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One year ago today, I made my first foray into reading the comics so you don’t have to, though I built up a week or so of material before I actually sent out links to anyone else urging them to read it. Since then, I’ve been more and more amazed at the number of people who share my love-hate (but mostly love, honest) relationship with the comics, and who moreover enjoy my writing and each others’ company enough to come visit on a regular basis. I think it’s strangely appropriate that I began the day dealing with technical problems and ended it with some cheap beastiality humor. Here’s to many more!

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Marmaduke, 7/11/05

OK, Marmaduke, you think you can just keep throwing this sick woman-on-dog stuff at me and I’ll eventually give up on talking about it, don’t you? Well, I’m not gonna blink first. As long as you can keep slipping the “doggie-style” action past your editors, your perversions will be displayed here for all to regard with mingled horror and fascination.

Seriously, do you think this is proof that even the folks at United Features Syndicate have stopped reading Marmaduke? Sheesh.

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The Phantom, 7/10/05

So for the past several weeks, I’ve been trying to get a handle on what the cultural deal is of the plague-ridden African nation of Baronkhan (BaronKhan?). It’s a neighbor to the Phantom’s own happy post-colonial democracy of Bangalla and the obviously apartheid-based state of Rhodia. But Baronkhan (BaRonKhaN?) is a tougher one to crack. In this strip alone, we’ve got a kimono-wearing doctor in panel two (assuming that we’re looking through de-colorizing glass and not at a sepia-toned Japanese print hung on the outside of the building for some reason), some soldiers apparently on loan from the 18th century Ottoman army in panel three, and our Aryan prince and his native sidekick Tom-Tom (Tom-Tom?), dressed for a trip to a mall in suburban Ohio. With this melange of sartorial styles on display, I guess the Phantom can indulge himself in disguises he doesn’t get to wear very often. In this case, he’s chosen some sort of hooded faux-medieval get up, perfect for working the manor fields under the watchful eye of a benevolent duke, or possible for leading a pitchfork-wielding mob to roust out a coven of potential witches. It would have been a little more effective if you couldn’t see the purple spandex through his décolletage.

By the way, if you’re not a regular follower of the Phantom, you might be edified by the little explanatory footnote in the middle panel of the bottom row. The fact that similar footnotes appear roughly once every two to three weeks says something about the how long the Phantom’s creators think they can hold on to readers.