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Beetle Bailey, 6/10/06

For all you haters who are still hating on Lou and Kelly gettin’ busy, consider yourself lucky: we could be dwelling on the Halftracks sex life — or lack thereof — instead. This is an unfortunate topic that Beetle Bailey revisits a bit too often for my taste. While the strip isn’t generally known for its attention to detail, the look of shock and alarm on the General’s face in the second panel brings the horror home. Also disturbingly well rendered: his neck wattle.

Check out the beret and goatee on our street artist here: isn’t there some aspect of the military code that forbids officers from engaging in financial transactions with Frenchmen? Perhaps he’s just one of Alan’s “boho friends” from Apartment 3-G.

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Crock, 6/9/06

You know, there’s a certain tension that comes from having sentient talking animals exist in a cartoon world where animals are killed and eaten. Usually that tension is sort of glossed over. But if you want to be a pointlessly cruel bastard about it, hey, knock yourself out. You wouldn’t be the first.

Apartment 3-G, 6/9/06

I’m not sure where Margo suddenly arrived from, but based on how manic she is and how wide her pupils are, I’m guessing she was doing rail after rail of coke while she there. I think all of us know that she’s going to invite herself along to this party and make some kind of horrifying spectacle of herself, which is actually lucky for Lu Ann and Tommie, since she’ll distract from the fact that they’ve chosen to go to a party full of artists and hipsters decked out in pastel suit jackets like a couple of up-and-coming Junior Leaguers.

Margo is not free of fashion sins herself. This is not the first time she has rocked the popped collar, but that doesn’t make it OK.

The Middletons, 6/9/06

Revelations 13:16-19: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Good job, the Middletons for depicting the mechanized beginning of the end times, and only three days late.

Mary Worth, 6/9/06

Oh my God, are Kelly and Lou going to start going at it right up against the wall? You haters hate all you want, but this is hot stuff! Hot … hawwwwt.

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Herb and Jamaal, 6/8/06

Jamaal looks like he’s selecting a volume from one of those fake bookcases full of near-identical tomes that shysters stand in front of in late-night TV commercials for law firms specializing in personal injury cases. Maybe the artist originally intended for Jamaal to be watching TV — an environment where his loungewear would be more apropos — but, like Jamaal himself, decided to do a little last-minute semantic shifting. Not that his internal musing on PC names for his loungewear makes any kind of sense anyway. I guess what I’m trying to say is: kids, don’t start with a punchline and then work your way backwards from there. It isn’t going to work out well for you.

Gil Thorp, 6/8/06

Who says the artists over at Gil Thorp aren’t very good? I have never seen a more harrowing look of sheer horror on any comic character’s face than the one that the Rap Dog is sporting in panel two. If anyone wonders how tough a nut Jolene Raptor’s going to be to crack, all they need to do is look into Brent’s glassy, terrified eyes right there.

Apartment 3-G, 6/8/06

“Things like … my roommates’ sexual orientation!” *sob*

You know, Lu Ann’s statement in the first panel would ring truer if we had even a shred of a sense of what Tommie’s personality was like. As it is, I think I can speak for the entire Apartment 3-G-reading public in saying that I have no idea what kind of party would be Tommie’s kind of party. “Tommie, I know you don’t like leaving the house or talking to people. Thanks for making the sacrifice!”