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Mary Worth, 4/9/07

Grandstanding oddballs? Grandstanding oddballs? OK, this … this … the people behind Mary Worth have to be in on the joke. They have to be. This is the grand calling the kettle stand. The odd calling the kettle ball. Professor Ian Cameron is without a doubt the grandstandingest oddball who ever grandstanded. I mean, come on.

Also, check out that faraway look in his eyes as he waves his hand around at nobody in particular in panel two. I know we think of him as being uptight, but he is a liberal arts professor at a groovy California state university who wears “nonconformist” facial hair and likes to bust out the burnt sienna leisure suit and get down on occasion. He’s almost certainly chemically altered right now. They can’t show it in the comics, but I’m pretty sure that throughout this whole pool party sequence, the Charterstone communal bong has been just off-camera as it gets passed around. Maybe that’s why Vera took off so quickly: over in Pacific Cliffs, that millionaire’s stomping ground where she grew up, the mind-altering substances came in little bottles and were prescribed by your private physician, and she looks down on this bourgeois tokery.

Slylock Fox, 4/9/07

I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that Cassandra Cat seems to now be a recurring character in Slylock Fox’s rogue gallery. You’ll note that she’s dyed her hair blonde since her last appearance in the strip, all the better to use her feminine wiles to slink out of a shoplifting conviction. Max Mouse is clearly besotted with a representative of the species that should by Cartoon Law be his greatest nemesis, which confirms once and for all that he’s an S&M submissive.

By the way, we also would have accepted “Because polygraphy is pseudoscience perpetrated by quacks, and Slylock’s half-assed guesses, based on equal parts induction and species prejudice, are just as likely to be accurate” as a correct solution to the puzzle.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 4/9/07

Careful TDIET readers (which category I trust includes ALL OF YOU) know that each daily panel, while a unique and brilliant masterpiece in and of itself, is often built out of a number of recurring elements and formulae, just like the epithets and set phrases that the ancient bards used to create the Homeric poems. I first encountered “the urge” in one of the very first TDIETs I commented on. Generally, the urge impels the urged to visit some horrible act of violence — usually something along the lines of skinning alive or burning to death — upon the perpetrator of whatever minor transgression is the subject of that day’s installment. Today, the urge is left unspecified: Alf is merely subject to it, and we are left to wonder just what variation upon it is rolling around his be-Kangoled head. It’s all no doubt baffling to the casual reader, but a nice treat for the true TDIET fan.

Dennis the Menace, 4/9/07

You know, as a comics reader, you sort of accept that your iconic characters are going to sport the same outfit day after day: Charlie Brown will always wear that yellow t-shirt with the raggedy black stripe, Dagwood Bumstead will always wear a tuxedo with a single dinner-plate-sized button in the middle of his chest, and Donald Duck will always wear the top half of a sailor suit, but, disturbingly, no pants or underwear. But scenes like this — where Dennis is wearing his typical red overalls and blue-and-black-striped shirt, and his mom is putting another instance of the same outfit, neatly folded, into a drawer that’s presumably full of them — make it harder to suspend your disbelief. Either Dennis has a serious undiagnosed case of OCD, or the Mitchells are very, very cheap and managed to get a deal in some kind of bulk sale on factory seconds.

Pluggers, 4/9/07

Once they quit the menial jobs that they hate, pluggers have very little reason to go anywhere or see anyone. Sometimes they just stay in bed for days.

Actually, sleeping in until noon is one of my very favorite things in the world, so, as a non-plugger, it’s disheartening to learn that I’ll be continuing to set an alarm even after I retire. I wonder what it is I’ll be doing so early in the morning? Having brunch with homosexuals where we drink mimosas and plot to undermine our commander-in-chief, no doubt.

By the way, apropos of nothing, I was checking out the Google search terms that brought people to my site today and discovered “make your boyfriend feel better when his dog dies” among them, and it really touched me. Nice lady (or perhaps fellow): just the fact that you’re trying will go a long way, honest.

