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Family Circus, 10/9/04

This has to be the meanest thing I’ve ever seen in the Family Circus. Dad smiles at his own cruel taunt, but little Billy’s face, contorted in a rictus of rage, shows that he’s now at the age where such make-believe games no longer soothe the sting of forced child labor. You can’t spend leaves at the store, Dad, and I’m guessing you’re not coughing up any real money at the end of this chore, either. Decades from now, someone’s going to be describing this moment to a therapist.

Comics sweatshop watch: no doubt the hapless soul who did the coloring for this strip is shackled to a drafting table somewhere in the steamy tropics, and can therefore be forgiven for making those fallen leaves a vibrant, mid-summer green.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/8/04

Fellas, don’t let the ladies fool you when they talk about wanting men who are “sensitive”, “caring”, “literate”, or “not felons”. Since time immemorial, girls have always gone in for bad boys. No matter how nicely they dress, with their big fluffy pastel-colored bows and such, they’re inevitably hanging around places where bad boys go — bars, detention, prison — waiting to get their hands on some surly, untameable stallion.

It’s good to see that the teachers in Hootin’ Holler, untouched by the educational reforms that have swept over the U.S. since the end of the Hoover administration, are still publicly humiliating naughty children Cultural Revolution-style. Also, Whar Th’ Boys Are would be a great beach movie in which four hillbillies, or possibly four pirates, came to Ft. Lauderdale on spring break in search of a little action.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/7/04

The avant garde-est of the soap opera strips (in terms of art, of course; surely there’s something avant garde about the recent dog vs. shark battle in Mark Trail) just keeps getting avant garde-ier. Today’s strip starts out normally and then starts getting trippy in panel two: Heather’s disembodied head smiles knowingly as it floats against an abstractly patterned background. Then in panel three, all hell breaks lose. Is it just me, or does June look deeply freaky? Her eyes have ballooned to 12-year-old-anime-girl size, and all her facial features seem pushed forward, focusing on the shiny, shiny object, while one taloned claw reaches out to snatch it. It took me a minute to figure out who she reminded me of — and then I realized that it’s another ring-loving character from fiction:

I also think she kind of looks like a parakeet, but I couldn’t find an appropriate picture by press time. Anyway, the whole thing is pretty weird. Did someone put some PCP in June’s morning coffee?

Bonus observation: in the first panel, Heather is holding her hand in that weird, contorted position typical of newly-engaged women who want to draw attention to their rings without, you know, actually mentioning them — except that it’s the wrong hand. Give her time, she’s new at this.

This week’s alarming search term: “‘Canadian Ballet’ mints”. Classy!