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Hi and Lois, 11/2/04

Of course, comics should have a slightly (or perhaps extremely) skewed worldview, but they’re best when that worldview is internally consistent. It’s not just funny when people say wacky thing; it’s funny when people say wacky things and other people react to them as if they’re normal.

That’s why this strip fails for me. Not only is Mr. Thurston’s question about cartoon characters totally without context and deranged (were there any cartoon characters running in previous years? Ross Perot doesn’t count), but Hi’s reaction to this question is exactly what your reaction would be: wide-eyed horror. That’s not a joke, that’s just dementia.

Fun fact about Hi and Lois: Mr. Thurston was once referred to continually as “Thirsty” and had the bright red tell-tale nose of a drunk. Now the nose and the nickname are gone, though the slovenliness and dysfunctional marriage remain. Maybe his question comes from a bad case of the DTs.

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Family Circus, 11/1/04

A week ago, I would have scoffed at the idea that any child Jeffy’s age would even know what marbles were. However, Monday I went to a nine-year-old’s birthday party, and you know what the gift that made the biggest impression was? Marbles! I was shocked, and a little horrified. You know, when I was a kid, we had to play crappy video games on an Atari 2600 (and what person born during the 1970s doesn’t remember the bitter, bitter disappointment that was the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man?). And so many people of my generation went on to slave away selflessly in the computer industry, for almost no pay, in order to produce whiz-bang, photorealistic, ultraviolent video games so that their kids didn’t have to suffer like we had suffered. And this is how they’re repaid? It just makes me sick.

This panel illustrates one of my favorite narrative oddities in the Family Circus: dialogue that’s half in word balloons, half in quote marks below the panel, and all half-assed. Also, sometime this week someone on the Family Circus production line decided to kick the caption font up from Roman to boldface. Maybe the whole family’s just been shouting a lot lately.

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Apartment 3-G, 10/31/04

Today’s Apartment 3-G trades in two vicious stereotypes about New York City’s residents: that they’re callous, and that they’re stupid. As noted earlier, we just spent a lovely weekend in this gracious city, and if we had been forced to escape from our cruel overlord by hiding out in the back of a flower truck, I think people would have been nicer to us, or at least a little more curious. (“Hmm, terrified, English-impaired young women keep trying to stow away in our van whenever we have deliveries to that mysterious compound — that’s odd. Hey, how’d the Nets do last night?”) I do like the pink- and blue-attired, stroller-pushing, fashion refugees from 1962. Their dialogue in the last panel sounds marginally less stilted if you imagine them as two little old Jewish ladies, though.

I’ve really been drawn to the Sunday Apartment 3-Gs lately. Maybe the evil floating heads have hypnotized me! Must … do … floating heads’ … bidding …