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Apartment 3-G, 8/10/04

Time and harsh experience have more or less cured me of my love for mean girls, but I must admit that Apartment 3-G’s Margo sometimes reminds me why I used to like ’em. No face masks! Lead hazards! Ownership responsibities! You set them straight, sister! I love the look of sexy outrage on her face as she describes these horrors. In the next day’s strip, she goes on a further tirade about historic building tax credits. It’s these kinds of riveting storylines that keep the kids coming back day after day. From the dialog here, it sounds like the ladies’ apartment building has only recently gone co-op; I’m sorry I missed that plotline, as it no doubt involved six thrilling weeks at a real estate lawyer’s office.

Bad-coloring-in-daily-strip alert: Margo seems to have taken time in the middle of her lecture to hastily apply some lipstick between the first and second panel. Also, the professor’s hair seems to have gone completely grey since the last Sunday strip he was in. Perhaps it’s caked with lead dust.

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Well, this blog’s varied and intelligent readership has met the challenge of last week’s baffling Ziggy cartoon. Josh “The Sedermeister” W. has this to say: “You presume that information cannot be extracted from the eyes/eyebrows of the characters. Well, my friend, I do believe you presume too much. Forget about Ziggy for a moment. The parrot’s eyes are quite telling. He has the half-closed eyes often associated with an evil or mischievous thought crossing a cartoon character’s mind. The eyes of a schemer. Case in point: ‘The Family Guy’s’ Peter Griffin, after seeing ‘free Tibet’ signs at a rally, informing China from a payphone that he has acquired Tibet and will trade it for ‘that’s right, ALL the tea.’ But I digress. Next take a look at the dog’s eyes. He has wide open (albeit small) eyes — the eyes of an innocent. So what you have here is less naive character corrupting his pure-of-mind companion by explaining a painful ‘truth’ to him — Lassie is a ho’. Imagine an older brother saying to his younger sibling, ‘You know, mommy and daddy tried to put you up for adoption but no one would take you — even when they offered a large sum of money to sweeten the deal.’ In this context Ziggy’s expression makes total sense. He’s the parent walking in on that conversation, disappointed in the lack of maturity being displayed by his progeny … while wearing no pants.”

The delightful and talented Laura continues with the no-pants tack: “Does the fact that Ziggy is naked from the waist down, and possibly pulling up his shirt to expose even more of himself, enhance the meaning of the strip in any way?” (That all depends on what you mean by “enhance,” Laura.) “Maybe the dog and parrot have something against nudists, and Ziggy’s annoyed that they’re mocking him and his dangly bits.”

By the way, I have already railed in this space against the evils of coloring in daily strips; in this case, it highlights the fact that the Ziggy’s artist is too lazy to draw Ziggy’s pants (which is still a lesser crime than being too lazy to put on pants, believe you me). A quick glance at the Sunday comics reveals that I don’t get Ziggy in the Sunday comics, so anyone who can add information on his pants-wearing in that context should chime on in.

Meanwhile, Willy n’ Ethel has proven a tougher nut to crack. One reader who chooses to go nameless says, “‘Will there be anything else Master?’ is a clear allusion to I Dream of Jeannie. And the bandage refers to the episode where Tony gets amnesia and forgets who he is. If you think of it that way, it all seems kind of obvious.” That “it seems kind of obvious” bit worked on me in my Apartment 3-G quandary, but it doesn’t quite convince here. I’m still holding out for a more logical explanation.

This is as good a time to any to offer a linkback to Subdivided We Stand, who makes an amusing reference to “Wilbur the Combover King.”

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Blondie, 8/9/04

Ziggy, 8/9/04

If we know one thing about Dagwood Bumstead, it’s that he likes to eat. I just never thought he’d get to the point where he’d eat his own pet. One wonders if he’s going at least have a go at becoming emotionally attached to the new member of the family before he boils it alive and eats its flesh. I’ll bet Daisy will work extra hard at being entertaining after that!

In an excellent book on the history of languages called The Power of Babel, linguist John McWhorter goes into an interesting discursus on Charlie Brown’s head. In the 1950s, he says, baldness was a universally understood shorthand for general dopiness; this meaning soon vanished from the popular mindset, and Peanuts got modern in many ways (with black people and jokes about the metric system and such), but Charlie Brown’s anomalous bald head persisted. Blondie has been around since the days of Prohibition, so perhaps there is some fascinating and forgotten cultural significance to Dagwood’s bizarre get-up — the bow tie, the single enormous button just below his sternum, the long, outwardly flowing locks of hair above each ear. Mostly I just think he looks like a freak.

Anyway, it was with the troubling image of the Bumstead family feasting on its pets in mind that I read Ziggy. This is no doubt why my first thought was that the friendly Eskimo-gram at the door was actually holding several pounds of exposed and neatly cubed whale blubber; and not only would such a thing be environmentally problematic, but would make a mess of Ziggy’s doorstop as well (click here to see what I mean, assuming you haven’t eaten lately). Sadly (or, well, maybe happily), the colored version of the comic demonstrates conclusively that our Inuit deliveryman is in fact holding a neatly wrapped parcel, so Ziggy will be able to put down some newspaper before opening his big box o’ blubber. My endangered-species objections still stand, though.