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Sally Forth, 7/30/04

If I were a different sort of comic reader — that is, an insane and hypersensitive one — this is the sort of comic strip that might prompt an angry letter to the editor about the open sewer that is American popular culture today and shouldn’t the comics pages be the one place where we can escape from the smut and won’t somebody please think of the children? As it is, my main thought was just “Ew.” Yeah, I know that it’s important for parents to have times to themselves and everything, and that a healthy sex life is not incompatible with parenting and/or responsible adulthood, but still: Ew. Imagine the trauma that would be unleashed on the unsuspecting comics readership if other comics, like Cathy, Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, or, God forbid, Marmaduke start encouraging us to imagine that the main characters are going off to get their Smoove B-style freak on immediately after the closing panel. If I wanted to think about that sort of thing in conjunction with cartoons, there are plenty of videos I can order from Japan, thank you very much.

When I was taking Latin in college, I was looking up the verb prodeo and was told that one of its potential translations into English was to sally forth. Immediately a little light went on in my head: The name of that comic strip is a Latin joke! Just like the Family Circus! Maybe failed classicists end up on the funny pages, or, in my case, commenting on the funny pages on the Internet. It sure would explain Prince Valiant.

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Jump Start, 7/29/04

When I got to the last panel of this strip today, I thought to myself, “Uh-oh. Is that my future?”

Then I realized: it’s my present. I hope you all appreciate it.

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Shoe, 7/28/04

When I read today’s Shoe, my first thought was, “Huh, Shoe’s real name is P. Martin Shoemaker. How about that.” Then I realized that I didn’t know the full name of anybody else in Shoe. Then I realized that maybe the reason finding out that Shoe has a first initial, middle name, and last name surprised me is that he and his cohorts are A BUNCH OF GOD DAMN BIRDS.

A friend of mine in California, sentenced to driving school by a traffic judge, chose to go to “Comedy Driving School,” after which she bitterly reported that “there’s a difference between being funny and being in a really good mood.” Similarly, there’s a difference between having a comic strip built on a wacky premise (like, say, that there’s this newspaper staffed by birds) and strip that uses that premise to generate actual humor. The birds of Shoe live and work in treetops, but for the most part they hate their jobs, drive unreliable cars, flunk in school, make clumsy passes in bars, and wear ill-fitting tuxedos and unfashionable glasses just like normal humans. I know that Shoe has been around for decades, so maybe I should assume that every possible funny aspect of its characters’ talking-bird existence was mined for comedy gold before I was born. But frankly, I’m not feeling that charitable. So here’s my challenge to Cassatt and Brookins: start making bird jokes in Shoe or … or … or face further tongue-lashings in this blog!

Oh, and while I’m making demands: no more “sexy” girl birds. They creep me out. Today’s linkbacks go to the weblog @ interbridge.com and Domestic Psychology, both of whom, I trust, support my anti-sexy-girl-bird stance.