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My fiancée is in the sex ed biz, and this week she returned from a visit to a health center north of the Mason-Dixon line with this intriguing artifact.

OK, so I understand that there are very few male characters in Luann who aren’t either related to Luann or involved in some sort of tiresome romantic situation with her. And obviously her make-out session with Aaron marks all this as outside the continuity of the strip. But still, she’s talking about dealing with sexual pressure with … TJ? TJ the schemer? TJ the scammer? TJ, whose every appearance in the strip heralds the inevitable entanglement of Brad in some awful web of deceit? The TJ I know would be turning this situation to his advantage and be attempting to shepherd Luann into the back seat of his car by the end of the pamphlet.

On the other hand, the TJ I know is also white. At first, I thought that perhaps I had never seen him in a Sunday strip before; but you know, it’s pretty obvious that Delta is black even in the dailies. Maybe it’s one of those parallel universe things: evil Spock has a beard, good Spock is clean shaven; evil TJ is white, good TJ is black.

My only comment on the content of this handout is that I think a “Waiting Is Sexy” t-shirt may send out some mixed messages. Waiting is many things, many of them positive, but “sexy” is not one of them, particularly if you’re a teenager. I can barely handle the three minutes of waiting involved in microwaving a frozen pizza pocket, and I’m 30. Also, I find it interesting that Greg Evans borrowed a trope from Mark Trail and featured some animal-closeup panels while humans converse offstage. Presumably this is because the only thing duller than drawing two people walking and talking is drawing two people walking and talking about not having sex.

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Mary Worth, 1/11/05

Holy crap, look at the tweaked-up expression on Anna’s face in the second panel. The tight, nervous smile, the eyes the size of dinner plates — she’s found a drug more powerful than meth, everybody, and it’s called love! Her expression is all the more striking when you compare it to her look in the first panel. She goes from dignified, Katherine Harris-esque adult to grinning, moon-eyed teenager in a mere moment. So versatile! So emotionally unstable! Just the person you want to jump into a relationship with after a draw-out, ugly divorce!

That profile shot of Dr. Brian in panel two gives us a good look at how … shiny … his hair is. Better not run your fingers through it when you get back to his room back at the Holiday Inn Express, Anna: they might get stuck.

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Sally Forth, 1/10/05

I don’t know which thought is more disturbing: that the creators of Sally Forth may have taken payola from Target, or that they may have taken payola from Rush.