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Apartment 3-G, 2/6/05

I know, I know, I know, Apartment 3-G isn’t even really that interesting right now, and yet I just can’t look away. It’s a disorder, I freely admit. Fun observations about this installment:

• Margo really likes hanging around the apartment in very short skirts. By which I mean: somebody really likes drawing Margo hanging around the apartment in very short skirts.
• Bottom row, middle panel: Mim needs to be nice so as to stay out of the homeless shelter, but I’m guessing that what they actually say at home doesn’t include the “someone who is so bright” bit.
• Last panel: I love the look on Margo’s face. You’d think Mim had just said, “The person who’s having the baby is me … and in fact, I’m having it right now! Say, do you think Margo will mind if I put the afterbirth in her purse?”

Meanwhile, the fact that Tommie wears that crazy fetishistic uniform makes me all the more resent her marginal role in the strip.

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Blondie, 2/8/05

It took me a while to figure out why the first two panels of this otherwise bland installment of Blondie looked so odd to me. Then I realized that, most of the time, people in Blondie are about the size of Dagwood and Alexander in panel three; panels one and two offer an unusual closeup view. Which is not to say that we’re given any more details or a better view of things in those panels. In fact — and remember, this is just my entirely uneducated first impression — one might get the impression that panels one and two started life as standard-perspective Blondie drawings that were then just magnified electronically, for unfathomable but presumably aesthetic reasons.

One might also point out, if one were unkind, that panels one and two are nearly identical to one another, with only a few lines tweaked. But to do so would be gauche.

Question for you: has anyone ever worn both an old-school letterman jacket and a jauntily angled backwards baseball cap as Alexander does here? Discuss.

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Get Fuzzy, 2/4/05

See, this is why I was excited about the Sun getting Get Fuzzy. It’s also more proof that a strip can be good without depending on a specific punchline in the last panel that’s been elaborately set up in the lead-in panels (yeah, I’m looking at you, B.C.). Everything Bucky says in this strip made me laugh aloud. Keep up the good work, Pinky! (I also like it when Bucky calls Rob “Pinky.”)

Meanwhile, a quick recap of the serials, since there’s a lot of action going on: in Apartment 3-G, Lu Ann’s niece reveals that she has gotten herself knocked up (apparently, she’s fled to NYC because she’s heard it’s all full of “roadside” “gigs” who won’t judge her moral flaws); in Rex Morgan, M.D., Rex is being suspiciously nonchalant about the discovery of human remains in his backyard; in Mark Trail, Mark seems destined to swim to the safety of an oyster bar, where he sadly won’t be eviscerated by razor-sharp shark teeth; and in Mary Worth, Elaine, the third point in our suddenly interesting love triangle, shows up and offers to give the good Dr. Good a family (if you know what I mean) right then and there. This last incident gives the Mary Worth artists the opportunity to do what they love most, which is to draw arm hair. I offer this retrospective for your edification.

And finally, to start your weekend off, here’s a case of life imitating Gil Thorp:

Melee Erupts at Alabama Girls Basketball Game

“People were screaming and running,” Prattville cheerleader Cherish Cartee said. “Girls lost their cell phones. Keys got lost. It’s something I will never forget.”