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Now and again, some of my readers have suggested that I spend some energy critiquing politically themed comics, either those on the funny pages like Mallard Fillmore or the Boondocks, or the actual political cartoons on the editorial pages. While my personal politics are not a secret (I called for a Red State-Blue State divorce after the 2004 election, and once implied that Dick Cheney likes to eat puppies), you’ll notice that I haven’t done commentary on Doonesbury and its ilk in quite a while. Generally speaking I see this blog as one where all of us, no matter what our political persuasions, can cruelly mock Herb and Jamaal.

But if you really want to see me get political, now you can, albeit not on this site. I’ve been recruited as guest-blogger by Wonkette, which, for those of you unfamiliar with it, essentially does to American government and politics what I do to Rex Morgan, M.D., (i.e., mock it and imply that it’s gay). I’ll be doing weekly installments of a feature called “Cartoon Violence.” This week I assess the good, the bad, and the ugly of cartoons from the editorial pages, but I’ve got some semi-coherent ideas for the future that may involve comics pages strips as well, assuming I’m not cancelled over there.

And for those of you who just wandered over here for the first time from Wonkette, I urge you to stick around for a while. Check out the archives, where can see all my entries on the comic of your choice.

Speaking of politics and this blog, this is as good a time as any to give a shout out to the libertarian types over at Reason magazine’s Hit and Run blog, who managed to find something like three different thin excuses to link to me last week, the best of which was an illumination of the issues surrounding eminent domain law using the current Mark Trail storyline as a jumping-off point.

And, apropos of nothing except that I think it needs to be brought to the attention of those who don’t read the comments on this site: you must, must, must check out The Outbursts of Everett True. This turn-of-the-(last)-century gem is something like They’ll Do It Every Time, in that it chronicles life’s petty ironies; but instead of whining about said ironies, the title character hands out savage beatings. For instance, have you ever tried to get a prescription filled, only to be given a generic drug instead of the one the doctor ordered? Why not assault the pharmacist with an umbrella? Everett also takes on cops, organized religion, perverts, cruelty to animals, and President Roosevelt’s spelling reform. A must read! Thanks to King Dogmeat and James Schend for the head’s up.

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For Better Or For Worse, 3/2/06

So, um, is the last panel some kind of metaphor made concrete? Or … is Susan a, um, midget? Oh my God, she’s a dwarf, isn’t she? We’re going to learn, over eight enlightening but grueling days, that dwarves can be teachers and positive contributors to society, and they don’t deserve ill-fitting sweaters, aren’t we?

That’s what I’m getting from panel four, anyway. It also appears that we’re going to learn that Canadian First nation children love the taste of dwarf flesh. You’d better look scared there, shorty.

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Pluggers and They’ll Do It Every Time, 3/1/06

We continue our desultory romp through some new comics with two that were interactive before the Interweb make interactivity cool: Pluggers and They’ll Do It Every Time. Both start with a seemingly sure-fire plan: give their readers what they want by actually having them write the jokes. But they take this idea and run with it in radically different directions.

Pluggers aims to celebrate the simple, upstanding, stoic blue color types who form the backbone of this great country. But I’m guessing that it’s unintentional that the life of a Plugger is made by these little anecdotes to look suicidally depressing. The Plugger never complains despite the daily helping of indignities heaped upon him or her. Check out the disoriented look on our protagonist today: you can tell that for a brief moment, he thought that the good-morning kiss was coming from a special someone who’s now gone, like his ex-wife, who’s presumably left him for, I dunno, a raccoon or something. (As a side note, the fact that the anthropomorphic bear Plugger owns a non-anthropomorphic dog doesn’t make this any easier to parse.)

But while Pluggers specializes in selfless nobility as a cover for self-pity, They’ll Do It Every Time serves as a channel for its readers’ pettiest rages. Heavy on the expository matter, it presents a parade of unredeemable jerks saddled with subtle names like “Migraina” who serve as the helpless punching bags of the strip’s ire. Supporting characters exist mainly to complement the main target’s awfulness (the little girl’s “Oh, Mommy … what you said!” is simultaneously incomprehensible and revolting to me). According to Don Markstein’s invaluable Toonopedia, this panel, which dates back to the 1920s, was originally intended to illustrate “the little ironies of everyday life.” If the last couple week’s worth are any indication, today’s version illustrates the little ironies of everyday life, inflated to the subjects of hateful mean-spiritedness.