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Momma, 3/28/08

Generally, I’m willing to let slide the fact that Momma’s title character is depicted as being roughly two feet tall; I chalk it up to artistic license, perhaps meant to metaphorically reflect the deep-seated feelings of personal inadequacies that drive her to her awful control-freakish extremes. But it’s harder to think of it that way when one of her normal-sized children, no doubt tired of waiting for her to toddle on her stumpy legs to Danny’s Place, simply picks her up and carries her. On the bright side, she probably weighs less than thirty pounds, so it won’t cost very much to get her good and drunk.

(Actually, Francis apparently just likes carrying inappropriate people to bars.)

Mary Worth, 3/28/08

That’s it? That’s the big flashback? Little Mary was poor, and her friend’s family was nice to her once, and then her mother remarried and all her problems were over? That’s crap. I’m disappointed in the strip, obviously, but I’m really mostly disappointed in myself, for thinking that this could be cool. As ever, I need to ratchet my expectations far downward.

It’s possible that this flashback has just served to set up the real story. Maybe in the present the older Cathy is down and out, and Mary will finally get to repay her parents’ kindness! Maybe she’ll have to journey to the hellscape that is the Downtown Women’s Shelter! Maybe … oh, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

Shoe, 3/28/08

I have to admit that I laughed unironically at Shoe’s completely absurd punchline today. Kids, this is why you don’t want to strike up conversations with random old people! They’re demented, and many of them are angry!

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Marvin, 3/27/08

Yesterday, several commentors noted that Marvin and Bitsy (yes, Marvin’s dumb dog is named “Bitsy”) were conversing not with their usual thought-balloon-based psychic powers, but in ordinary word balloons denoting normal audible speech — or as normal as any such speech can be when being uttered by a baby and a dog. Naturally, because this is Marvin, I assumed that it was a result of the strip’s general slapdash halfassery, rather than than some momentous change in the inner universe of the characters. But today, we see that Marvin can in fact speak aloud to adults in complete (and rather pompously phrased) sentences. Why? Who knows? Who cares? It’s Marvin. At least they’ve quietly dropped the stupid text speak.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/27/08

Gosh, Liz, I wonder why it doesn’t feel quite right? Maybe because this whole process has involved you letting go of your own hopes, dreams, ambitions, wants, and personality, and now are just being buffeted along by everyone else’s opinions? Or maybe you’re talking about the dress itself, with its built-in whalebone corset, which feels very much not right as it jabs into your ribs.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/08

Hey, everyone, would you like to get ready for taco casserole at home? It’s easy! Here’s how:

• Dump a dozen hard-shelled tacos, with your choice of cheese, ground beef, salsa, and vegetables, into a saucepan.
• Pour in four cans of cream of mushroom soup.
• Stir over medium heat until mixture becomes a more or less undifferentiated, vomit-like mass.
• Pour into possibly leaky brown paper bag; hold sideways.
• Never, ever eat again, because the process has been made forever repellent to you by your experience with “taco casserole.”

Sally Forth and Pearls Before Swine, 3/27/08

Hey everyone, it’s a Sally Forth-Pearls Before Swine crossover! There’s very little I can say that would be funnier than Sally Forth writer Ces Marciuliano’s original blog post on the subject, so you should just go check that out now.

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Herb and Jamaal, 3/26/08

That Jamaal! He’s got a “head” that a gal could “rub” all day! If you know what I mean! And I think you do!

Ha ha, just kidding. I’m sure this isn’t meant to be some kind of double entendre; the lady in question is obviously just talking about the head that sits on his shoulders.

Which looks like giant penis, of course.

Man, I wish this cat-calling had been phrased in more typical Herb and Jamaal-style ludicrously nonspecific terms. “Hello, attractive individual! I’d sure like to make pleasurable contact with a portion of your anatomy!”

Beetle Bailey, 3/26/08

The cruel gaslighting of the unlovable and unloved Lt. Fuzz is par for the course in Beetle Bailey; but today I’m just sad that the almost-as-dorky Spc. Chip Gizmo has gotten roped into it. Presumably he’s sick of being a nerdy social pariah and is trying to win points the only way he can: by turning on someone even further down the social ladder than he is. Oh, Chip, they just want your technical skills — they aren’t really your friends! You won’t be getting any offers to hang out or anything, until they need someone to get all the porn viruses off their computers.

Wizard of Id, 3/26/08

I was going to go into a diatribe today about this one, ranting that I haven’t seen an actual child delivering newspapers in more than a decade, and that all subscription billing these days is entirely computerized, with bills arriving in the mail or the charges just being automatically put onto your credit card, but then I remembered that the Wizard of Id takes place in the Middle Ages. So, um: Ha ha! The King of Id likes to torture children in his dungeon!