PLUGGER SKULL LUMPS NOT CHARMING NOT FOLKSY JUST DEEPLY UNSETTLING ABORT ABORT ABORT

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Apartment 3-G, 1/17/08

Not to try to apply “reality” to Apartment 3-G or anything, but: don’t these people live in New York? You know, the city with one of the most extensive and useful public transit systems in the world? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but in New York lots of people ride the subway instead of taking a cab — even middle-class white girls! By themselves! This will probably shock the A3G creative team, but post-Giuliani it’s practically like riding the monorail at Disneyland, with only a slightly higher possibility of encountering a unconscious, smelly hobo.

Maybe the route from Blaze’s apartment to Lu Ann’s doesn’t lend itself to subway travel, but it is kind of weird that you never see any of these kids on the train. I mean, obviously Margo would refuse to board public transit of any kind, but Lu Ann and Alan, with their high-paying jobs of art teacher and starving artist/part-time curator/junkie, respectively, seem like prime candidates for MetroCard ownership.

Family Circus, 1/17/08

Much as it warms my black, black heart to see a Family Circus kid weeping openly, I’m a little disturbed by the sudden shift in this feature from its standard “Little kids say and/or mispronounce the darnedest things” to some kind of Pluggers-style play on words (for certain limited definitions of “play”) by an omniscient narrator. On the other hand, I admit to being pleased by the image of a perpetually sobbing PJ being hooked to electrodes and used as an alternate source of power for the Keane Kompound after they became convinced that being connected to the utility grid kept them under the thumb of the “gummint.”

Pluggers, 1/17/08

Speaking of “plays” on words: Hey, Pluggers, you get a pass on this one because it doesn’t make any sense at all, in that it’s not at all clear what if any alternate meanings of “swinger” and/or “family tree” are being referenced here, but don’t let me ever catch you inching towards doing a joke about “plugger swingers” again, OK? Ever. I mean it. There will be rage.

Mary Worth, 1/17/08

WHY YOU PUNCHIN’ YOURSELF, DR. DREW? WHY YOU PUNCHIN’ YOURSELF?

I’m assuming that Drew is assuming the “Serious High School Senior Yearbook Photo #2” pose in panel two because he’s casting his mind back to the sweet net of physical love he cast over Vera — she thought she could escape, but her struggles have only snared her further! Faithful commentors suggested a number of more plausible reasons for Vera’s change of heart. Good: Vera’s pregnant! Better: Vera got the clap, and she knows from where! (Note that these two suggestions are not mutually exclusive, obviously.)

The Phantom, 1/17/08

I’m pretty sure that tomorrow we’ll see that the stem-less word balloon in panel three is emanating from the Phantom himself, aka Ghost-Who-Buttresses-The-Patriarchy, who’s going to tell them a little something about the Jungle Patrol, specifically that it’s not for “girls.” Diana, who’s heard this spiel before, has already taken a phone call. Possible sexism aside, everyone who thought that in yesterday’s “That’s the answer! Jungle Patrol!” they had found a catchphrase for the new millennium must now admit that “Whoa, girls! Let me tell you a little something about the Jungle Patrol!” is even better.

In other news, when I first saw panel two, I thought cop-lady was grabbing waitress-lady’s left boob. I really, really want the Phantom to be more interesting than it is.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/17/08

Today’s TDIET is submitted by faithful reader Harold, who pushed this family-friendly feature to the brink with his demand for red-hot just-out-of-the-shower action.

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Item the first: Faithful reader Pogoer points me to this story which reveals what most of us probably had guessed: They’ll Do It Every Time will be closing up shop forever after the last of the Al Scaduto-penned panels runs on February 2. I have weirdly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I always rail against zombie strips, and while I’m still sad over Al’s passing, the 100 or so newspapers that ran TDIET now represent 100 slots for aspiring new cartoonists to try to break into the industry. (Let’s hope the papers do give some unknowns an opportunity to find an audience, instead of “getting that Family Circus cartoon we’ve heard so much about.”) But, since Scaduto was the third artist TDIET had in its tenure, part of me wonders what it might have been like to give the feature to someone young who had a very different style and see what they might have done with it. I do hope that this blog has in some small part given the feature a bit of a send-off and resurgence in interest in what turned out to be its last few years.

Item the second: Many, many faithful readers have pointed me in the direction of Lasagna Cat. What, you might ask, is Lasagna Cat? I could tell you that it’s a series of short videos in which Garfield strips are acted out live (and which feature an actual person in a Garfield suit), each followed by a somewhat longer video that matches a light-rock favorite with images from the strip, but that doesn’t even begin to capture how awesome and bizarre the videos are. By all means, check it out for yourself before Paws, Inc.’s wrath is unleashed!