Post Content

Herb and Jamaal, Shoe, and Six Chix, 8/15/07

Oh, hey, everybody! Did you hear that it’s iPhone day in the syndicated funny pages? No? Well, fortunately, these three team players did. Yes, there’s nothing that will help make the comics relevant to young people like jokes about a hot piece of electronic gear that was released to great fanfare and media hype eight and a half weeks ago. Actually, that’s close enough to what I imagine the comics lead time to be that it makes me think that someone got a look at gadget-hungry types waiting camped out in the streets outside Apple Stores and thought “comedy gold!” And thank goodness we’ve finally got to see the results.

Herb and Jamaal has worked its cutting-edge cell phone joke into a storyline involving a hip young priest who’s been sent to clear out the clerical deadwood from the diocese of wherever the hell it is that Herb and Jamaal takes place. This might be interesting, except that nothing that ever happens in this strip is remotely interesting, so this won’t be interesting either. I like the way that “hip” is signified by the earring and the indoors sunglasses — he’s like Herb and Jamaal’s Coach Kaz! Though with less propensity for violence, hopefully. The strip is pandering to the newspaper comics’ core audience of angry old people by making this fellow as unlikable as possible; presumably he’ll be shuffled off to another diocese in disgrace soon enough, once the altar boys start complaining.

Shoe, meanwhile, manages to make no sense at all in its particulars, though it does manage to reflect the higher truth of its characters’ well-established personalities, since the Perfesser is well known for his food addiction. Six Chix thinks that the “a seashell is like a cell phone” joke somehow becomes funny when transformed into an “a seashell is like a particular, much-hyped kind of cell phone that was recently released” joke. For the record, it doesn’t.

B.C., 8/15/07

Just in case anyone’s wondering, the new, post-Johnny Hart’s death, assembled-from-existing-drawings B.C. is terrible. I’ve never been a huge fan of the feature, and I sort of have been waiting for the new team to find its bearings, but it’s kind of shocking how much worse it’s become. Today’s strip practically boggles my attempts to enumerate criticisms of it; I’ll start with the weird, mangled look of the figures in panel one (is this what happens when the new team deviates from pre-drawn templates?), the actively crude looking baseball and blimp, and the bizarre orthographic choice to end “Lookie, the blimp” with a period rather than an exclamation point. The saddest thing, as I’ve noted before, is that zombie B.C. is occupying space in hundreds of papers that could be used by someone trying to break into the comics business, or, failing that, by a nice ad for an auto dealership that would help the newspaper afford to buy more comics, or pay its copy editors.

Mark Trail, 8/15/07

Check out where Andy’s paw is going in panel three! Ha ha, Cherry, you’ve been rude-synonym-for-vagina-blocked! She knew that her one chance to have relations with her husband for the fifth time since their wedding was to hop on him the moment he got out of the car, while he was still disoriented; fortunately, Mark’s trained his faithful St. Bernard well to save him from the unpleasantness of physical love. Looks like Cherry’s got another night of furious masturbation in store while Mark blathers on about duck innards to her father!

The Lockhorns, 8/15/07

Actually, “Leroy” is French for … oh, you know what, just forget it.

Oh! And! Faithful reader Flipper earned that virtual penny and more with this utterly amazing Mark Trail squirrel montage. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

Also, faithful reader loudfan shares this evidence that Spider-Man is whoring himself out for the postal service. Thrill as he runs errands for Aunt May! Gasp as he surfs the Internet! Boggle as he puts a cold compress over his eyes, for some reason!

Post Content

Spider-Man, 8/14/07

You sort of get the feeling that the final panel is taking place in the Shocker’s tiny studio apartment, and we’re about twenty minutes into this. “Wait, hold on … ‘Look out, world — here comes the Shocker!’ Hmmm … no, I think that’s too much emphasis on the name, sounds egotistical. How about this? “Look out, world … heeeeere’s … the Shocker!’ No, God damn it, that’s derivative and corny. Stupid! So stupid! I’m never going to get this right!”

God bless faithful reader Tabby, who a while back posted a link to the Shocker’s character page at SpiderFan.org. Here are some delicious excerpts:

Real Name: Herman Schultz
Known Confidants: None
Education: Unknown, but probably a high school education
Strength Level: Normal human strength
Powers: None
Limitations: The Shocker has had severe problems with self-doubt.

