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Hagar the Horrible, 5/14/05

I’m not even going to dwell on the ostensible humor content of this strip. I mean, I really think a pair of bloodthirsty Viking warriors and one of their Valkyrie-like mates could think of “something” to get the attention of the waiter that’s a little more forceful than standing on the furniture. That “something” should at a bare minimum involve the severed head of the maître d’ and a rusty pike if any of our diners want to have a hope of entering Valhalla in gore-soaked triumph.

But what I’m really worried about his the The Horribles’ domestic situation. Specifically, what kind of married couple goes out on a date to a fancy romantic restaurant and brings the husband’s dorky sidekick along? Couples in trouble, that’s what kind! Are Hagar and Helga so terrified by the prospect of staring across the table at one another with nothing to say that they’ve dragged Lucky “Third Wheel” Eddie (or maybe that should be “Lucky” “Third Wheel” Eddie) along to break up the long, painful silences with his patented brand of deliberately-missing-the-point comedy? Or maybe I’m coming at things from the wrong angle: maybe Lucky Eddie has become so well-beloved by the hardcore Hagar the Horrible audience (which, against all logic, I feel must exist somewhere, or else why does the strip persist in existing?) that every time he fails to make an appearance in the strip, angry letters pour in to King Features Syndicate. Perhaps some day, after Hagar and Helga have converted to Christianity and gone off to raise sheep in Iceland, the strip will follow the lead of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and be called Hagar the Horrible and Lucky Eddie, with decades passing between appearances of the former. It’ll be just like Joey, but (and I can’t believe I’m typing this) not as funny.

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Apartment 3-G, 5/13/05

As a long-time New York Mets fan and registered Democrat, I love lost causes. Thus, every time Apartment 3-G wraps up another exciting adventure, I keep rooting for the next one to feature Tommie. There’s all sorts of wacky plotlines just waiting in her mysterious, off-cameral life, I just know it! Maybe they could revolve around medical issues she encounters on her job — like the millions of Americans who lack health insurance! There’s something that nobody has the guts to tackle in the funny pages.

Instead, though, it looks like we’re going to have to sit through eight and a half boring weeks of a boring boring storyline about Lu Ann’s boring boring boring love life, which, as you may have guessed, I don’t find very interesting. My hopes were briefly raised this week that we’d at least get to see that saintly art teacher fired and reduced to eating cat food and turning tricks down at Port Authority in order to keep making her rent, but alas, there’s only sweet, chaste, Apartment 3-G-style romance in the cards for her. As an example of why Lu Ann’s romance storylines are so dull, we need only take a good look at the “gorgeous” object of her lustful rumination: he’s just some guy who looks like every other dark-haired, suit-wearing, 1950s-white-collar-job-holding male character who’s wandered in and out of this strip (and they are legion).

I do admit that I’m intrigued by the no-color view through the window of Dr. Fielding’s office, though. Is that pane of glass really a one-way mirror that the lusty headmistress uses to spy on choice morsels who come into the outer office and do nonspecific but plausible-looking things with pieces of paper? Too bad Lu Ann is such a goody-goody with a terror of authority figures; the two of them could bond by engaging in construction-worker-like catcalls together. “I’d like to service his project — and not for our school, either!”

A word of Lu Ann-management advice for her future paramour: if you really want to get her all hot and bothered, just don’t fire her! As we saw yesterday, it’s apparently the equivalent of giving her an enormous amount of Ecstasy.

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Mark Trail, 5/12/05

It’s fun, in a self-psycho-analysis kind of way, to watch delusions of grandeur slowly transform into paranoia. For instance, now that I know that at least one comics writer reads my blog, I’ve come to assume that all comics creators do. This means that just about anything that happens in any comic could be a reaction to things said here!

Take Mark Trail, for instance. Jack Elrod has long come under sustained and savage attacks, both by me and my commentors, for his inability to draw human beings and corresponding tendency to throw into random panels adorable wildlife animals rendered freakishly huge by problems with perspective. But today’s strip is fauna-free, and instead features a disturbing closeup on the wizened, crumpled visage of Mike, the lovable alcoholic hermit. When considered along with last month’s zombie sherriff, it’s almost as if Elrod is saying, “You want strips with drawings of people? I’ll give you drawings of people! I’ll give you drawings of people until you can’t take it any more! You’ll be glad for me to go back to beavers, moose, pelicans, and sea turtles once I’ve shown you what an ugly, awful creature Homo sapiens is.” And then he laughs and laughs, one of those awful laughs that gets raspier and raspier until it degenerates into hacking coughs that raise up blood-tinged phlegm.

At least, that’s how it happens in my mind.

Well, I for one say: enough already! Bring on the beasts! Not least because the human-interaction angle of this story is possibly the dullest Mark Trail plotline on record. An insurance investigation has made for entertaining narrative exactly once in human history — in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity — and there was at least sex involved there. Jack Elrod can draw a mean sea turtle, but he’s no Billy Wilder.