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Baldo, 8/10/11
It took me a moment to figure out that Baldo is supposed to be embarrassed by his family’s ludicrous outfits. I at first assumed that his father subscribed to some religion that operated in a way that was exactly the opposite of most religions and actively opposed shame on general principles. “Baldo, why do you cover your thighs with your sinfully long shorts? Why do you not show the world your package, like I do in my Speedo? It’s what God wants!”
Judge Parker, 8/10/11
You probably don’t remember, what with the exciting last four months of Judge Emeritus Parker getting everything he wants with no effort on his part, but our gal Sophie has a bit of a romantic conundrum, what with there being a boy that she wants but can’t have because he likes some other girl better. Abbey urged Sophie to study the problem in her analytical, borderline Aspergers way, and now she appears to have come up with a solution. Doesn’t she look like a happy young girl in love with a plan win over the object of her affection? Sure, if taking out the young man and his girlfriend and all of her other classmates in a hail of bullets counts as “winning.”
Mary Worth, 8/10/11
I’m delighted by how much grown-up Gina’s head in panel one looks exactly the same as little-girl Gina’s head in panel two. I certainly hope that whatever family drama we’re about to see unfold involves her parent’s secret horror and disgust at their daughter’s adult skull, perched unnaturally atop her child’s body.
That dinner scene sure is an accurate depiction of life in a cramped New York apartment, what with everyone sitting around four inches from various items of bedroom furniture.
Ziggy, 8/10/11
I was about to make some comment about how Ziggy’s parrot is a paranoid schizophrenic, ranting about how “they” were secretly tracking his every move, but then I realized that it’s really much more likely that Ziggy’s the crazy one, and this is a Son of Sam like situation. “No, he’s the one who told me that they were CIA agents! He’s the one who told me they had to die! Say something!” “SQUAAAAK” “See! See!”
Gasoline Alley, 8/10/11
Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date with the pulse-pounding action in Gasoline Alley! I’ve been nervous that it might just be more excitement than you can handle.
Let’s start our discussion of Tuesday’s comics by looking at the first panel of Monday’s Apartment 3-G:
Panel from Apartment 3-G, 8/8/11
Sorry Lu Ann, looks like you’re left holding the glass! Wait, don’t you have another roommate? Maybe she wants lemonade!
Apartment 3-G, 8/9/11
Do you think that’s the same glass? I sure hope not, for Lu Ann’s sake. Margo doesn’t want your hand-me-down leftover glasses of lemonade, Lu Ann! Margo only wants the freshest lemonade! And Margo couldn’t possibly want anything Tommie has rejected! What’s the matter with you?
Fortunately for Lu Ann. Margo is mostly ignoring her as her mind is firmly set on her next round of harebrained schemes. Still, our lovable dim blonde sure is hilariously sad by the end of the strip! “Doesn’t anyone need me? Making lemonade is my only skill! If nobody ever wants lemonade again, what will become of me?”
Gil Thorp, 8/9/11
Ha ha, remember when a Ben Franklin lookalike hustled Marty Moon out of hundreds of dollars on the links? That was all good fun, since Marty is everybody’s punching bag, but having the strip’s ostensible authority figure and voice of reason high-five his protege after a successful revenge-grift seems somewhat more problematic.
Lockhorns, 8/9/11
C’mon, Leroy, it’s Tuesday, aka “sexy hobo cosplay day.” You know what Loretta wants. Unless … this is part of the game? “Fine, let me just finish the paper, and then I’ll put a little something in your cup, if you know what I mean.”
Mary Worth, 8/9/11
That tiny question mark in the final panel isn’t a sign of self-doubt or a signal that Mary isn’t sure what her next move should be (ha ha, like she would ever experience such things). Rather, it’s indicating her sudden disorientation. As soon as she hears the words “I need your advice,” the world seems to retreat away from Mary, appearing as a tiny pinprick of light at the end of a long tunnel, as she enters a fugue state. She’ll come to three months later, covered in blood, just in time to watch Gina’s newly de-estranged father walk her down the aisle.
