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Marvin, 10/21/06

Behold, the first nice thing I’ve ever said about Marvin: whereas most comics engage in rampant grandparent worship, treating our elders as endlessly loving and patient repositories of wisdom and affection, Marvin dares to say what no one else will: that old people are just as likely to be as vain, self-serving, emotionally manipulative, gold-digging, and cranky as the rest of us. All of last week, Daddy Marvin’s mother held the Marvin household in a reign of terror, humiliating her daughter-in-law and emasculating her son; you can see the aftereffects of the visit in the numb stares of the entire family in panel one. Not even the wise-cracking baby has emerged from the ordeal with a shred of affection for the old bag intact.

Mary Worth, 10/21/06

Speaking of old bags, this Mary Worth reveals both why hospitals view volunteers as a double-edged sword and why adult children are sometimes uncomfortable with their parents’ new romantic partners: in both cases, once they’ve been around for a while, they start to act like they run the place. I’m particularly tickled by the Cory Wonder Twins’ stunned expression in the second panel: “Did … did that hag just order us to present ourselves to her at noon? Oh, hell no.”

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OK, kids, I’m going to post a weekend’s worth of comics later this morning, but first: this week’s COTW runners-up:

“Death is clear cut/It’s life that isn’t/The gorge took Aldo/but mine has risen/BURMA SHAVE” –mdrew

“You guys can keep ignoring it all you want, but no one — and I mean NO ONE — is exploring the many, many ways the word ‘punchbowl’ can be used for humor like TDIET’s Al Scaduto.” –gump worsley

“I’m so glad Sam and Horace are taking the high road, keeping the campaign focused on the issues — like Reggie’s fat, rich, alcoholic wife.” –Dennis Jimenez

“I’m sick of mustachioed foob characters using their lips for things (kissing, trumpet mouthpiece playing). It grosses me out.” –anne

“Meanwhile, random crap just spontaneously happens in Gil Thorp.” –RoboMax

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Other times, it is a disturbingly inappropriate prop trying to compensate for the lack of visual excitement in Judge Parker: Tales From the Closet.” –Decker

“I was unaware of One Big Happy until tonight, which shall forever be known as ‘Black Tuesday.'” –Joe

“If they made a movie about Gil Thorp they could just use chunks of firewood. It would be no less lifelike than the characters, and since all the action happens offscreen it really doesn’t matter that they’re inanimate.” –RentedMule

“I’m concerned about the lumpiness of the chaplain [in Beetle Bailey]. His head is nothing but tumor on top of tumor. And I’m guessing that odd crescent-wedge below his nose is his mouth, but the mechanics of his jaw frighten me.” –Blueline

“Then they could have a domestic disturbance, because a plugger marriage counselor is an episode of Cops.” –Steve S

JP: “‘You know what the doctor said about cigars!’ …Dr. Freud? Yeah, we know.” –Mibbitmaker

“Mary’s going to try another route to reach Dr. Jeff Cory? I think I get what’s intimated here but the way she said it it sounds like she may have just realized that the world is in fact round. ‘He’s so far away! But I can try another route, heading west to get to the Indies instead of our usual eastern trade route! That will show you all.'” –arlo

“‘Your husband can’t walk and has the mind of a child.’ ‘Then at least he’s happy.’ Yeah, happy as a child who CAN’T WALK!” –Ran

“And Horace’s wife is a fox. He doesn’t care if she is 15. And his granddaughter.” –smacky

“Are those… things… on either side just above Olive Oyl’s negative-space hips supposed to be her breasts, sagging and torn after years and years of over-zealous manipulation at the spinach-fueled fingers of her cyclopean beau?!” –Wirrrn

“I think Mark Trail has honestly stopped caring. For the past three days, it’s, ‘We should save Molly … yep … any time now. Ah, forget it. Lets just drink beer and talk about how they’re going to horribly mutilate her.'” –Monkey’s Paw

“Can’t you see that the poachers are going soft? Molly can melt her way into anyone’s heart. It’s Reverse Stockholm Syndrome. First they won’t be able to kill her, then they will save her from a giant mallard and everyone will have a good cry. Then Molly will eat them. Or french them, whatever.” –ben

“So, I know this is a problem that comes up periodically in the horrifying Dr. Moreau-meets-Git-R-Done world of Pluggers, but a chicken owning a pet cat is just asking for trouble.” –Cold Eels, Distant Thoughts

“So, when Dr. Jeff doesn’t return her calls, Mary Worth heads down to his kids’ workplace to harass them about it? I’m pretty sure this is covered in the definition of ‘stalking.'” –Donut

“This is Mary Worth and so disappointment is inevitable.” –Dactyl

“I’ve already given my ass to Margo, but Tommie has stolen my heart with her adorable self-doubt.” –dramashoes

Also! A fab new Comics Curmudgeon merch photo has arrived from faithful reader Non-Shannon. She’s working it like a claw here with her beloved bearded dragon, Sir Hubert Cumberdale.

You too can be like Non-Shannon by (a) buying stuff from my store and (b) (this is the important part) sending me a picture of you wearing it.

Finally, in a new weekly feature here at the Comics Curmudgeon, I’d like to thank this week’s advertisers:

• Very Funny Ads (powered by TBS) (link includes sound, so turn the volume down if you’re at work)
• PETA’s Boycott KFC video (starring Pamela Anderson)

If you’d like to join these fine advertisers on the site, click here to get started.

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Judge Parker, 10/20/06

FOR GOD’S SAKE, SAM, HAVE SEX WITH YOUR WIFE! Jeez, how clear to she and her left breast have to make it to you? Because if you don’t service this hot, mature, mulleted woman, that job is going to get “outsourced to India” when the kids get home from the party, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Blondie, 10/20/06

I think what everyone is thinking in panel two is not, “Ew, this kid hasn’t washed his hands?” but “What is this kid doing here?” Elmo sometimes drops hints about his home life, but I think it’s all a front: my guess is that he’s secretly living a Dickensian existence as a street urchin, and that the food that falls onto the floor out of Dagwood’s structurally improbable sandwiches is all that stands between him and starvation. If he is a hobo-boy, it would explain his unfamiliarity with basic hygiene skills. This is the first time I can remember him actually conning his way to the family table though, though the presence of the bathroom step-stool in the Bumstead household, where everyone is over the age of 16, indicates that he probably at least washes his one set of clothes in the sink there from time to time.

Against all logic, Dagwood seems to treat Elmo like the son he never had, something that must make Alexander die a little inside every time he sees it.

Mary Worth, 10/20/06

Speaking of children someone never had … the fact that Dr. Jeff reproduced, and managed to go two for two on doctors, is news to me, and I’ve read Mary Worth pretty much every day for the last four years. Since that represents about an month and a half in Worth-time, I suppose it makes sense that I’ve never met these two before. It does seem a bit creepy to me that the two siblings AND the dad all work at the same hospital, which I assume is called Our Lady of Perpetual Cory (Messrs Haim and Feldman could both check in for rehab stints).

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the relationship between Mary and her non-sexual beau’s children ought by right to be painfully awkward. The facial expressions in the second panel give me hope. While Adrian just looks garden-variety confused, Drew’s face appears to me to be caught at the moment when the polite smile he’s put on for his father’s girlfriend is starting to crack. “God damn it, I told dad that I don’t care if he wants to spend the next six months in a whorehouse in Phnom Penh, but I don’t want to have to lie to his old biddy about it!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/06

Lucy is a master of psychological warfare, and Ted is her unwitting bagman. I can’t wait to see Tommie try to tart herself up.