Post Content

OK, first I was too stressed about the election to write funny things about the comics. Then I was too depressed about the results to write funny things about the comics.

I’m somewhat over it now, so there will be a rash of new comics coming tonight. If you want to know how I feel about the election, click here. Feel free to heatedly agree or disagree with me, but I ask that you keep all political diatribe comments attached to this post. Any others will be removed by me at my arbitrary whim.

Post Content

Wizard of Id, 10/29/04

Welcome to a new feature here at IRTCSYDHT — IRTCSYDHT on the road! I’m comin’ at you live from New York City, the Big Apple, Gotham, the city that never sleeps! Let me tell you, New York’s good for trendy boutiques and twelve dollar martinis, but pretty crappy when it comes to comics. But by plunking down 25 cents for the New York Post (which, by the way, is the crappiest paper I’ve ever read — today they used a dollar sign as an S in a headline, as if it were the title of a bad rap song), I got reacquainted with an old friend named The Wizard of Id — or, as the Post apparently calls it, just The Wizard.

Like Kudzu, this strip has long since dispensed with its title character as its main source of yucks. It looks like its passed through the decade or so since I last read it without missing a beat: still making jokes about the short little king! Oh, he’s a hoot. I like how he always seems to be running for office — as if he weren’t a brutal monarch who was anointed by God and could crush his subjects with an iron fist! O King, why do you waste your time grovelling before your subjects for their approval when you should be taxing them blind and spending their hard-earned gold on wenches and ornaments for your palace! Your majesty, you are not worthy of your crown!

OK, so, to sum up: Wizard of Id is still stupid. Still, I have to credit it with teaching me the meaning of the word “fink.”

Post Content

Peanuts, 10/28/04

The Boondocks, 10/28/04

When I was a kid, I learned a lot from the comics. For instance, I had a bunch of Peanuts anthologies that I read obsessively, and they taught me about how to be melancholy. Take sighing: from strips like the one above, I learned the precise emotional and conversational situations in which a sigh would be appropriate. Unfortunately, I had no idea what a sigh actually was, which meant that, when the mood struck, I would actually say the word “sigh.” This went on for years with no one older and wiser correcting me, presumably because it’s pretty hilarious to see a little kid going around saying “sigh.” Come to think of it, that probably accounts for a lot of Peanuts’ appeal. I add the Boondocks strip here as evidence that this trend is still going strong.