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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/29/07

Ha ha! Awww, Rex doesn’t like mean ol’ Hugh! Rex thinks Hugh’s a bad son! Plus Hugh was not nice to Rex! So Rex has busted out the angry face! It’s OK, Rex, it’s OK, Heather’s got the situation in hand now. Put down the celery before you hurt somebody with it.

Archie, 5/29/07

That Archie! You can totally tell why all the girls are always fighting over him. He’s thrown into a state of naked panic and despair whenever he has to make the simple kinds of choices necessary to function as a human being in society! Speaking of which…

For Better Or For Worse, 5/29/07

For whatever reason — residual affection for a strip I liked in my youth, some vague desire to keep a hold of my dignity — I always feel like I need to step back from full-throated Foob hate, so I’ll try to keep this as rational as possible. It is, in fact, true that buying a house a huge leap, a stressful responsibility. It’s natural to worry that, if your financial situation changes, you might not only lose the house, but all the money you’ve invested in it to that point — a worry that might be all the keener if a big part of your income comes from freelancing and is thus not predictable. And then there are the little costs, like maintenance, that would normally be your landlord’s responsibility that suddenly you have to cover. It’s a Big Deal.

And yet exactly none of this has actually been discussed in the strip. We don’t know why Mikey is so freaked out about buying the house; as far as I can tell, he’s just sitting under some kind of smoldering cloud of existential dread about it. It’s not like he even really had to decide to do it — with the fire and his parents’ machinations, it’s like the choice was made for him! (In real life, this could of course be the very cause of his unease, but again if that’s the case, nothing has been said to that effect.) Today we learn that Mike is in such a state about the prospect of property ownership that he wants to punish his body until his mind shuts down. The turn to booze and drugs is inevitable. If Mike spends all his days in the coming frozen-in-time version of the strip in some sort of dreamy opium haze, every Foob outrage we have suffered to this point will have been worth it.

Judge Parker, 5/29/07

If you’re sympathizing with Sam’s hair-pulling panic in panel three (“The ladies, they’ll just go out with that credit card and come back with three new dresses they don’t need! And an apartment in Paris! Am I right, fellas?”), I must remind you that all of the fabulous wealth that keeps this motley family in the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed at stately Spencer Farms is Abbey’s (inherited, I believe). Perhaps he’s worried that any pinch on the family finances will reveal that his claims to be contributing with his big-shot lawyer’s salary have been nothing but lies. I’ve been reading this strip for two and a half years and I haven’t witnessed anything from him that might qualify as a billable hour.

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Apartment 3-G, 5/28/07

Yes, Alan’s a humble fellow, and, based on his general uselessness in this strip to this point, he has every right to be. He certainly doesn’t see himself as some kind of miraculous or divine figure. But Lu Ann has been dying, or at least napping, for literally the entire month of May without respite or comic relief. If Alan, with his mystical powers of key-turning, stair-climbing, and 911-calling, manages to save our dizzy blonde, and, more importantly, shift Apartment 3-G’s narrative focus back to Margo or (and I can’t believe I’m typing this) maybe even Tommie, then I for one will be ready to accept him as my personal lord and savior.

The Phantom, 5/28/07

The Phantom’s Crazy Caucasian Chicanery is continuing unabated. In case you haven’t been reading (and really, who could blame you), Young Father Guy has for some reason gone on a little cruise on a boat owned by Pudgy White Haired Dude; YFG is going to be testifying against PWHD at some upcoming trial, and has done nothing but taunt him about the fact from the moment they entered international waters where nobody will be able to help him or find the body. YFG’s decision to shout “Be a man, you dope!” at a fellow holding him at gunpoint but wavering about killing him seems particularly baffling.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 5/28/07

Hey, kids! That “Anonymous” is none other than faithful reader Trotzenbonnie … and she’s got another entry in this feature coming up next week! Total Comics Curmudgeon domination of TDIET — OH YE-A-A-AH!