Mark Trail, 8/8/11
You guys, Mark Trail is on the case of this crazy biblical goose mystery, if by “on the case” you mean “heading down to the local U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service branch office to shoot the breeze for an hour or four”. More proof of government waste! How do these people have the time to jaw with random weirdos about geese or whatever when they should focusing on which wild animals can be most profitable harvested for their lovely coats? Anyway, this US&FWSer doesn’t just have an incredibly awkward/sexy way of sitting on a desk; he also has a decent memory for strange combinations of God and waterfowl. “Yeah, I heard about this sort of thing years ago, so I put a little pushpin in this map, right here near the Canadian border, just in case it ever happened again. They all laughed at me. ‘C’mon, Bob, take the pushpin out of the map,’ they said. Now I can put a second one in! Who’s laughing now?”
Hagar the Horrible, 8/8/11
Ha ha, it’s funny because murder and theft are very profitable!
Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/7/11
You really need to read the solution and think about its implications to this realize how gross today’s Slylock Fox is. That suitcase is full of stolen money and mammal milk, implicating the bear lady. (I wonder what will become of her cub when she’s sent to the slammer? Will it be sent to Ursine Foster Care, i.e., left in the forest to fend for itself?) Since we now know that a bird can’t be expected to have a milk bottle in her suitcase, we’re left to figure out for ourselves just how she’s going to feed her little chick en route. Is there hidden in that unopened suitcase a bottle full of fish guts that she vomited up? Or will she just be puking a portion of her airline-provided meal directly into her child’s mouth, disgusting all of her fellow passengers?
As a side note, the criminal bear’s bottle has not been placed in a ziplock bag and put through the x-ray separately from the rest of her luggage. I sure hope that’s what triggered the search of her suitcase, because it would be depressing to me if our human universe TSA’s regulations are even more pointlessly stringent than those in the world of Slylock Fox, which is a notorious police state.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/7/11
Parson Tuttle is a notorious grifter and fraud with little or no theological training, so it’s not that surprising that he’s desperately hitting up one of his community’s elders for some pearls of spiritual wisdom that he can drop into his Sunday sermons. I do love how incredibly put out he looks when Grampy finally gets to the point. “I can’t wait for my enemies to die, that’ll take forever! And killin’ ’em all just sounds like work.”
Crankshaft, 8/7/11
I’m not sure if either Abbot and Costello or The Who have really been victimized particularly badly here, but if Crankshaft wants to start apologizing for its terrible punchlines, I’m certainly not going stand in its way.
(Also, as faithful reader David Willis points out, today’s Crankshaft probably takes place a decade before today’s Funky Winkerbean, meaning that Crankshaft is dead, maybe! Hooray!)
Panel from Crock, 8/7/11
This right here pretty much says all you need to know about Crock.
Funky Winkerbean, 8/6/11
Oh, man, did I almost somehow manage to not comment on an entire week of Les grousing and moaning about the fine print on the contract he was forced to sign because sinister Hollywood wants to turn Lisa’s Story into a wacky comedy called Cancer Movie? Here’s the climax of the entire sullen festival of entitlement, in which our hero complains of having been sucked dry by the entertainment industry vampires, who have given him literally nothing in return. Yes, of course a tidy check counts as “nothing.” I’m sure Les barely even cashed it. Are you seriously trying to put a price tag on art? Are you not aware that Lisa died, of cancer?
Anyway, Les, if this is like most Hollywood book options, it was approved by some mid-level studio exec trying to improve his reputation by getting a middlebrow tearjerker out for awards season three years from now, but said exec will be outmaneuvered by other players within the company who have optioned other books, books that can be turned into movies that people might actually pay money to see, so you really don’t have to worry about anything terrible happening to your precious book. If you’re really lucky, when your option is about to expire two years from now, someone at the studio will notice, think, “Huh, who the hell approved this? Enh, better re-up in case it was somebody important,” and send you another check. That should be about the extent of your hopes in this matter.
Judge Parker, 8/6/11
Oh, were you worried that there might be a minor ancillary character in Judge Parker who wasn’t going to be rewarded for their non-efforts with six figures? Well, you can relax.
