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Judge Parker, 11/12/06

Oh man, Sunday’s pre-“Meanwhile” Judge Parker packs in as much queasy adolescent sexuality as a John Irving novel. The image of Ned sticking out her ass for her mother, and asking “You don’t think it’s too revealing … too sexy?” is somewhat alluring, but mostly horrifying. Abbey’s blatant look of mingled horror and arousal in panel five adds to the squirm. She probably would like to complain about her daughter’s trampy outfit, but realizes that she doesn’t really have the moral authority to do so since you can totally see her buttcrack in panel three.

By the way, Neddy, French women dress in sexy and stylish clothes, not like … that. Prepare to be mocked.

(Incidentally, Abbey isn’t Ned’s bio-mom … and I’m pretty certain Ned was adopted as a teenager. I’m not sure if that makes the underlying tension here better or not.)

Post-“Meanwhile,” the phrase “Nice work, Celeste … you smell like a still!” may be the best marital put-down this side of the Lockhorns. Still, it’s nice that Reggie gave her a full two hours get her drunken mess of a life together enough to get to the press conference.

Beetle Bailey, 11/12/06

There’s a lot to hate about today’s Beetle Bailey. It follows the weird stumbly, improvised, cumulative-joke rhythm that’s been somewhat typical of the Sunday strips of late. I also wonder what happened to Beetle’s perfectly presentable t-shirt-and-shorts combo while he was in the truck, or why Miss Buxley is the only person Beetle can think of to call in his predicament, or how Miss Buxley could possibly be so femme that she doesn’t own any clothing item that isn’t a dress, or any shoes that aren’t high heels. However, I’d like to reserve the brunt of my ire for the phrase “But it sure left its output,” which has never been and will never be uttered by any speaker of idiomatic English ever.

Mary Worth, 11/12/06

As Mary walks towards her date with destiny, it’s amazing just how rattled she is. First off, in the first panel she appears to actually be practicing her first greeting to her new archrival. In panel three, she looks like she’s sneaking down the hall way, ready to leap around the corner and bash in roller-suitcase-woman’s skull with her pan. But mostly I’m charmed by the look of grim determination on her face, which gives way to an utterly insincere smile in the final panel. Next week is going to be great.

Family Circus, 11/12/06

The lesson: You can’t have nice things when your kids are morons.

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Blondie, 11/11/06

You know, Dagwood gets walked in on when he’s in the bathtub an awful lot. It’s one of this strip’s stock jokes, but you have to admit that it’s pretty weird. But our nosey paint-jockey’s comment made me think, “Say, it’s kind of unusual that Dagwood is shampooing in the bath, rather than in the shower,” which then made me think “OH MY GOD DAGWOOD AND BLONDIE DON’T HAVE A SHOWER WHAT WEIRDOS.” Seriously, there’s no shower head, or curtain, or even a rod where such a curtain would be, and the soap dish is blatantly at tub-level. This strip shows the showerless tub at a different angle. This goes a long way towards explaining why Dagwood is so damn late for his carpool every morning.

Hey, is that a glass door on the bathroom? This gets more disturbing by the moment.

Mark Trail, 11/12/06

I love the way Jake and Snake — surely two of the dumber miscreants in the history of Mark Trail villainy, and that’s saying a lot — don’t ever form any kind of long-term villainous plans, but rather lunge at each new opportunity for evil like a giant rabbit at a delicious carrot. Sure, bear-baiting and illegal organ sales are all good fun, but why not engage in a little kidnapping and torture if you have an opportunity? Unless they think that Kelly Welly gallbladders sell for good money on the Asian market, they seem to be losing track of the goal here.

I also enjoy the reassuring similarities in the appearance of Mark Trail villains. Facial hair is of course an obvious indicator of evil, but the orange-shirted, non-mulleted half of Jake and Snake (has it actually been established which is which?) is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to the no-necked patriarch of the petnapping hillbilly clan from two or three storylines ago:

The Phantom, 11/11/06

The NEXT: box in the Saturday Phantom is pretty much always awesome. This one sent the phrase “Last night the Phantom saved my his life,” to the tune of the title line from Indeep’s 1983 hit “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”, rattling through my head for the past 36 hours or so, so I thought I’d subject you to the same treatment.

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When I logged on to my custom Houston Chronicle comics page this evening, I discovered that, alone among my chosen strips, Pluggers was refusing to load.

What could have caused such a thing to happen? Was it the Democrats? Was Pluggers’ down-home wisdom too true for Nancy Pelosi and her chardonnay-swilling crowd? Eagerly, I rushed over to the Pluggers Web site to find out precisely what truth it dared to speak to power.

Pluggers, 11/10/06

I was kind of dissapointed. Ha ha, it’s funny because he’s bald! I’m a little concerned about the stream of black dots emerging from the back of his head, however. They seem to be the same color as his eyebrows, more or less. Are those the last chunks of his hair, flying away in the breeze? Was that fancy sports car really worth the last shreds of your head-covering dignity, bald dog-man?

One Big Happy, 11/10/06

I usually leave the silent penultimate panel watching to the Silent Penultimate Panel Watch, but the instance in today’s One Big Happy was particularly interesting. Panel three captures that awkward moment in which you’ve told a joke and nobody gets it and so you have to stare or gesture or something to drive your point home. Of course, the advantage of being in a comic strip is that such awkward moments don’t have to exist; Joe’s joke would have worked without that silent third panel. With that panel in there, however, I almost think the strip is supposed to be less a vehicle for Joe’s slam on Ruthie and more an examination of how poorly he told it. His use of the phrase “real fast” in the final panel is undermined by the silent frame that preceded it, which, since comic time is ultimately determined by the reader, could last as long as you care to stare at it.

Grandpa, as usual, would rather be somewhere else.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 11/10/06

Having apparently completely exhausted the inventory of things that they will do every time, TDIET has now apparently decided to move on to things that even it admits they will never, ever do.