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Slylock Fox, 11/20/06

There are some puzzling narrative decisions going on in this Slylock Fox. Apparently the artist has tired of actually drawing the mystery scenarios and has decided to settle for the thrilling visual spectacle of Slylock reading a word problem to a group of schoolchildren. Still, I’m so God-damned trained by this feature that I keep staring at the clock on the wall, thinking that the fact that it’s ten after nine is an important clue of some sort.

Perhaps once he’s assessed their fitness for detective work, he can explain how you can make a living from butting into other people’s disputes and solving them with elementary deduction. Max Mouse, meanwhile, is just courting death. It’s bad enough that Slylock brought the tiny rodent into a class full of predator animals, but Max’s inability to keep away from the teacher’s apple should by all rights get him devoured before recess.

Judge Parker, 11/20/06

As Raju heads off into the boat-wrestling sunset, I hope that we get lots and lots more Celeste Black to fill the void. I’m loving her swoopy arm gestures in the first panel here; presumably she’s performing an interpretive dance piece entitled “Jesus Christ I’m so hung over WHY ARE THE LIGHTS ON SO FUCKING BRIGHT IN HERE I hate you all”.

Archie, 11/20/06

Archie is, of course, a moron, but the setup for this joke was so convoluted that it’s hard to blame him for his poster verbiage faux pas. I’m more concerned about the fact that this placard was created in an art class, and yet is essentially just a bunch of words on a big piece of paper. The curved line at the bottom doesn’t make it “art,” and “Mr. Weatherbee” isn’t even centered properly. Pretty sloppy, Andrews.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/20/06

Sorry I couldn’t work up the energy to cover last week’s Rex Morgan, during most of which June was holding our mop-haired purse-snatcher at broompoint. If you only follow this strip through my commentary on it, you should know that we learned a few things last week about our cast of characters. We found out that Nikki and his trashy mom are Katrina-driven evacuees from New Orleans, forced to live in the slums of Rex Morganville because George Bush doesn’t care about white people. We also learned that if you take June’s purse she will never let you forget about it.

There’s some problematic punctuation going on in our omniscient narrative box at the upper left. No sentence in which the main verb is modified by the word “reluctantly” should ever end in an exclamation mark.

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Beetle Bailey, 11/19/06

Beetle Bailey is totally divorced from anything actually happening in the U.S. military, as has been repeatedly noted by everybody ever. Today’s strip gives me an intriguing idea, though. What if the reason that Camp Swampy was so unlike the real army is that nobody there was actually in the army? It’s just a bunch of weirdos/re-enactors/lunatics wearing a mishmosh of army uniforms from different eras who have got a hold of some surplus army jeeps and are playing out a bizarre drama for their own inscrutable purposes. The missile in panel five indicates that the real army has finally wind of their little game, and has declared war upon them for impersonating the military and sullying its good name with their rampant incompetence and stupidity.

The General Halftrack piñata is panel seven is just about the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. Since all Beetle Bailey characters are incredibly cartoonish anyway, it’s difficult to portray something that’s supposed to be a stylized version of one of those characters in the strip, so it pretty much just looks like the general’s been lynched by his angry men.

Curtis, 11/19/06

When I first saw this strip without the top two supposedly disposable panels, I was pretty baffled by Gunk asking Curtis to “take me to a mailbox.” I mean, I know he’s from tiny Flyspeck Island and all, but surely he’s lived in the neighborhood long enough to know where the major landmarks are. Panel two reveals the real source of the so-called humor: Gunk is such a wacky crazy foreigner who doesn’t understand our ways to such an extent that he doesn’t even know what a mailbox looks like! Whoo! This, of course, is dumber than a sack of hammers, as is the Curtis convention of one character simply vanishing in the last panel as a reaction to another character’s outrageousness. Poor Gunk never will find that mailbox, but that’s OK, since his hand-drawn stamp won’t take his mail back to Flyspeck Island. God, I hate Gunk.

Mary Worth, 11/19/06

Oh, so they like each other now. How depressing.

