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Beetle Bailey, 1/14/08

I actually kind of admire the spare joke at the core of this Beetle Bailey: Beetle doesn’t want to climb the steep hill, despite the fact that the hill’s steepness is exactly the point, because he is lazy and thus resistant to most of the activities the Army has planned to improve his readiness for combat. This being Beetle Bailey, the effect is ruined to a certain extent by the slapdash visuals. The presence of the plunger in panel two is puzzling enough (does Beetle plan to use it as a makeshift bludgeon in a last-ditch effort to avoid enforced PT?); it’s made even more baffling by its total absence in panel one, implying that Pvt. Bailey received and confirmed his orders, went inside to get a plunger, and then came back, coming up with this devastating zinger on the way.

Another problem: the “hill” is clearly a pile of salt or gravel about five feet on the other side of that chain-link fence.

Blondie, 1/14/08

When Blondie says “Well, that’s a real surprise,” she doesn’t mean Dagwood and Mr. Dithers’s shared enthusiasm for a fascinating period in American history; she’s referring to mere fact of Dagwood’s own Civil War buffery, which has managed to go unremarked and unnoticed in 75 years of this strip’s existence. Still, I’m looking forward to future strips where Dagwood affixes outrageous 19th-century-style whiskers to his face with spirit gum and goes trooping off into the woods with his fellow re-enactors. Look for history to change when the defense of Little Round Top is fatally undermined by one soldier’s forty-minute pause to prepare and eat an enormous sandwich.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/14/08

Haw haw! Oh, have you ever noticed that the men, they cannot cook? Becky probably has some difficulty in the kitchen, trying to manipulate everything with only one arm, but when it comes to cooking, a missing arm isn’t anywhere near as difficult a handicap to overcome as a penis!

Mary Worth, 1/14/08

OK, I admit it: I was holding out hope that the love triangle between Mary, Chester/Ralphie, and Ralphie’s Real Owner wasn’t over and that there were new shocking developments in store. But since we appear to be moving on, I now must acknowledge that this is indeed one of the lamest Mary Worth storylines in recent memory, which is, you know, really saying something. Still, I’m glad to see the perpetually self-pitying Dr. Corey the Younger lumbering back into view. In the wake of the dog of a storyline (ha ha, get it?) just concluded, we need his patented brand of ego-driven romantic disaster to cheer us up. Perhaps we’ll see him try various supposedly mood-lifting activities in an attempt to alleviate the psychic pain from his cruel dumping. (“Where’s this ‘methamphetamine high’ I’m supposed to be feeling?”)

We also might get to see him put his medical skills to use. In panel one, Mary is clearly rearing back in terror as that squirrel prepares to launch itself at her face. Tomorrow, Drew will have to do some emergency stitch-up work as Toby desperately tries to subdue the enraged beast.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/14/08

Now here’s an exciting story development I can get behind! Does Dr. Rex Morgan, outdoorsman extraordinaire, believe that he can use the possibly decades old and almost certainly highly explosive hooch left in this still to create a gentle, controlled fire that he and Niki can use to dry off and keep warm? Or does he intend to use the moonshining apparatus as some kind of improvised incendiary projectile to fend off their pursuers? Either way, excitement is in the cards! And by “excitement” I mean “massive second- and third-degree burns.”

They’ll Do It Every Time, 1/14/08

Tucson’s “K.L.” is in fact none other than faithful reader The Divine O’F! I’m sure she’s thrilled to have been Scadutoized, even though she looks suspiciously like Ronald McDonald in the second panel.

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Hi and Lois, 1/13/08

I’m not the kind of guy who’d fly into a pointless rage and rip into Hi and Lois … oh, no, wait, I double-checked and it turns out that’s exactly the kind of guy I am. Anyway, today’s Hi and Lois is even more pointless than usual. It is in fact the worst kind of Sunday strip: the kind that could have easily been a daily strip with three panels (specifically, the last three panels) or even one panel (specifically, the last one). Even without the two throwaway panels at the beginning, this pretty much has the vibe of a long boring story that Lois is telling that turns out not to have a point; add in panel one (red-hot UPC scanning action!) and two (Lois realizes she doesn’t have her eco-friendly reusable bags — what, does she usually carry them all in her purse?) and it becomes practically unbearable. For some reason, though, it’s panel five that really pushes me over the edge, and I want to isolate it to make my point:

See, if this were part of some meandering, slice-of-life graphic novel by Harvey Pekar or Daniel Clowes that ran to thirty or forty pages, it might be acceptable. But this is a Sunday Hi and Lois. It’s got six or seven panels to make its point, one of which taken up by the title. None of those panels should consist of a character making a statement of fact and another responding with a punctuation-less “OK”. C’mon, Hi and Lois, you’ve got places to be.

