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Apartment 3-G, 12/10/07

I’m not sure what I would have expected Margo’s reaction to a simple, open-hearted gesture of human kindness to have been, but “recoiling in horror” seems about right. I do sort of wonder why she thinks running a chain of hair salons qualifies someone to plan a wedding, but she is desperate. And not a particularly good event planner. Maybe she just takes Ruby’s business prowess as evidence that she’s not a mouth-breathing submoron like her cousin Lu Ann.

Weighing against Ruby’s intelligence, of course, is the fact that she keeps calling Margo “Maggie”. At first I thought she just actually didn’t know A3G’s feistiest roommate’s name, but I’m beginning to think that she believes that “Maggie” is an acceptable nickname for anyone whose name starts with “M” and then has a “G” in there somewhere. (Note: It isn’t.)

Gil Thorp, 12/10/07

This little expedition in school spirit-based vandalism cannot end well. I’m going to bet that the current governor of whatever benighted state Milford is in ran on an “I’m even tougher on crime than the other guy who’s tough on crime” platform, resulting in a “two strikes and you’re out” rule on the state lawbooks. Thus, once Cully is caught red-handed in an act of senseless spirit rock desecration, he’ll be sent to the big house for 25 years. There, as he whiles the decades away lifting weights, only one thought will be on his mind: “MUST. KILL. ONE-LEGGED BILL. (OR WHOEVER THAT IT IS IN THE CAR. I’M PRETTY SURE IT’S BILL THOUGH.)” Somewhere in the year 2034, Bill Ritter will be leaping about on whatever advanced cybernetic limbs are available then, only to come face to face with Cully, hell-bent on revenge!

Momma, 12/10/07

“Hmm, I’ve been doing this strip for 37 years, and I’ve constantly harped on the fact that Momma is unnaturally jealous of her daughter-in-law. But how can I make this so vilely obvious that everyone gets a full sense of this feature’s Oedipal horror?”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 12/10/07

Our long good-bye to Al Scaduto begins today with this entry from “Samantha Gordano,” who is also faithful Comics Curmudgeon reader mako. “Of course I wrote in talking about [my husband’s] inability to find the trash can for juice containers,” she says, “but Mr. Scaduto must have known about his propensity for letting the dog clean it up as well.” She says she’d like to dedicate this strip to his honor. What I want to know is, does she want to vacuum his skull on the inside or the outside?

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Slylock Fox, 12/9/07

Oh, Cassandra! Your attempts to snare Slylock’s heart grow ever more transparent — and ever more pathetic. “Accidentally” leaving the heel of your shoe behind? Come on. Staring brightly ahead as you wear that prim little pastel outfit isn’t going to fool anyone.

Getting a lineup together in world shared by many kinds of sentient animal life isn’t easy, but the crew assembled by Officer Duck today is particularly motley. The two creatures of indeterminate species on either side of Cassandra look like they’re hoping that this will be their big chance to break into movies, or at least reality TV. If I were Slylock, I’d start looking into the background of the elephant lady at the far right — she looks guilty as hell, and presumably has got some kind of home counterfeiting business or meth lab set up back at her trailer. The pink-haired bunny, meanwhile, is way, way too stoned to care.

(If you wish Cassandra would “steal some files” from your “office”, you obviously need some Bob Weber Jr.-designed Cassandra Cat gear from the Comics Curmudgeon store!)

Crankshaft, 12/9/07

You might chalk this up as a garden-variety generation gap comic, but with young chinbeard and his sister watching their parents turn into their grandparents and worrying about turning into their parents in turn. But recall that the grandparents in question are rageaholic Crankshaft and the somehow even more loathsome Ukrainian hate machine. The kids probably thought that they’d at last be free once their grandparents kick off, but now are worried about enduring their post-transformation parents. Junior is right to look so terrified.

Family Circus, 12/9/07

Note the bit that I’ve highlighted. Billy is clearly in the “Anyone but Obama” camp for the 2008 elections.

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 12/9/07

Yeah, osmosis! Osmosis and time travel.

(Yes, I know there’s a neo-swing scene that’s alive and well today in New York and elsewhere — but the kids today out doing the Lindy Hop tend to be young hipsters like these. Tommie and Gary are soooo very much not hipsters; and I don’t care how old they’re supposed to be, I refuse to even qualify them as “young”.)

Panel from Shoe, 12/9/07

It’s not like I’m in love with the word “barmaid”, exactly; I just think “bartenderness” sounds kind of creepy. “Come on, baby, I’ve been lookin’ at you all night; show me a little bartenderness.”

Site meta-note: I’ve decided that I’m going to start doing the comment of the week/ad love posts on Monday instead of Sundays. I often don’t even get to Saturday’s comics until Sunday, and doing the Sunday strips takes me longer than usual because I can’t easily see them all at once on the Chronicle site, so often doing blog work eats up a good chunk of what oughtta be a weekend day of rest and relaxation! So, Trilobite’s comment gets an extra day of glory thanks to the shift.

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Judge Parker, 12/9/07

OK, Judger Parker, we get it, we get it. There’s something significant about these damn brownies, seeing as the dialog and the authorial gaze has lingered on them for most of this week. If this were an exciting strip, they’d be laced with knockout drugs so that Abbey’s plane-flying, chicken-growing neighbors could kidnap her for their nefarious purposes, or perhaps some kind of mind-control serum so that they could force her to do her bidding. But this is Judge Parker, so perhaps the message they’re trying to get across is that “brownies are yummy.”

Mary Worth, 12/8/07

Chester the dog: Hero, or greatest hero in American history?

Panel from Spider-Man, 12/8/07

Not to get ahead of myself on the comments of the week, but nothing I could say about this awesome panel can possibly match this from faithful reader Gold-Digging Nanny:

The comics syndicate should just eliminate Spider-Man’s bio from their website and substitute today’s panel two. That’s all you ever need to know about Spider-Man.