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Hey, everybody! Ready for this week’s top comments? Here’s #1:

“I like the fact that in Santa Royale, nothing says drunkenness like loosening one’s tie ever so slightly.” –Andrew Leal

As my wife says: “I know it’s easy to make fun of Mary Worth, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying.” Also satisfying is collating the list of runners-up:

“A3G: Aaargh!! Sunday’s strip was no more than a synopsis of all the previous week’s crap, and Monday’s is a synopsis of Sunday’s. I mean, how much torture can one woman take? And by that, I mean myself, of course, not Lu Ann.” –Kronkina

“Dagwood is disturbed by the fact that he had a sex dream about Blondie. They’ve never done it — just look at their children, who are creepily identical to them. Clearly the Bumsteads reproduce via mitosis, possibly by releasing a cloud of spores.” –Steve S

“I’m having a real problem with Mark Trail. He says most of his stories are interesting, which means, by his own low standards, some are not. Much like ‘Can God make a rock so heavy that not even he could lift it?’ the concept of a story so uninteresting that even Mark Trail calls it boring is a paradox that experts in the field of logic, and college students high on pot, will debate for the foreseeable future.” –Missy

“Perhaps Hi is simply such a poor golfer that he won’t even be able to achieve par on his children’s mockery of a course, and with the entire venue in view of the window, his atrocious failure will be public fodder for jokes for years to come. But more likely he’s simply afraid his children found the bodies.” –minosbull

“I think that Mark Trail is actually the Elrod Repertory Cartoon Company, in which many different characters are played by the same toons. For example, George Spelvin played both Bo Jones in ‘Andy Kidnapped by Rednecks at the Ivory Billed Woodpecker Woods’ and is now playing the role of ‘Buzzard’ in ‘Oh, Those Crooked Airport Pols.’ The same toon plays Cherry, Kelly Welly, and now Sam Hill. Those years of study at the Old Vic certainly paid off.” –Islamorada Girl

“Mrs. Lockhorn is right, life is not like a box of chocolates; chocolate goes straight to your hips, and Leroy hasn’t paid a visit to that region in years.” –andreavis

“If Milford’s Poorliest-Drawn Kidz Klub is going to help cure cancer, I bet their plan involves standing around like 1970s Sears mannequins in a lab and freaking out the scientists. ‘Oh, hey, are you kids here on a field trip?’ [Eerie silence.] ‘I said, are you here on a field trip? Do you want to watch me titrate this sample?’ [Eerie silence.] ‘Oh. Oh, no.'” –Yitzchok

“When Mike says ‘I’ll get it gassed up and ready,’ he’s actually referring to the Pattersons’ secret basement death chamber. The poor realtor will regret the day he sold them that tree-magnet of a house.” –Steve S

[On Funky Winkerbean]: “Doomlarity will ensue.” –Jym

“Don’t you just love the look on Heather’s face? Her internal thermostat has run up from ‘Nanny’ to ‘Au Pair’ to ‘Governess’ to ‘Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS.'” –willethompson

“I’m off till Tuesday, secure in the knowledge that, when I return … county commissioners will still be behaving like typical liberal politicians who think any problem can be solved simply by throwing more birds at it.” –gh

“For someone’s who’s never had to drink from a glass without his butler’s assistance, Von’s a quick study: ‘Perhaps if I pour it on my forehead? Hmm, that didn’t work. No no, let me be, Jeeves, I want to puzzle this out for myself. Ah, what about into my ear? Unsatisfactory. It can’t be too difficult, surely. Poor people seem to manage it. Think, Von, think!'” –Old Bean

“I wonder if this was sent in by a dentist or a denture wearer. If it was sent in by a dentist, I find it very endearing that, when confronted by an obvious lie about broken dentures, the dentist’s vision of the awful truth is a brushing accident, and not the insane meth-induced BDSM/tooth breaking fetish nightmare that I would naturally lean towards. ‘Spongecake” indeed.” –evie oh oh

“Does the government keep a list of people aroused by reading Slylock Fox? Just looking at the strip makes me feel bad inside. It’s like getting off on the Junior Jumble.” –Flealick

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