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So, too tired to do post of Sunday’s comics tonight — will do tomorrow at some point, but I did want to do the comments of the week. This week’s winner made me giggle with glee:

“Yeah, beaver, I stole your damned briefcase. You know why? Because I have so much use for tiny little beaver clothes and chewed pieces of wood. You caught me. Is there a little beaver fedora in here? I want one of those like you wouldn’t believe.” –bup

Other giggle inducers:

“I think the point of FOOB’s great love for Granthony is that it’s not what’s outside that counts — good looks, exciting career, etc. — it’s that Granthony’s soul is so well-suited to Liz, it’s as if it’s another part of her. Unfortunately, that part is her ass: pasty, blobby, and nondescript.” –Gadge Cubic, Mole Preener

“What’s with the unsupervised tike tearing underfoot in panel 4? Since when would Mary let that slide? The old Mary would take him aside and offer up some home-spun platitudin’: Young man, there is no ‘I’ in polite. Then she’d slip a hairpin from her well-coiffed bun and gig the kid like a frog.” –SmartPeopleOnIce

“I hope you like tuna casserole, with a side order of spite.” –Miss Alexandra

“It’s easily to criticize Slylock Fox because it’s simplistic, obviously written backward from the conclusion, and frequently uses puzzles that have been around for decades. But it’s written for kids! How better to teach them about the duplicity and rigged competitions they’re going to have to face as adults?” –Mr. O’Malley

“Hey, Slylock, here’s a fun fact you might use as a clue in your next strip: You can’t steal from a beaver because beavers can’t legally own anything!” –Meanwhile

“Hasn’t anyone noticed that in the time it took Raju to come to the U.S., solve Abbey’s rat problem, reinvent his image, network his way into a free ride at a prestigious university, and ride off to a glorious new future, Neddy is still packing for art school? No wonder they’re kicking our ass economically.” –cheech wizard

“Say what you will about the artist’s depiction of casseroles, but they captured Ella’s look of mild disappointment mingled with disgust perfectly.” –Citric

“I feel it my duty to inform the people that TUNA CASSEROLE can be rearranged to spell ONE CAT ASS RULE. Once I saw I could get the words CAT ASS out of it, I didn’t really care about the rest.” –Baby D’oh

“It occurred to me today that the pan of tuna casserole has made an appearance in MW for seven consecutive days. I certainly hope that tuna casserole is symbolic of something other than the fact that reading Mary Worth every day is eating away at my soul.” –DaveyK

“I am a fan of the notion that Ziggy is totally losing his mind and he is walking around his house delivering ultimatums to empty holes (that he probably made himself while randomly blasting away at imaginary foes with a shotgun) while his menagerie of pets cowers in a closet, praying to their pet-gods that Ziggy doesn’t snap and come after them and turn them into hats. Ziggy is much more entertaining if you view it as a short, dumpy, bald, pants-less, earless, shoeless, toeless man’s lonely slide into howling, drooling madness.” –Lyman Returns

“How can [Dr. Octopus] possibly get a job with his tacky wardrobe and shit hanging off of his sides? He’s also overweight and apparently has no reproductive organs. Hell, his superpower should be making people feel sorry for him.” –Concerned Citizen

“I find it moderately charming that the Spider Man daily has ‘downscoped’ from portraying world-conquering supervillains to portraying the day-to-day tribulations of the profoundly socially dysfunctional ones who can barely function as adults and take direction from their appliances.” –Gattamelata

“I am almost violently disturbed by Gina’s hair.” –Poteet

“It’s amazing how all Gina’s taunting has done is induce an episode of self-loathing. Is Tommie really incapable of pointing out that Gina’s being really rude? Is there a barter system I’m unaware of, whereby you can trade favors for insults?” –Donald The Anarchist

“Mark Trail’s Jack Lord/Hawaii 5-0 hair makes sense when you consider the fact that he is an outdoorsman and thus rarely has access to a shower. Dippity-Doo is to the well-groomed outdoorsman as perfume is to the French. All he has to do every night is pick out the pine needles and squirrel poop and throw a hairnet over it.” –Blissful Ignoramus

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