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Shoe, 10/24/05

Isn’t it enough, O current toilers over at Shoe central, that you have glommed onto the legacy of a successful comic strip and can pretty much blather on in a vaguely amusing fashion over two or three panels every day because if the strip were to get pulled, dozens of doddering Korean War veterans would write nasty leaders saying that they didn’t get strafed by the Red Chinese just so they could come home to a nation so ungrateful that it took their favorite comic out of the paper? Don’t you at least have the common courtesy to make the jokes in Shoe relate in some peripheral way to the characters and/or setting? Did you have no other way to offer up this lame-ass, heaving, flopping, stinking, sorry slab of non-humor than in the context of a completely nonsensical “letter to the editor” that no one would ever, ever write? Were you so bursting with anticipation on this joke that you felt you had to share it with all of us, those who fought honorably in Korea and those who did not? Were there no family barbecues where you could trot out this little number and let it die a deserved death? Were there no brothers in law or adorable towheaded nephews you could inflict it upon? Did it have to be this way? Have you no sense of decency, sirs, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

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I’ve been remiss in thanking our very own Islamorada Girl (who sent it) and our very own Beasley (who appraised it) for a fab wedding gift I received a few days ago: the Sunday comics section from the Baltimore American on April 26, 1942. My reactions?

• “Wow, every comic got, like, half a page each!”
• “Wow, everybody’s in the army!”
• “Wow, the Phantom sure used to be a lot more racist!”

Fortunately, except for the kids being younger, Blondie hasn’t changed much:

There’s a breast-feeding joke here somewhere, but I’m too classy to really go for it.

I’m taking a quick trip back to see the family in Buffalo this weekend. I’d say that it would interrupt the flow of comics, but that flow got interrupted quite nicely this week without any trips, now, didn’t it? So let’s just say that I’m going to take a pass on Saturday and Sunday’s comics, unless something really wacky happens, like more hand-jiving.

Stuff to entertain and/or distract you while I’m gone:

• Dub Not Dubya’s Gil Thorp-Mallard Fillmore mashup
• A deeply weird reimagining of Rex Morgan, M.D.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/19/05

Rex looks puzzled and anxious in panel three. Missing thought balloon: “Soccer ball? Does he think I went to some kind of European medical school! Damn it man, try to hold it together!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/05

Lu Ann, your engagement is falling apart! Your love life is crisis! This is no time for hand-jiving!

Hagar the Horrible, 10/21/05

Yeah, it’s just as ridiculous as saying that people will play a game that involves knocking a tiny ball into a hole with little sticks! Or that there will be an organized medical profession! Or institutionalized and regular taxation! Or … oh, why do I bother?