Ha ha! No powers, no confidants, no super-powers, normal human strength, maybe a high-school diploma, and crippling self-doubt! Truly the creative team dipped deep into the reserves and found the perfect villain for the newspaper iteration of the Spider-Man mythos.

Mark Trail, 8/14/07

Boy, the ladies sure can’t get enough of Mark Trail! And who can blame them, what with his rugged good looks, corpse-like pallor, propensity for violence and vigilantism, disinclination to use contractions, and total disinterest in sex? Sam sure is keen to get with this hunky hunk of man-hunk: she’s even willing to go back to Lost Forest to have a three-way with his disturbing-looking wife while his hideously ugly son takes pictures.

By the way, for those of you who don’t remember the beginning of this interminable storyline, “clean up places that attract birds” is, no fooling, a euphemism for “pave over wetlands so that birds can no longer breed there.” Also, I’m reasonably sure that we’ve seen this spread-eagled squirrel before; a shiny virtual penny to whomever can discover him in the archives.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/14/07

OH MY GOD! ALAN HARRINGTON! THAT’S … wait, are we supposed to know who that is? Damn it, what was the point of introducing us to all those loser board members if the suspect wasn’t even memorable enough to remember?

Apartment 3-G, 8/14/07

COMICS COLORING COURSE, FINAL EXAM:

Q. OK, so you’ve got two characters in your soap opera strip. Both are male, white (of course! Ha ha!) 30s/40s-ish. Both are sandy-haired. So far you’ve managed to avoid having them appear in the strip at the same time, but now narrative logic demands that they meet. What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?

A. Yellow! Very, very yellow!

Eric Mills obviously had the same reddish hair color as Alan as recently as two weeks ago, but it’s worth noting that, when he was introduced last summer, his hair was black. Personally, I think that the process of dating (or “dating”) Margo is slowly but surely sucking the life essence out of him. His hair will be completely white by the end of the year.

Post Content

For Better Or For Worse, 8/13/07

Look, I love bacon cheeseburgers. And I adore tuna casserole. And my diet is pretty dodgy, and errs in the direction of the greasy, as those two previous declarations would indicate. And even I’m kind of appalled by today’s FBOFW. It never really occurred to me that these would be two great tastes that go great together, possibly because of some residual instinct of self-preservation. And if I did choose to combine these artery-clogging treats in a single meal, I probably wouldn’t make burgers that were literally the size of dinner plates. I don’t want to judge. But I guess that’s what I’m doing.

You’ll note that despite Ellie’s good mood, there’s a tear running down her cheek in panel two. My guess is that her circulatory system is weeping in anticipation of its coming suffering. Also, sadder than any other aspect of this paean to cholesterol is the look of pure unmediated joy on John’s face in the final panel. It’s as if he’s finally discovered a reason to live again — one that will kill him in short order, ironically.

One Big Happy, 8/13/07

OBH’s mom is caught in a moment of repose in panel one. And by “repose”, I mean “utterly soul-sapped exhaustion,” obviously. The look on her face and her body language pretty much say, “Please, God, take me now so I never have to deal with my children’s ADHD-driven antics again.” Thus, the dire violence on tap in panel four is, if still probably against the law, at least well set up in the strip’s narrative.

Apartment 3-G, 8/13/07

Yesterday’s encounter between Alan and Jones the beatnik, in which the latter opined that he “might have just what you want”, followed by today’s episode, in which Alan claims to have been “riding high” and now needs to start making “amends”, all combine to imply one thing: we’re going to get an “Alan the recovering substance abuser” storyline written entirely in scarcely veiled code and innuendo, apparently to shield the bluehairs who fainted in droves during Mary Worth’s Tommy the Tweaker storyline. Look for Alan to have a meaningful conversation with Lu Ann in which he claims to have “thrown out all of his ‘junk'” and to be “no longer interested in ‘riding the white lion,'” winking at her all the while, then saying “wink” aloud to reinforce his point.

Family Circus, 8/13/07

The way Grandma is nervously fidgeting with her collar implies that Dolly is more of a threat than her short stature and low IQ would suggest. “People who don’t hang up all of my art get the CORNFIELD!”

Luann, 8/13/07

“Um, yeah! Totally different reasons! Ha ha ha ha ha!” [45 seconds of increasingly uncomfortable silence]