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Momma, 8/3-4/05

If you’re wondering why I didn’t post yesterday, it’s because I’ve spent the last 48 hours trying to wrap my head around the fact that Wednesday’s Momma made me laugh aloud in what most experts believe was the first incident of its kind to date. I mean, it’s not earth-shatteringly amusing or anything, and it continues the strip’s baffling trend of setting the action at the beach for no discernible reason (though the seaside scene is much better drawn this time around), but I like Francis’s casual attitude towards his own sister-comforting incompetence.

The intricate network of assumptions and prejudices that make up my worldview was however strengthened by today’s Momma, which makes no sense and isn’t funny. I do kind of like the single wave of what I presume to be panic radiating out from Francis’s nose in panel three, but everything else about the strip (What the hell is a “Mothers Club,” anyway? And are we supposed to think that Momma considers 22-year-old Francis an “older child”? And what possible interest does she have in laxatives for him? And are we expected to find the “punchline” funny solely because it evokes the image of Francis crapping uncontrollably?) blows. In fact, the strip is so extremely not funny that it has retroactively quashed most of my goodwill towards the previous installment, leaving me disgruntled about Mary Lou’s wildly spewing tear ducts (is she crying so vigorously that tears are actually coming out of her chin and the top of her head?) and, of course, Francis’s tiny buy still unfortunately visible nipples.

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Mark Trail, 8/2/05

What’s that you say? You’ve been waiting in vain for weeks — nay, months — for another exciting installment of What They Say And What They Mean? Well, wait no longer!

Yes, that’s our patented feature … What They Say And What They Mean! Sometimes it’s even funny!

Incidentally, hasn’t the sky in Mark Trail been a particularly trippy shade of ultra-bright blue lately? Even in strips like this, which ostensibly take place at night? The fact that everyone’s skin is chalk-white makes for extra psychadeliosity. Maybe the mega-amphibian in panel two is meant to stand in for the uncompromising toad-licking that the censors wouldn’t let Jack Elrod show.

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FoxTrot, 8/2/05

Look at panel four! I believe that what we’re looking at here is the first visually confirmed case of cooties on record. Long rumored to be the result of contact between prepubescent boys and girls but dismissed as a fantasy by the medical establishment, we now know that cooties do exist — and, more alarmingly, can be spread electronically.

OK, seriously though, can anyone tell me what the deal is with Jason’s face? ‘Cause if it’s not cooties, I got nothing.

One of the problems of kids in comics who don’t age (which I suppose is every comics child outside of For Better Or For Worse) is that behaviors that are no doubt charming or at least vaguely tolerable for the year or so they last in real life become deeply irritating as they go on in eternal comics time. Jason’s anxious avoision to girls in general and his obvious soul mate Eileen in particular is a prime example. I can’t sum up this attitude any better than the Simpsons’ Jimbo Jones: “Dude, you kissed a girl! That is so gay!”