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Mary Worth, 3/22/05

I’ve read the comics obsessively for a long time, so I think I can say with some authority that one thing you very rarely see depicted in the funny pages is someone holding a hand to his or her mouth in order to prevent vomit from getting on the rug. It’s even rarer that said vomit is the herald of good news, as Anna’s barf clearly is meant to be. Given the stately and deliberate pace of this strip, I expect at least two or three days of Mrs. Dr. Brian on her knees bowing before the porcelain god, her body giving rapturous thanks for the precious new life germinating in her hitherto barren womb by desperately trying to expel last night’s dinner into the Santa Royale municipal sewer system. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing how the sound effects are transliterated. Hopefully she’ll just drop the phone to the floor as she dashes into the bathroom to hurl, so we’ll get some more of Mary’s nonverbal bafflement indicators as well.

Mary Worth isn’t just entertaining; it’s also a message strip. And today it’s clear what the message of this storyline is: if you refuse to deal with a problem long enough, it will eventually solve itself.

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Judge Parker, 3/21/05

“But seriously, Josh,” I hear you asking, “What’s been happening in Judge Parker for the past month?” Well, I’ll tell you: a whole lot of nothing (or, as they say in the strip’s current south-of-the-border locale, nada). Sam has arrived in Mexico, spoken with Gloria, and gone back with this priest to his church. That’s taken something like five weeks. It makes Mary Worth look like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The strip is so parched for excitement that an entirely gratuitous exclamation point has been added to the first panel’s exposition in an attempt to make the “short drive out of town” sound like some kind of adrenaline-fueled car chase sequence.

That being said, I’m kind of intrigued by the underlying religio-cultural tensions in today’s dialog between Sam and Father David. To that end, I’d like to introduce what could (if I feel like it) become the first installment of an occasional feature: What They Say and What They Mean.

Um … OK, so that was in poor taste. Watch this space for a future installment of What They Say and What They Mean, assuming I’m not fleeing for my life from the combined forces of the Jesuits and the federales.

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For Better Or For Worse, 3/20/05

So very, very disturbing. So very, very, very low on my list of potential FBOFW erotic fantasy sequences, coming in just below the Deanna’s mom-on-Lovey lesbian scene. I hope that, when I get so old that my sex life happens entirely in my head, my meanderings aren’t so clichéd.

Now, many of you have already remarked on this unpleasant bit of business in the comments section, so what do I have contribute? Well, in panel two there, if those where real Greek letters, Grandpa would be getting something called rsrreums poured on his head. There, no need to thank me, that’s what we in the biz call a value-add. Those six semesters of Greek sure were a good investment for the future. Yesiree.