The Comics Curmudgeon

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Comment of the Week

Tune in tomorrow as Rev. Croom embarks on a new life of selective observance. He'll dine and dash (thou shalt not steal), covet Herb's wife, murder Jamaal, and make a graven image, but he'll at least call his mom to wish her a happy birthday (honor thy father and mother). The funnies haven't been this theologically bold since Judge Parker financed the construction of a giant needle big enough for a dozen camels to thread.

—Abram Beazer
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Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, what in the name of God is THAT?

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Mary Worth, 8/27/04

Much, MUCH more alarming that subtle changes in Rex Morgan, M.D.’s artwork is the presence of this freakish she-man in Mary Worth. The deliberate cultivation of gender ambiguity as an expression of one’s innermost self or as a cultural critique is one thing, but I think this is just some seriously crappy drawing. The diagonal folds towards the beltline of that too-small tank top made me think that it was actually a woman’s leotard at first (and there’s a challenge to all you Photoshoppers out there if I ever heard one).

I’m assuming that this individual is the ne’er-do-well son of the object of Wilbur’s affections. Actually, now that I look at him more, I have to say that he most resembles what He-Man (a cartoon figure with his own set of fascinating gender issues) would look like if he stopped using steroids.

I have to say that I’m really “digging” his mental use of hip drug lingo. Now that I’m back, I urge any Mary Worth-ites out there to take up my challenge and summarize the series of fascinating events that brought us here, or to the present moment in any of the soap opera strips. I’ve got a couple entries already, but I’ll wait a day or two before posting them to give others time to play along.

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I go away for TWO WEEKS, and they start changing stuff

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/26/04

OK, is it the jet lag, or did the art in Rex Morgan, M.D. change while I was away? I can’t pinpoint a day in the archives when everything changed, but things just seem different. The names on the strip are the same, but that doesn’t mean a thing in the seamy underworld of comic sweatshopery. Maybe Wilson and/or Nolan took a night class and wanted to show off some new techniques.

At first, I was a bit put off — I really like the art in this strip — but after squinting at it some it’s growing on me a bit. The polka-dot shadow on Rex’s face in the middle panel look kinda Roy Lichtenstein-esque. In fact, this strip reminds me a lot of “In the Car,” a Lichtenstein I’ve always liked.

(Jeez, look at that, I go to France for a couple of weeks and I’m getting all ooh-la-la-serious-art-referency. I gotta watch some TV.)

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Metapost: Valiant, hiatus

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Not that I’m married to factual accuracy or anything, but I just thought I’d correct one misstatement in my Prince Valiant entry of a few days ago: the current author of that strip and managing editor of the Atlantic is named Cullen Murphy, not John Cullen Murphy. John was Cullen’s father, who also worked on Prince Valiant, and he just recently passed away. You can read more about them both here. Thanks to Robin for setting me straight.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading this little blog over the past few weeks. In what has been a fairly major shock to me, I seem to have attracted a core group of several dozen readers. So now I’m going to probably throw all that away by going on vacation for two weeks. I’ll be in France, and thus away from my computer and the comics section, until Friday, August 27. In theory, I could go to an Internet cafe and post about the comics in the International Herald Tribune every day, but I’m, like, not going to.

For everyone bereft by this news, I have a homework assignment. Those of you who are interested should keep track of one of the soap opera comics discussed here so far (Apartment 3-G, Mary Worth, The Phantom, Rex Morgan, M.D., or Mark Trail) over the next two weeks and send me a summary of plot developments on the 26th. Whoever can sum up two weeks of action most succinctly and amusingly gets their version published here. I’ll bet you can do Mary Worth in a sentence.

Au revoir, y’all!