Ha ha, you know how sometimes you’re just having a relaxing Friday evening with your wife, and then you up and forget to put the comments of the week on your blog? It could happen to you! Here’s the top comment:
“Remember the good old days when a guy would teach a girl how to play golf so he could hold her as she practiced her follow-through? Now it’s all ‘you record me’ and ‘I’ll record you.’ Kids: Missing the point since 2008.” –BigTed
And here are the also hilarious runners up:
“Was Mary wearing that kicky lace vest all week, or are her undergarments creeping to the outside of her clothes, in order to make an escape?” –Patrick
“Throughout this whole whinefest, Gina keeps her order pad poised for action. Is this so the other customers will think she’s just taking the longest order ever? ‘Yes dear, I’ll have a turkey sandwich … with tomatoes … and lettuce. The lettuce should be under the turkey. I suppose cheese would be good, too. Not too strong a cheese, perhaps white American. That should be a square so it won’t hang off the sides of the sandwich. The cheese should be between the tomatoes. For bread, I will have … um … let me see … a white bread but not too spongy a bread because I have dentures. I assume a pickle comes with that…’” –Ellie
“I like to read this strip as if it’s set in Hootin’ Holler. ‘Shore ya don’ wanna hang around a few more days?’ ‘I’d like ta jedge, but I should git back.’” –Dood
“I doubt he’s buttering toast. Probably he’s scraping the gold ingots the waiter brought him as a gift from Table 5, to make sure it’s not gilded lead.” –Spunde
“Local Dominatrix Lets ‘Cat’ Out Of ‘Bag’; Death Toll At 132 And Rising” –Walker of Dog
“‘That is interesting!’ says Doc in the middle panel of Mark Trail. The weird emphasis must mark his growing impatience with Mark yammering around about golden bands while a perfectly delicious goose is sitting right there. ‘You should take that and get it analyzed! I’ll stay here and pre-heat the oven!’” –Lorne
“Look, Les, this is a boilerplate contract. Sign it or not. It’s not worth my time to go to the lawyers and rewrite the parts you don’t think apply to you. Been nice working with you. BTW, the statement ‘been nice working with you’ was standard boilerplate agent talk. It’s been a real pain in the ass. Good riddance, asshole.” –Mark B.
“We have concluded that it is just as well that Mr. Bolle refuses to show anyone below the shoulders. We do not want to know that Miss Thompson’s hideous kelly-green polo shirt is tucked into a pair of belted madras-plaid bermuda shorts.” –Fashion Police
“I hope this A3G plot twist uses the same artistic strategy it did with the piano storyline in November. ‘Why, there’s a piano in the Mills Gallery! …And Lady Gaga is playing it! What strange clothes she is wearing!’ Then we cut to her chiseled, blond, suit-wearing male manager for the next eight weeks.” –Shmebbber
“I never got until today that ‘Ann Eiffel’ was supposed to be a pun. Also that she’s a horrible person, as shown by her telling an employee to actually do his job instead of standing there talking to his girlfriend.” –UnclGhost
“On a completely different note, I’ve had this fancy for awhile where I like imagining Mark Trail as played by Tom Hanks. There’s something hilarious to me about the concept of Tom Hanks yelling all his thoughts aloud. Picture it as you read the above strip. ‘THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE, A GOLD BIRD BAND … GENESIS 1:20, A PASSAGE FROM THE BIBLE.’ Note also what he’s saying here makes minimal sense.” –Carly
“I like that the Mark Trail characters who are not on the set can just walk over and grab some lunch at Santa Royale diner during their down time. This guy could have stayed longer to chat up Waitress Sad-Is-Sexy, but he’s got twenty minutes to report for work as an unscrupulous land developer who emotionally abuses his stacked wife.” –Edgy DC
“Is Lu Ann really allowed to invoke a change in the topic of conversation, particularly when Margo has the floor (who even knew Lu Ann was in the … um … whatever vague room they’re in with a lamp and a picture frame and some gauzy curtains and a refrigerator)? Can somebody check the A3G bylaws?” –Ned Ryerson
“I like to think that the pervert in Mary Worth overheard their conversation about the waitress’ dead mother and is now wearing mom jeans in an attempt to burrow his way into her subconscious (and her pants).” –Roto13
“Ok, just to be clear, this is a strip about grown women living together in New York, right? So why does the dialogue sound like it belongs in a strip about three maladjusted girls in an orphanage for dowdy teens?” –pugfuggly
“I guess the swarthy pseudo-Hi is supposed to feel like a real dope for hitting on a married woman, but how the hell was he supposed to know? Lois doesn’t even have a ring finger.” –Doctor Handsome
Plus this comment Effluvius Erratus is too long to feature here but, hilariously combining as it does several layers of source material, is definitely worth your attention!
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