Apartment 3-G, 1/13/08

Speaking of long, boring stories that go nowhere, having subjected you to several utterly uneventful days of Apartment 3-G this week, I feel obligated to show one in which something actually happens — namely, the totally unforeseeable betrayal of Lu Ann. I’m sure Alan has a reasonable explanation for his behavior, like “I know she has heroin hidden in her teeth! I know it and I’m going to get it!” This is definitely going to be the most awkward art opening ever.

Pearls Before Swine, 1/13/08

I don’t have much to say about this one other than to add to the chorus of approbation, but I thought those of you who don’t see the Sunday PBS would want to have a look. The answer to the six differences is particularly hilarious.

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Judge Parker, 1/12/08

At last, the brownies’ “special” nature is explicitly acknowledged! Just what mind-expanding substance makes them “special” (complete with quotes) will no doubt be revealed in due time, which, since this is Judge Parker, means maybe by September. We know it’s good stuff, though, because in panel three Elvira appears to be so funky with ganja that she’s sporting visible odor lines, or perhaps her chemically altered brain is sending her down some kind of nightmare trip that’s beginning with her face melting and dissolving into the air. Normally I’d complain about the conversational discontinuity here — Elvira’s request that Biff respect neighborly etiquette and/or local general aviation regulations has little to do with her attempt to “turn on” the local squares — but these people are clearly so very high that we can’t expect them to make much sense. I’m looking forward to weeks of groovy psychedelia, Judge Parker style, which is to say that it will be slow, confusing, and ultimately frustrating, but there will be cleavage along the way.

Apartment 3-G, 1/12/08

The essential perversity of my entire blogging project can be summed up as follows: for the past four days, Rex Morgan, which I’ve ignored, has involved gunplay and our heroes fleeing into the woods in terror, whereas Apartment 3-G, which I’ve made sure to keep you current on, has involved boring people at a stupid New Year’s party. If you’re not down with that, then maybe the Comics Curmudgeon is not for you, my friend. Anyway, while we wait for Lu Ann’s inevitable discovery of Alan in the bathroom either shooting smack or offering to perform any number of unsavory acts in exchange for said smack, I want you to ponder this: of the 365 Apartment 3-G’s that were published in 2007, were there really not 13 or 14 that could have been combined, or perhaps even eliminated entirely, to so as to allow whatever Big Dramatic Moment is looming for midnight to happen in the strip actually published on December 31?

Family Circus, 1/12/08

Billy! As a native of Buffalo, the Queen City of the Great Lakes, I was doomed from birth to always have an undying affection for and rooting interest in the Buffalo Bills, despite the fact that with each passing year they find a new and exciting way to tear out your heart and stomp on it with their cleat-clad feet. Do not voluntarily pledge your love to them based merely on a coincidental match-up of names (yours being scrawled on your shirt, lest we not get the joke)!

Jeffy! There’s no such thing as the “Buffalo Jeffies”, but you’re a moron and so we expect no better of you. Your stupidity has in fact made you so well known that you don’t need any label on your clothes. Here, have a cookie.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/08

I have to say that I’m perturbed and unsettled by the verb tense in the first world balloon in this cartoon. “Did we ever argue like them” rather than “Do we ever” implies a certain temporal distance between the speaking couple and the ones being referenced. It would be understandable if the contentious pair in the background were a younger feller and his wife and the speaker were remarking ruefully on the tempestuous nature of early courtship among fiery rural folk, but the presence of long white beards on both men indicates that they have equal status as elders in this inbred hillbilly community. The only other scenario that makes sense to me is that the foregrounded couple are in fact dead and, like overall-clad semiliterate versions of the icy, reserved angels of Wim Wenders’ 1987 classic Wings of Desire, no longer argue about anything, but merely remark and observe. This would mean that they have been cursed by a vengeful God (who turns out to be some kind of liberal city slicker after all) to haunt the same chaw-stained shanty town where they spent their narrow, miserable lives rather than being permitted to enter the blessed afterlife.

Also perturbing and unsettling: “Honeypot.”