Post Content

Jeez, y’all have been busy little commentors over the weekend, haven’t ya? Anyway, new comics coming soon, but I thought I’d reiterate clarify a few comment-related matters:

• The spam filter is an automated, capricious beast. It is necessary to keep me from going insane — without it, I would get literally thousands of spam comments a day — but if it decides that you are a spammer, sometimes it will “retro-spank” your old comments — that is, find comments that have been around for a while and zap them. I will retrieve them if I can but I’m not always able to do so. This also mucks with the numbering system of the comments; apologies, but it is the best I can do.
• I don’t care what you link to in your comments, so long as you’re not just posting outright commercial spam or links to spyware or something. But if you’re linking to something that you might expect someone else to reasonably find objectionable, be polite and make a note of that in your comment.
• Please don’t get pissy at other commentors, even if they get pissy with you. Especially if they get pissy at you. Really, be a big person and ignore them. Do you want this site to be a center of rage and vitriol like every other site on the Interweb? No, of course you don’t. (Update: Rage and vitriol towards your fellow commentors, I mean. Hate on the Foobs and Hi and Lois all you want.) If things start getting bad, the comments will be banished to the Cockpit, but I can’t police people all the time.
• Do not throw around racial or homophobic slurs, or deliberately and repeatedly instigate conflict with your fellow commentators. That will get you deliberately added to the spam filter’s blacklist by me, and you will not get out. See the discussion policies, and heed Rule #4.

Post Content

Shoe, 2/23/07

To me, the tropes in Shoe range from the mildly amusing (“the Perfesser has trouble with deadlines”) to the bland (“Skyler doesn’t know the answer to a test question, so he comes up with an ‘amusing’ response”) to the irksome (“Shoe is hounded by his ex-wives for money”). However, there are few I find more more outright distasteful than “the obese older male birds hit on ‘sexy’ fortysomething birds who look like they have been used hard by life.” And few strips in that genre have been as unpleasant as today’s, in which the Perfesser drunkenly attempts to initiate sexual relationship with a barfly, only to be repulsed to discover that she’s even more intoxicated than he is. So, um, congratulations, Shoe, on bringing me to this new level of ick. Don’t feel any obligation to top yourself in the future or anything.

Apartment 3-G, 2/23/07

So the Apartment 3-G creative team had done a decent job depicting Albert Pinkham Ryder’s face, though his ghost is dressed rather nattily for someone who spent the latter part of his live a shut-in. But considering that most of Ryder’s work consisted of dark, moody landscapes that presaged modernism, I question whether he would go through the trouble of coming back from the dead just to help Lu Ann paint her bright, faux-Victorian botanical still lives on white backgrounds. I suppose he doesn’t really get to pick the tastes of the artists he inhabits. Being dead must be even worse than I thought.

Kudzu, 2/23/07

Most of the time, Kudzu’s hateful “modern bible translation” bits involve slang that’s at least five years out of date, which allows me to feel young and scornful. But I had to goggle at today’s strip for a good five minutes before I figured out that “friend” as a verb is probably supposed to mean “to add as a friend on MySpace or Facebook or whatever those social networking hoo-hah sites are that I’m too old and cranky to use.” Sussing out the meaning was made even more difficult because the phrases in the Lord’s Prayer it replaces — “trespasses” and “trespass against” in the King James, “sins” and “sin against” in more modern translations — don’t correspond, like, at all. It’s just an attempt at slapping in a random neologism in place of a word that may be vaguely suitable for replacement because in the King James translation it’s kind of archaic and confusing. So, in conclusion, I hate it, and it should die.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/23/07

I usually look away when Funky Winkerbean hits its high points of horror, but I have to ask: does anyone else think that the black blob between Wally’s outstretched arms in panel three that doesn’t seem to be attached to anything is his head? Take that, Mrs. Wally! You think it’s so damn tough going through life with one arm? How about going through life with zero heads, huh? Game, set, and match!

Post Content

Ziggy, 2/22/07

Oh, man! Zing! Who else but Ziggy would dare to make this sort of cutting, politically-charged joke about the Savings and Loan scandal? And only twenty years after the last of the fallout ended, too! Pow! Preach on, brother! Somewhere, Neil Bush’s ears are burning! And this time, it’s not something he caught from a Thai prostitute.

Mark Trail, 2/22/07

“That’s right! Mark will be none the wiser about the fact that I peed in his lake! I’ll be sipping piña coladas on a weirdly nonspecific tropical island before you know it!”

Seriously, I don’t know what’s more stilted and artificial: that Dan is narrating his evil plotting aloud, or that Dan is narrating his evil plotting aloud in a weird, circumlocutory way that preserves suspense about what exactly his evil plot is. On the other hand, maybe the whole point of this exercise has been to get that sexy second panel drawing of him shirtless, dripping wet, and perfectly coifed out there. If so, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, baby.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/22/07

“Yes, let’s go take a look … at my vagina!”

…

OK, I think I’ve gone about as far with this as I can.