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Mary Worth, 3/12/08

Why do I forget that Mary Worth only exists to shatter my hopes and dreams? All my fantasies of a bizarre flashback sequence are looking less and less likely by the day; instead, we’re just going to see Mary and Tobey standing around while Mary natters on in frustratingly vague terms. FLASH BACK! FLASH BACK, DAMN YOU!

Tobey is looking even more numb and Stepford-like than usual in the second panel. It’s possible that like us, she’s become so monumentally bored as to be on the brink of passing out.

Pluggers, 3/12/08

Wait a minute, pluggers don’t actually go hunting? Ha ha, they’re total blue-collar posers! Perhaps pluggers just know that having other people kill and butcher animals for you makes it easier to get the maximum amount of meat down your gullet as quickly as humanly possible.

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Zits, 3/11/08

Today’s Zits disturbed and horrified me — not, I hasten to add, because there’s something wrong with a woman of a certain age (or any age, for that matter) dancing around in such a fashion as to cause her bosoms to jiggle and sway. No, my gripe is in how said breasts are depicted. The rightmost Connie is depicted frozen in a moment in time and leaning back, presumably as she dances to the music; in a world governed by the laws of physics as I understand them, her breasts should themselves be at the top of their gentle arc, perhaps raised up a bit from the rest of her chest. Instead, they appear to be wriggling around as she stands motionless, as if they were the tentacles around the mouth-parts of Cthulu, an illusion made all the more real by the fact that there seem to be six of them. If I saw such a thing on the front of any human female, let alone my mother, I too would beg for hysterical blindness.

Cathy, 3/11/08

Speaking of nameless horrors, there’s something unsettling about today’s Cathy, and not in the usual way, either. What exactly does Irving mean by “a person like you”? And why is Cathy standing in front of some kind of inky black portal in the final panel? “I know! That’s why I can’t go back!” she proclaims, terrified of the unspoken but no doubt awful fate that awaits her at the demonic so-called “gym”. But it doesn’t matter that she refuses to go — the darkness is looming behind her, threatening to swallow her up.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/11/08

Man, check out Liz’s face in that final panel. She looks pretty pleased with herself, doesn’t she? Remember, fellas: Nothing can bring a woman to orgasm faster than explaining carefully, with careful attention to the grammatical case of your relative pronouns, that you respect and value and her autonomy.

Meanwhile, Anthony is driving ever closer to the secluded clearing where he disposes of the bodies.

Dennis the Menace, 3/11/08

This may seem on the surface to be more run-of-the-mill submenacing, but what if by “I beat the sun up again” Dennis means not “I woke up before sunrise” but “I bested the sun in hand-to-hand combat”? You have to admit that if an eight-year-old kid managed to pummel our sun, which is 800,000 miles in diameter and has surface temperature of 9 million degrees, into submission, that would be pretty menacing — both because it would be a bad-ass achievement in and of itself and because it would send our planet’s temperature plunging close to absolute zero, killing all life on its surface. Henry and Alice will barely have time to bestir themselves before the very atmosphere freezes solid!

Herb and Jamaal, 3/11/08

I have to admit that I find the little puff of smoke hovering over the toaster in the first two panels of this strip totally adorable! It’s like the toaster is angry! Possibly because it has to just sit there and listen to this ancient, horrible joke.

Crankshaft, 3/11/08

Ha ha, the old lady slipped on the ice, probably seriously injuring herself! Man, I can’t wait to see how this barrel of laughs develops.

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This past Friday, I had a very agreeable meetup at Tucson’s Kon Tiki with a slew of Comics Curmudgeon readers! A fun time was most definitely had by all, as the following photos should demonstrate beyond a doubt. Let’s start with the big group shot:

Up front, you have Trilobite, me, and my lovely wife Amber; in the row behind that you have Bob Weber, Jr., The Divine O’F, KT, Mr. Bats :[, Fran Ledue Page, Bats :[, and Mountain Momma; and behind them you have The Divine O’F’s husband Rocko (face sadly obscured by overhanging tiki ambience), Mooncattie, Jimmy, Garrett, and Wood.

KT here is looking happy in his Cassandra Cat shirt and holding his book of his own cartoons. He drove all the way from Houston to attend, and shockingly he wasn’t even the one who came the furthest!

That honor goes to Mooncattie, seen here with his video camera, who flew all the way down from Toronto, Foobonia, to spend a week in the Arizona sun. Will the video of me giving a little speech in a Family Circus vest (more on which momentarily) hit YouTube? Only time will tell!

Mooncattie also brought Canada’s greatest literary product, Michael Patterson’s Stone Season, as a gift. Actually, this was much, much better than the actual Stone Season, since it was mostly blank — except for individual Comments of the Week from last year pasted on each page!

So, about that vest … Bats :[ discovered some fabric emblazoned with classic religiously themed Family Circus cartoons. Naturally, she turned into a vest that she presented to me as a gift. The best of the cartoons features Dolly declaring that “Heaven is a great big hug that lasts forever.” It was determined that, as per this classic Dinosaur Comics, this sounds unspeakably creepy when you whisper it.

I tried my best to get around and chat with everybody. I thought this was a good pic of Fran and Trilobite; the latter looks kind of pensive, even though I’m pretty sure that at this point he’s telling me about his storied history of consuming alcohol at the Kon Tiki. (Unlike KT and Mooncattie (and everyone else, really) Trilobite was actually able to walk to the bar from his house.)

Here’s a nice pic of the Divine O’F chatting with Bob Weber, while the latter’s wife looks on affectionately. Bob was obviously much beloved by all in attendance, and naturally turned out to be a superstar of friendliness! He even brought super-cool original Slylock Fox art for everyone who came! Ms. O’F is holding hers in this picture, and here’s a photomontage of others of us and ours:

Bats :[ scored a Count Weirdly cartoon; I got one featuring Reeky Rat, whose virtues I had been extolling mere moments before Bob revealed the goodies he had brought for us; and KT ended up with a Cassandra Cat number — appropriate, since he was the crazed genius behind a certain bit of Slylock/Cassandra bootleg art you might remember.

I loved hanging out with all of you! A few folks had to leave early, but here’s a great picture of the rest of us worshipping the tiki god, or at least grinning in front of it. Thanks to everyone who came! I will definitely be planning more events like this in the future, I think.

Anyway, due to the travel and the guest-blogging and the hey hey, I’m going to let Darkefang’s reign of COTW terror continue for another week. But still, we must, as is our practice, give thanks to our advertisers:

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