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Heart of the City, 5/14/07

Heart’s worries are all too well-founded. When I was in sixth grade, I spilled a pot of boiling chicken soup on my foot while I was stirring it and had to go to the emergency room; I ended up with bandages around my foot for some weeks. My plan was to refer to the cause of my injury as “boiling water,” but I made the mistake of telling someone the real deal and was “noodle foot” for the remainder of the school year. What I’m trying to say, Heart, is that I only wish I had hurt myself doing something cool, like cheerleading practice.

Wait, I think that might have come out wrong.

Slylock Fox, 5/14/07

Ever felonious? Try ever sextaculous! Seriously, if Slylock Fox is part of some secret long-term plan to make kids more open and accepting of the lifestyle of furry fetishists, I’d say it’s scoring another point every time Cassandra Cat appears, especially if she keeps showing up in paradoxically prim-yet-sexy outfits like the turtleneck sweater/tartan combo she’s got on here.

The amount of time our fox/mouse detective duo spend tailing (ha ha, see what I did there?) Miss Cat probably indicates their forbidden lust for her more than their desire for justice. Max Mouse’s infatuation with the sinister feline is well known, so it should come as no surprise that he’s checking out a Krazy Kat collection, since that feature revolved around a cat in love with a cruel mouse tormentor — no doubt the reversal of the real-life situation soothes his tiny besotted bowler-covered brain. Slylock’s appearance here reminds me of another episode from my misspent youth: when I was in high school, I worked in the local branch of the public library, and one day a patron appeared who was apparently notorious for exposing himself in the reading room, and I was assigned to keep an eye on him and kick him out if he did anything funny. He mostly just sat there with the newspaper in his lap, though not with the disturbing look of preternatural alertness that Slylock is sporting here.

Mary Worth, 5/14/07

I can’t even begin to explain to you what the hell is going in the second panel. Is Mary about to demand a horsey ride from Vera? A horsey ride of meddling? In panel one, Vera is following the lesson she learned from hard experience — “be ever vigilant in guarding your crotch” — so Mary may have had no choice in going for the backside attack. But since Vera appears to still be sitting on the bench, what in God’s name has Mary done with her legs?

Gil Thorp, 5/14/07

If Clambake isn’t giving down-home, country-style prostate exams by the end of the week, I for one will be very disappointed.

Ziggy, 5/14/07

Ziggy is going to die from some kind of venereal disease.

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Hey rockers! It’s time for the TOTALLY BADASS AND AWESOME COMMENT OF THE WEEK! Uh huh! That’s right! You know it baby!

“It would be great if someone revealed a cure for cancer, if for no other reason than to render the next several months of Funky completely irrelevant.” –Reedzilla

Hey and guess what? THESE COMMENTS ROCKED PRETTY HARD TOO!

“Oh my god, kids these days. They stick out a fist at you, and they expect you to just know that you’re supposed to respond analogously. Not like high-fives, where you slap the other guy’s palm with your tongue, or a handshake, where you put your penis in the guy’s waiting hand.” –junk science

“I think that Gabriella’s mystical powers and ecstatic visions are perfectly within the realm of believability. Only a great and powerful witch could carry the devil’s child to term.” –The Eleusinian

“As the tale of Cedric the Butler winds to a (presumptive) close, let’s play Judge Parker Mad Libs for a stab at the next story line: Abbey and Neddy travel to [geographic location] where they run afoul of a [social stereotype]. Fearing that they will be victims of [crime or impropriety], they attempt to defend themselves with a [household object]. The day is saved by a [adj.] [profession] with a [adj.] [noun]. Later, Neddy tries on a sexy [article of clothing], much to Abbey’s [emotion].” –Motorposus

“Is it me, or is Mrs. Coach Thorp a dead ringer for Resuscitation Annie, the CPR doll? And when I say ‘dead,’ I mean that I don’t want to poke around in Coach Thorp’s closet any time soon.” –Wonder Boy

“That second panel, with the locker room staring accusingly at the reader, may be the finest moment in the history of unintentionally unsettling things.” –Victor Von

“I personally prefer the drag queen/stripper name scenario [for Oki Merlot]. Also, that would explain the glittery classlessness of the Oki/Oaky joke. She was probably born in Northern Idaho and in a grand, drunken moment in a Coeur d’Alene Safeway wine aisle, misspelled and mismatched her way into a new life, a new mixed heritage, and a new cultural identity to capitalize on. Her eyes were swelled shut with allergies and regrets, and everyone just kept assuming things, and then after a while it just became easier to go with the flow, as they say. The Chopstick Chignon and Qingpao Qicanery are thus easily explicable as just so much overcompensating.” –SecretMargo

“I’ll take a break from my general crankiness to point out that just about every male character in A3G looks exactly alike. Sandy hair, indistinguishable features, bland, bland, bland. ‘Alan — I’ll miss you most of all — if I could tell you apart from the lunch counter guy.'” –fizzy logic

