Well, I must admit, I have never seen 'yikes' used in a cartoon that conveys so exactly and accurately the reader's impression of the panel in which it occurs. I mean, yikes.
Gil Thorp, 6/14/05
“My mom’s a freak about my hands and lips.” Now there’s a sentence I can honestly say I’ve never seen in the comics before, and hope to never see again.
What’s with the Batman-villain-style weird angle of the house in the third panel? I’m thinking that, what with much of adolescent sexuality centering around the hands and lips, it’s the Rap-Dog’s little world spiraling down into a pit of despair.
Sally Forth, 6/13/05
Jesus, look at Sally and Ted’s eyes! It looks like they spent the better part of the previous evening taking turns hitting each other in the face with a brick. If you want more proof of the Sally Forth-industrial complex’s horror of day jobs, you need look no further than the bleak, puffy morning faces of our two-income couple.
Speaking of day jobs, seeing Ted in a tie makes me wonder: does anyone know what exactly Mr. Forth does for a living? Other than sit around and try to think of comebacks to Sally’s witticisms, I mean.
Curtis, 6/12/05
We’ve of course seen plenty of egregiously unhip fake “rapper” names used in Curtis, but I believe this is the first instance of egregiously unhip fake “rap” lyrics. Let’s take a moment to savor them, shall we?
Den ah snuffed ‘im!
I snuffed ‘im! Woo!
He looked at me wrong,
so ah snuffed ‘im!
Yeah! Woo! I put quotation marks around “rap,” of course, as an homage to Curtis’ tendency to put quotation marks around “rap,” along with almost anything else, including, in this strip, “complaints” and “Bullet-Wound’s” (and what’s with the hyphen? Is he an 18th century rapper or something?). Bizarrely, the word “spanker” in panel four is left unquoted.
The question that really gets me in this strip, though, is: how old is Barry supposed to be, anyway? I mean, Curtis may be about three years too young to be listening to the ultraviolent stylings of Bullet-Wound and Fortyounce and what have you, but I have Barry pegged at about three years too old to be shouting “yay” at the choo-choos and the teddy bear town and all that sugary crap. And incidentally, the top two panels of this strip were cut off by my paper, so I was severely traumatized when I downloaded this strip and actually saw Charlie Chipmunk in the flesh. If I had a little brother who insisted on watching this, I might have a very strong urge to, well, snuff ‘im.