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OK, kids, you know what time it is! Here’s this week’s top commment:

“GT: I guess the lesson is that girls shouldn’t play sports because they don’t think it’s okay to beat your own skull in and pin it on some other guy. Hey ladies, it wasn’t that kind of can’t-do attitude that made this country great.” –Artist formerly known as Ben

And the runners-up, hilarious as always:

“Who knew you could get hassled by the man for walking while black in Africa?” –Mac

“Pentagon Briefing, 3/31/07. Gen Halftrack, CO of Camp Swampy, was observed painting furniture on his porch by civilians. Recommended action: Assassination.” –reader-who-posts

“I see Mark’s friend, Dan, somewhere on a beach. A well-built man next to him says something in French; Dan doesn’t understand. The man repeats, in English: ‘It’s hot, no?’ Dan glances at the man over the top of his Ray-Ban sunglasses, takes a sip of a tall drink, and utters, ‘Yes, it’s hot.’ As the sun sets on the horizon, past tropical trees and ocean waves. Back in Lost Forest, Andy digs up the bones of Sally.” –Dingo

“Speaking of Albert Pinkham Ryder, I was fascinated by that Death on a Pale Horse painting as a kid. I had no idea the guy who painted it was so damned annoying. And boring.” –John C Fremont

“I love how Dennis’ mom’s face just reeks of epiphany. ‘Say…maybe birthing and cleaning the clothes of this poor man’s Fritz Katzenjammer ISN’T the pinacle of my existence!'” –Mack

“Were Margo to die, the decomposition of her rotting corpse would be more entertaining than Lu Ann.” –TurtleBoy

“Poor April. Now that she’s 16 she’s obliged to dress like a cross between Nikki Sixx and Ivana Trump. It’s Canadian law.” –Motorposus

“It’s nice to see that the ‘raising a little hell’ April’s birthday song referred to means ‘remaining a complete prude.'” –Tats

“GT: Those two may put the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional, but we all know it’s Mary Worth that adds the ‘unction.'” –Foobar

“Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can — as long as someone else does it.” –Lizardmess

“Yeah, Liz seems to be in a Schrodinger’s Cat thing of simultaneously unresolved frump or babe. If we open the box, she … Heh. Open the box.” –Jack Parsons

“I say, bring back Gary Dent. He didn’t hide behind word balloons. He let his hands do the talking.” –True Fable

“The guy in panel 3 of Gil Thorp has some interesting glasses, insofar as you can’t see his son’s hand through the lenses. Maybe they live in Reversistan, where the whites of eyes are black and glasses are for not seeing.” –Steve S

“The holes the Mudlark baseball team have to fill include shortstop, middle reliever and gaping plot-.” –t.a.m.s.y.

“You know, other families stage interventions when somebody’s in a self-destructive spiral of booze, drugs, gambling, sex, or other debauchery. The Pattersons have staged an intervention to try and convince a grown man with a wife and family and over $25,000 in the bank that it’s time to buy a house and let his baby sister have her bedroom back.” –No Evil Monkeys

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B.C., 4/8/07

Johnny Hart, creator of B.C. and writer (or co-writer? I’ve never been able to nail this down exactly) of Wizard of Id died Saturday. Today’s Easter strip is perhaps appropriately typical of his later work: infused with his religious beliefs, and largely idiosyncratic and inscrutable (numerology?). He liked to take potshots at atheists, Darwinists, and Jews, and as an interested party I have a hard time not taking those personally, but I’m not going to write anything mean about him today. Instead, I’ll just note that the dude died at his drawing board. That’s hardcore.

Here’s the obit from the AP via CNN. One of the things that struck me was this bit:

Richard Newcombe, founder and president of Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles … said Hart was the first cartoonist to sign on when the syndicate was created 20 years ago. “Traditionally, comic strips were owned by syndicates,” Newcombe said. “We were different because we allowed cartoonists to own their own work. It was … Johnny’s commitment to this idea that made us a success.”

This is the end of the CNN version of the story, but faithful reader pesch (who works in a newsroom and has reason to know) adds this from a version of the story he’s seen:

Newcombe said B.C. and Wizard of Id would continue. Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart’s drawings to work with, he said.

If I have any pull at all in the comics industry, I have to beg and plead for this not to happen. Say what you will for good or for ill about Hart’s work, but it has always struck me (despite that note about help from family members) as being indisputably his work. The best way to honor that would be for it to stand on its own, not to be continued by assistants cutting and pasting new dialogue into scans of old strips. Because of the way that comics publishing works, there will be a few weeks worth of Hart-authored strips still to run, but after that it should bow gracefully out. It may be hard to believe for younger folks, but Hart was one of a generation of young turks who shook up the comics page in the 1970s, and letting his strip continue in other hands denies that chance to others and diminishes what went before.

Some folks have already used other comment threads to argue vociferously about the best way to honor (or not) his memory. Feel free to work out your aggressions here; doing so elsewhere will get you sent to The Cockpit.