“Is Curtis’ dad a Foob, or what? His wife is telling him her whole family hates his chain-smoking, rap-hating guts and all HE hears is ‘blah blah blah Other boyfriends, Blah blah blah.’ At least he’s not dying of lung cancer or I-hate-rap cancer.” –dreadedcandiru2

“The smug batter from Central looks like a young George ‘Superman’ Reeves, only in better shape. And by a young George Reeves, I mean 42.” –John C Fremont

“Man, only Mark Trail could take such seemingly dull elements as bird-watching, airport expansion, and bureaucratic zoning and make them … actually even more boring than that sounds.” –GG

“FC: Jeffy has never looked this closely at Dolly before. ‘It’s more a snout than a nose, really. Fascinating.'” –Old Bean

“I admit that I have only been following Rex Morgan via this blog. Usually, serial comics move so slowly that you only need to read every third one to understand what’s happening anyway. But RMMD’s current plot is so convoluted that I’ve just given up trying to understand it. I’ve now accepted that it’s just some sort of surrealist commentary on modern life. A woman makes threatening phone calls! A man sits in ice cream! A lady attends a board meeting in a cheongsam!” –Rooser the Bruiser

“Y’know, I still haven’t heard a good reason why the local paper in Mark Trail apparently runs articles about which journalists are in town and what articles they plan on writing. Perhaps it was a puff piece, something like ‘Severe Autism Doesn’t Hold Reporter Back’ or ‘Coming Soon — The Most Boring Article Ever’ or even ‘Famous Face-Puncher Visits Airport’? Because if that’s what counts as a major story in that town, they desperately need a good spree killing or molasses fire or SOMETHING.” –Trilobite

And hey, you know what else? We gotta thank God, our moms, and OUR ADVERTISERS! Oh yeah!

• Autumn Lake: Good old fashioned Webcomickry (from faithful reader Mooncity!). The kind of comic Mom used to make.

To find out more about advertising on this site, click here. There’s a lot of space available! Also, you may not be aware of it, but you can also buy ad space at the top of the page, just under the search box, where the Google ad sits now; e-mail me for rates. ROCK OUT EVERYBODY!

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Blondie, 5/13/07

The saddest thing is that the central joke of this strip — that Blondie has been utterly charmed into an aroused frenzy by her pampering, and is eager to discovery what other surprises her husband has prepared for her, while Dagwood has one foot out the door as he’s planning to head out for a “men’s foursome” — is so in keeping with the well-established dynamic of the Bumstead marriage that I barely noticed it. The thing that really disturbed me is the heart that’s drifted up into Blondie’s word balloon in the final panel. I have no idea what it’s supposed to represent semantically. I suppose it could be “love” as a noun and term of endearment, rather than “love” as a verb, which it usually stands for — but then it ought to have a comma after it. Really, the fact that it’s sitting after a comma just makes it all the more anomalous to me. Mostly I’m worried that Dag and Blondie have ingested some kind of potent hallucinogen and now believe themselves to be conversing using abstract symbols rather than normal human speech.

Family Circus, 5/13/07

This strip is a subtle but powerful reminder of the strict laws of patriarchy that govern the Family Circus. Note that Dolly wonders who their mother would be if her parents hadn’t met, not who their father would be. On Mother’s Day, she assumes that her mother is just an interchangeable womb who could have been replaced by any number of other females from other times and places and their family would have remained pretty much the same.

I really enjoy the fact that all the other comics moms in Billy’s thought balloon are just sort of idly looking off into the distance, except for one. FBOFW’s Elly is looking straight at the eldest Keane boy in goggle-eyed horror, as if contemplating how excruciating it would have been to pass that enormous melonhead through her birth canal.

Doodles by Mac & Sack, 5/13/07

Someone’s kind of fixated on the idea of being crushed to death by a boa constrictor, and it makes me uncomfortable. I’m also disturbed the puffed-out cheeks of “the Doughboy” in the Doodle Zoo: they clearly indicate that he’s dying horribly as the smart-ass little koala cracks wise. I am kind of amused that the Doughboy seems to have lost his “Pillsbury” moniker at the last minute due to trademark infringement concerns, though it does bring to mind the notion of an American infantryman, having survived the hell of combat in the trenches against the Hun’s forces on the Western Front, being felled by an unexpected snake attack.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 5/13/07

I’m not showing you the rest of this strip, because these panels perfectly set up the Dennis the Menace strip we’d all like to see, the one where Mr. Wilson murders Dennis with a pair of garden shears.

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/13/07

Since Vera’s so angry at Von, it’s ironic that she’s remembering him at the height of his glory: all decked out in his yellow suit, shirt, and facepaint, standing in front of that blue door, and disco dancing like nobody’s business.