Post Content

Dick Tracy, 7/5/06

I’m beginning to suspect that this Dick Tracy storyline is an extended apologia for the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program; thus, it’s somewhat ironic that it brought up the subject of the U.S.’s secret monitoring of terrorist financial activities weeks before the New York Times did. Still, one begins to see their point: if our terrorists enemies are as dumb as Al Kinda here — who, while sitting in his Washington, D.C., office, changed from Western clothes into some sort of costume from a touring dinner-theater production of Sinbad the Sailor, and then greeted the entire al Qaeda network by name on his enormous wireless phone — then they probably won’t be smart enough to realize that they’re being spied on until they read about it in the liberal media.

Shoe, 7/5/06

Speaking of morons dressed in ridiculous outfits, here’s today’s Shoe. I have to admit that I’m charmed by the idea of some kind of Shakespearean method actor who refuses to change out of his costume, ever. Apparently, despite the fact that the vast majority of stage productions in this country feature contemporary characters dressed in essentially street clothes, the artist felt most Americans would fail to recognize Ye Olde Birde as an actor without this faux-Elizabethan getup, even though he utters the words “my” and “play” (in that order) in the first panel. This is a troubling assumption, but, sadly, it’s probably a safe one.

Mary Worth, 7/5/06

Ooh! Ooh! Mary Worth is being stalked! Mary Worth is being stalked! By, apparently, the world’s dumbest stalker, who appears to be standing approximately fifteen feet away from her and thinking, “Nobody can see me! Why, that branch is barely three feet above my head! I’M INVISIBLE! MOO HA HA HA!”

Oh, and: mustache, light hair — is our sinister fellow erstwhile Dawn Weston paramour/effette intellectual snob/violent rage addict Woody Hills? Dare to dream!

Slylock Fox, 7/5/06

I’m less interested in these so-called “facts” about peanut butter (no doubt supplied, along with a generous honorarium, out the deep pockets of the American Peanut Butter and Peanut Products Council) and more in the little tableau that accompanies them. From the look on the face of the groovy, hippie headbanded chick, she’s about to hit her breaking point. I’ll bet when she visualized her future as a young girl, it didn’t include dealing with a couple of buck-toothed freaks (are they brothers? father and son?) fighting over a condiment while she cleaned up after them. All I can say to Greedy McSandwicheater is that he’d better clean up those globs of peanut butter he’s spilled on the table, because that knife is temptingly close to his throat.

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 7/4/06

Ah, it’s summer! That means that Gil Thorp’s interminable and incomprehensible baseball-themed storyline has finally wound up, and the summer vacation hijinks can begin. Last summer we started off with innocent polka antics that quickly degenerated into a dangerous stalking situation, so my hopes for the next few weeks are high. This strip, which features hands and lips freak Mandy taunting the sexually frustrated Brent by forcing him to chase her while she tools around in a golf cart, holds a lot of promise, as does the return of squareheaded smart-ass Milford alum Von, whose lameness is confirmed by the fact that he didn’t flee from these high school kids the moment he saw them.

For those of you who were on tenterhooks, by the way, Mama Jolene decided to let Brent and his fluffy hair go to junior college because she got a free trip to Phoenix. No, I don’t understand it either.

Crock, 7/4/06

Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that this strip isn’t funny. It might have been funny, for instance, if “tar” and “mayo” formed some sort of natural pairing of words, or were opposites, or were ever discussed in the same context, really. Or it may have been funny if “mayo pit” was a phrase that anybody actually used in real life. But we’re ignoring that.

Even ignoring that, we’ve once again got a big coloring problem. Tar is black. Sand is … yellowish brownish, so I suppose the yellow used here is close enough. Mayo is white! White, people! Not yellow!

Unless it was, say, left out in the hot sun.

Like, in the desert.

In a … pit … of some kind.

Then I imagine it would get pretty yellow.

It’d smell pretty bad too.

So I guess the coloring job was OK. Which brings us back to the strip content. Which isn’t funny.

But I said we’d ignore that, didn’t I? All right then.

Post Content

Archie, 7/3/06

I have a deep, dark confession to make: when I was a kid, I was really obsessed with Archie comics. There’s something about them that makes the teenage lifestyle seem especially fun and glamorous to a 9-to-11-year-old. You think that high school’s going to be about dating and friends and wacky contests, rather than humiliation and social exclusion. I’ve always been afraid to revisit Archie since for fear of being horrified at my own terrible tweenage taste. Still, it took this brilliant article at the Onion AV Club to make it clear to me that not only does Archie completely fail to capture anything resembling authentic teenage experience, but it’s actually written by adults who harbor active contempt for young people.

Anyway, I recently started reading the Archie newspaper strip, since it’s available at the Houston Chronicle Web site. I’d like to believe that I’d have recognized at least this iteration of the Archie mythos as deeply lame even when I was 10, but I have my doubts. I offer today’s installment for examination only because it illustrates the casualness with which the strip discards the characters’ long-established, deeply-held values. Specifically: Jughead has a job? For which he takes off his hat? What the hell?

Apartment 3-G, 7/3/06

Um, she hooked up with some guy who wasn’t her husband? C’mon, Tommie, keep up.

Incidentally, I think that as a nurse, Tommie has a moral obligation to set a good health example for the America’s young comic-reading public. In particular, she shouldn’t take long, soul-searching walks in the pouring rain without a hat. I’ve experienced some hard times and heartbreak in my life, and never once when I was at a low state did I say, “Hey, you know what would make me feel better? Going outside for hours and getting cold and soaking wet! Yeah!” Call me an old stick in the mud, but I’m quite capable of moping inside with a cup of hot chocolate.