Post Content

Mary Worth, 7/28/05

Ah, the glory and pageantry that is a Charterstone pool party! Where tongs daintily drop ice cubes one at a time into tall, frosty glasses of what have you, and where the gentlemen artfully hide their middle-age spread by tucking their polo shirts into their electric-blue slacks. Today Mary, sporting her favorite paisley magenta sweater, is learning a valuable lesson about the world: you can be sucker who gets her treasured swans broken by an ungrateful houseguest, or you can be a self-important, intolerant ass like beardo here. What thoughts are whirling behind those guarded eyes in panel two? Is she thinking, “I just have more compassion than you, Ian, and can see the good in even the most self-pitying of drunkards?” Or is she thinking, “My God, he’s right — what was I thinking, turning my nice apartment into some kind of flophouse for boozehounds?” Mary’s face is inscrutable. And by “inscrutable,” I mean “poorly drawn.”

Post Content

For Better Or For Worse, 7/27/05

(Once again, not gonna piss off Mt. Foob by posting the strip here. No, sir. Read it here.)

So let’s take stock of feminism north of the border, shall we? Remember, a woman can do anything a man can do! Operate heavy machinery or what have you! And if you try to tell ’em otherwise, why, you’re nothing but an boorish jerk with a receding hairline and a misshapen skull and a … a … weird little … thing in the middle of your forehead! Yeah! Jerk!

This only applies, of course, to women who haven’t had kids. Once you’ve had a baby, of course, your job is to stay home and raise ’em. Yup, that’s what’s in your future till they can take care of themselves! What’s that? You say that you’re committed to your career and that your husband is perfectly willing to take over the childcare duties? You think that sounds like an equitable arrangement? Wrong! The gods of narrative will make sure that you come across as an emasculating wench, you … you … francophone!

Meanwhile, let’s see the proof that spider-sense doesn’t make for good financial sense.

Spider-Man, 7/27/05

Yeah, because the last thing I’d want if I had a high-stress job, time-consuming job that paid exactly nothing — like, say, being a superhero — would be for my wife to suddenly become extraordinarily wealthy. I mean, dude, you can climb up walls and what not, and now you’re feeling inadequate because you make less than your woman? I would definitely like to sign up for this sort of marital problem. I’m sure I’ll feel a twinge of discomfort, just before I dive head first into my Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool of money that I didn’t have to work for.

Post Content

B.C., 7/26/05

Here’s what the future Mrs. C. had to say about today’s B.C.:

“Some comics make you laugh, some make you think. Unfortunately, this one does neither.”

Actually, though, this strip did make me think, specifically about what ol’ Johnny’s smoking, what with his legs-protuding-out-of-the-armipits fish there. Because you know that the idea of some sort of fish that could, in defiance of God’s law, go up on land is totally removed from reality.