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The Phantom, 12/4/06

Today the Phantom gives you what in the business world they call the “value add”. See, any two-bit superhero can give you explosions and fisticuffs and gunplay and what-not; but with the Big Purple Guy, we stick around to see what happens after the climax. Thrill as the Ghost-Who-Hopefully-Isn’t-Getting-A-Paper-Cut idly rifles through the Doorman’s files! Marvel as he and the freed slaves stand around making idle, awkward small talk waiting for the cops to show up! Look on in wonder as the Phantom gives his cell number and e-mail address to the assembled servants so that they can use him as a reference on their resumes! You’ll pay for the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge!

Beetle Bailey, 12/4/06

You may think that keeping the soldiers at Camp Swampy pumped full of Wellbutrin isn’t the best way to run a military, but if they can’t ever feel any negative emotions, they’ll presumably obey any order, no matter how atrocious, and cheerfully roll forward as an army of smiling, glassy-eyed, remorseless and conscienceless killing machines. One hopes that General Halftrack got personal approval from the Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey before engaging in his sinister psychopharmaceutical experiments on his hapless subordinates.

Judge Parker, 12/4/06

So, Eduardo Barreto’s been handling the Judge Parker art for several months now, and I’m still a fan, but he does seem to shift styles every once in a while, which can be a little unsettling. I guess if the history of soap opera comics is any guide, he’s going to be drawing this for the next seventy years, so he’s entitled to do a little experimenting in the beginning of his reign. Things did suddenly get a lot less shady and more stylized this week. Panel two illustrates the major artistic dilemma for anyone drawing Judge Parker — can you make Sam Driver and Randy Parker look like different people? Today, it’s all about the part in Sam’s hair.

The Family Circus, 12/4/06

Oh please oh please oh please.

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Monday and Tuesday comics coming later today, I swear, but to tide you over, I present some troubling evidence sent to me by readers.

First off, faithful reader David was alerted to troubling doings in Mark Trail by co-worker Joe Krocheski. No, I’m not talking about poaching, bear abuse, or wandering beavers; it’s much more sinister than that. Here’s the November 15 and 27 strips:

And I thought it was just the plot that was giving me deja vu.

Then there’s the e-mail I got from faithful reader Daijinryuu in regard to Sunday’s Family Circus:

Just within the last week, I stumbled upon a rather horrible, crazy-beyond-the-telling-of-it manga called “The Family Zoo,” which shares rather … striking similarities to this. Dad is an elephant, Mom is a giraffe, the two brothers are a monkey and a lion respectively. The only thing different is that the daughter is being portrayed as an ostrich instead of a snake. Also, Grandpa’s a toilet. It involves bestial incest and, um, toilet use.

He provided the link to download it, which I provide to you, but WARNING WARNING WARNING: it’s really really gross, with the pooing and the coprophagia and the incest and the lion penises and the hey hey. But if you want to appreciate the link-up with the Family Circus, here ya go. Faithful reader Sincere also posted a link in the comments to one of yesterday’s posts, but Daijinryuu pointed it out to me first (not that it’s a race or anything).

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Without further ado: This week’s Comment Of The Week is:

“Kelly is going to make sure ‘The Snake’ gets put away in a nice secure place, if you know what I mean. Plus she’s going to have sex with Ricky. Just wanted to make that clear.” –Donald The Anarchist

And the runners-up (also very funny):

“Man, this Margo/Eric thing can only end in tears. And blood. Eric’s blood.” –Hippocrass

“Is it just me, or is Peter Parker learning more about the meaning of ‘exposition’ than ‘Catch-22?’ And is it just me, or is he not really learning the meaning of ‘Catch-22’ at all?” –GG

“(DT)GT: Oh, my GOD! What in HELL is HAPPENING!? It MUST be HIDEOUS! I’d WONDER, but I DON’T CARE!!!” –Mibbitmaker

“Were I not already gay, Mary Jane’s Marvella costume would be enough to put me off of women forever.” –Teenage Bamm-Bamm

“We will always have Family Circus, because like a demon from the pits of hell, you cannot really kill it. It will simply come back, stronger than it was before and even more ravenous for the souls of the innocent and just.” –Mikel

“Funky Winkerbean has walked way too far out on the platform of despair for any ‘jokes’ to ever work again. It’s kind of like if a Dostoevsky novel tried to make light of the fact that everyone was drunk.” –bup

“The Home Depot® thing is skeevy, but Big Papa DeGroot trying to reclaim his lost masculinity via power tools is terrif. The guy’s got what he apparently thinks is a fixer-upper on his hands, and the first thing he goes out and buys is … a router. If this doesn’t end with Dad electrocuted and Brad at the business end of a nail gun, then Evans isn’t even trying.” –Michael

“Thanks to Mark Trail and Slylock Fox, I can use the phrase ‘beaver overlap’ without sounding like some bizarre pornography formalist.” –Eleven

“Granthony emits negative pheromones. I can smell them from here.” –Sheilagh

“To me, Anthony is the Monday morning wasted in an unnecessary three-and-a-half-hour meeting featuring a droning boss and a tableful of people trying to stay awake. He’s the temp job that required me to go through old musty incomprehensible files and dump most of them. He’s the wilting leftover salad that I ate because it shouldn’t be thrown out. He’s the time when I was ten that my parents visited their friends and their friends’ kids turned out to have almost nothing in common with me and my sibs, and we all still had to spend the day together. He’s the stale tea that I forgot about in the microwave. He’s the third load of laundry. He’s the email message that I don’t want to have to answer. He’s the solidified slush on the windshield that I don’t want to have to chisel off. Anthony’s one redeeming feature is that he doesn’t exist. Were he a real person, I would feel obliged to show a little basic human decency and try to conceal my feelings. But because he’s fictional, I’m free to hate him. I’m free to have FUN hating him. I’m free to join and converse with others who ALSO hate him. I don’t have to keep it to myself.” –Poteet

“Mom-to-be is on the event horizon of a black hole of degradation and madness. In a normal universe she would leave shaking her head at this Impending Baby Bacchanalia, but since Funky Winkerbean is more like 1920s Germany, she will doubtless have a S/M tryst with the stripper where undue focus will be placed on her stump.” –Concerned Citizen

“Do they sell MedicAlert bracelets that say ‘If taken to hospital, please give me a room in the no-bears-allowed section’? Because if they do, it looks like I need one.” –gump worsley

“As someone once pointed out, we at least gotta give the Phantom some props for an occasional superhero-ish type action sequence. If this were Spider-Man, the Phantom would have watched the crash on TV while he was out at the local JungleMart. If this were Gil Thorp, we wouldn’t see the crash at all. Elrod would have drifted off a while ago and started drawing freaky ginormous jungle fauna; in Mary Worth, the Doorman and the pilot would be going over the preflight checklist for a couple more weeks. And if it were Funky Winkerbean, the plane would have crashed into a school for blind orphan puppies. All things considered, I think we got off easy.” –SmartPeopleOnIce

“Josh, when you title something ‘Beard Patrol’ and it’s not about June Morgan, I get all confused.” –Marion_Delgado

“Also, God help me, but I actually found today’s Pluggers to be sorta vaguely amusing. It’s times like this I’m glad I don’t keep a firearm in the house.” –fillmoreeast

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