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Family Circus, 4/11/06

Ah, the desperate stab for relevance! See, Sudoku’s all popular now, and it’s Japanese, and … heh. Relevance. You see. Well, as a typical reader, let me assure you: it didn’t work. The Family Circus appears right under the Sudoku puzzle in my paper, but it still didn’t make this cartoon relevant or funny.

Also, this cartoon? Deeply racist. Sudoku means roughly “Single number,” and it’s an abbreviation for a larger phrase that means “the numbers must occur only once” (“Suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru”). It is not, in fact, anybody’s name. Keep right on writing those letters to the editor, Sarah Ditmars.

Sally Forth, 4/11/06

This is an awesome meta-moment … but Ces, you tease us. We all know that whatever Ted’s new job is, it won’t be as good as any of these.

In addition: Tan shirt? Just-one-shade-darker tan pants? Electric blue tie? Ted Forth is not gay, everybody.

Gil Thorp, 4/11/06

I think the commentor who suggested that Trey Davis’ t-shirt is foreshadowing has hit the nail on the flat-topped head: Gil Thorp must be determined to match Funky Winkerbean and Doonesbury with a depressing Iraq War storyline of its own. Of more immediate concern is the snoopy reporter in panel three, who is clearly Andy Dick in a bad wig.

Luann, 4/11/06

Hey Gunther, even if she did want you to put on a dog suit, this is girl who you forced to dress up as a giant pen at a comics convention in your doomed bid for fame last year. You might want to dial down the self-righteousness while you’re adjusting the invisible control panel on your forehead there.

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Slylock Fox, 4/10/06

You know how else you can tell Shady Shrew is guilty? His name is frickin’ Shady Shrew. If only non-cartoon-dwelling, non-fox detectives were confronted with a criminal element that chose names with such blatant disregard for blending in to the population at large. “Chief, we’ve got three main suspects for the knife murders: Hunter Vanbecelaere, Merrill Colagiovanni, and Stabby ‘The Blade’ Stabokowitz. If only we could find one clue that could break this case wide open!”

I was fascinated by Slylock Fox, which alternates between simple-minded mysteries and jokes for particularly dull children, since its debut when I was in junior high; I seem to recall that my interest was piqued by an appalling installment in which an adorable tot speculated as to whether our Lord in Heaven, Almighty God, could beat Arnold Schwarzenegger in a fight. I do enjoy a lot of the incidental art in its panels, like the baby elephant’s sleepy eyes contrasting with Mrs. Elephants righteous, mascaraed rage, or the skateboarding rat who’s wearing a bowler cap for no good reason. The fact that Shady Shrew is a transparent anti-Semitic caricature reminds me that I used to think that this strip was called Shylock Fox, which would be an amusing, but much different feature.

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The Phantom, 4/9/06

Great Caesar’s Ghost-Who-Walks, has there ever been a more gratuitous sexy-woman-in-her-underwear panel in the history of the Sunday comics than row two, panel three of today’s Phantom? I mean, sure Diana lives in the jungle and all, but of course it didn’t actually occur to her to change into sporty safari gear before flying home, so obviously she’ll have to change in the middle of this jungle clearing. Yup. Obviously. Don’t bother going behind a tree or anything … there’s nobody here but your lawfully wedded husband, and millions of comics readers.

But for my reader who’s always demanding that Rex take June to the beach: This may be as close as you’re going to get, so enjoy it.