Gasoline Alley, 3/9/10

In order to keep their iron grip on their last remaining pool of paying customers — old people — newspapers are spreading the lie that consuming print media sates your hunger because it supplies you with nutrients as well as information. You should totally be spending your money on the paper rather than cat food, seniors!

Mary Worth, 3/9/10

“I mean, she didn’t love you so much that she wasn’t sleeping with other people, but, uh, free spirit, yeah. Plus I imagine that her career as a Minnie Pearl impersonator was really taking off then, so she couldn’t afford to settle down.”

Crankshaft, 3/9/10

And that’s when Pan and Jeff knew for sure that Crankshaft’s rambling diatribe over dinner the previous week, in which the old man had vowed to “track down and murder each and every one of those mouse-eared bastards while they sleep,” was no idle boast. The police couldn’t stop him. The army couldn’t stop him. They would have to take care of this themselves.

Your COTW momentarily, but first, some items of note! Last week I noted that one might need to (horrors) leave the house and go to the local library to find old soap opera strips, but faithful reader AndyL has another suggestion: the omnipotent Google! Yes, our cybernetic overlord has scanned back images of newspapers, allowing you to see things like Judge Parker from 1963, Apartment 3-G from 1967 (did someone just get acid thrown in their face?), or Mary Worth in 1962. (You may have to scroll around a bit in order to get to those strips.)

Also, faithful reader fillmoreeast offers evidence (cribbed from here) that many of your favorite comics characters once hawked high fructose corn blobs, including (shudder) Marvin.

What A Guy is apparently a comic from Reiner and Hoest, the same people who brought you the Lockhorns. I have no idea what it was about, but I hope it was about some little kid who just always goes around kissing everyone’s ass, proclaiming “What a guy!” about anyone at the drop of hat. As an aded bonus, fillmoreeast points us to another Google-indexed historical moment, this one from 1988, in which a Lakeland Ledger reader from Tampa writes in to complain that her beloved “cute” What A Guy has been replaced by some newfangled thing called Calvin and Hobbes, which she calls “OK but very uninteresting.”

And on that note, here is your totally interesting comment of the week!

“Petey’s pretty flagrant with his web-slinging there, but good job to him for not blurting out, ‘IT WAS SPIDER-MAN AKA PETER PARKER.’” –He Brought Queenie Baby Jesus

And your runners up! Also funny!

“Mark Trail: “Ummm … people who punch out a Senator get arrested pretty damned instantly. You ‘expressed concern’ to the wildlife office? I can hear Leonard Nimoy in panel three saying ‘Most illogical.’” –ignatz

“It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Peter that none of these costumes comes with a mask. Which is why ‘Mary Jane Watson’s husband climbs a building in a wizard suit’ is bound to be number 1 on YouTube tomorrow.” –BigTed

“How is that broom hanging from the rack? Is the hook part of the prop? Now all Peter needs is a fake mustache and a spinning bow-tie, and he’s all set to unleash some vaudeville justice.” –bman

“I’m less concerned about Mark talking to Mr. Spock than I am that Boss Hogg is apparently a U.S. Senator now.” –BRWombat

“Is it possible that Batuik is going to impose his own version of Chekov’s Law of Economy in Narrative? ‘If you find a gun in the first panel, it must be completely forgotten by the third, to make way for more suffering and disease’?” –Calvin’s Cardboard Box

“I didn’t know that they sold Lockhorn dolls?! It even comes in a ‘What has two thumbs and hasn’t had sex in forty years?’ pose.” –LUJBEM FEJF

“Panel 1 from A3G is golden. Look at her face! Poor Tommie, moping through life in the shadow of one roommate and the all-encompassing eclipse of the other, has just had her last and final hope of at least a normal life — that age comes hand in hand with wisdom — crushed by the wisest and most honest person she knows. It’s powerful, tragic and, at the very centre of the issues at hand, takes place during someone else’s storyline. Now let’s watch as the story writes itself from here as Tommie’s crushing depression begins to suffocate her, but only in the throwaway Sunday panels most papers don’t even run.” –Black Drazon

“Also, just to make Gunther’s month complete, he let his subscription to Needy Loser magazine expire! Go figure!” –Marion Delgado

“It’s good to see Mark consulting the Romulans on political matters. They served him well in providing a wife.” –migellito

“I think if you were to tell Tommie that ‘life isn’t fair,’ she would be genuinely surprised to hear it. ‘Golly, I always thought it was! Hmmm. Now that you mention it, that makes a lot of sense. Explains a lot, really, like my string of failed relationships or the fact that I share an apartment with the modern-day Lucrezia Borgia.’” –Joe Blevins

“Dawn can’t wait to see the crushing disappointment on Wilbur’s face; it’s like Christmas, only with tears!” –True Fable

“Re: Wilbur (advice columnist) and Toots (slacker/drifter), methinks I detect the mayo-smeared fingerprints of the vast international Sandwich Lobby in the comics. Is nothing sacred? (Other than, perhaps, Baconnaise.)” –mvg

“If it’s 1960, why aren’t the ladies sipping sherry? It’s obviously after 9 a.m.” –shermy glamrocker

“A rare early Family Circus panel depicts the prequel to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with a hydrocephalic Dolly in the title role. Note the audience of matronly drag queens she has invited into the living room, to the horror of her mother.” –Doug Starr Twinkle

“Ok, if faced with the fill-in-the-blank ‘you’re a ___ couple if you can wear each other’s jeans,’ I’d have said gay. Why is Pluggers insulting my people like that? (Obviously I meant that as a gay, not as a monstrous suburban furry.)” –edp

“It’s heavy … but I like it. I could probably crush an esophagus pretty easily with this. Now cough up some real money, you hippie.” –Taquelli

“GT: GO Ñ!” –Red Greenback

“Toots’ plan to remain hidden will fail because 1) Sarah has no way to conceal the skateboard, 2) June will detect his life signs with her tricorder, and 3) Abby just took the only food he’s had in days. He’ll be found out by nightfall (aka ‘late May 2010′).” –Ed Dravecky

“Strangely enough, Peter Parker has hit upon the perfect costume for a Miami super-hero: ‘Raving at an all-night beach circuit party in an angel costume, mild-mannered Rafi Aguilar was transformed into the Amazing Guardian Angel when he took ecstasy laced with radioactive ketamine!!” –teddytoad

“I find it strange that Mr. Prisoner has a checkbook in prison, where the barter system is the accepted mode of paying debts. Sam should have held out for $100,000 worth of cigarettes and/or blowjobs.” –Rusty

“Be careful with your addictions, Wilbur. Sandwiches are comforting, but they’re a just a ‘gateway’ food. Soon, you’ll begin experimenting with wraps, then pita pockets and gyros. I only pray you’ll seek help before you find yourself drawn helplessly into the dark underworld of paninis.” –Perky Bird

Big thanks to everyone who put cash in my tip jar! And here is where we would give thanks to our advertisers, were there any to thank! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot — and how you could be the launch advertiser for our new RSS feed sponsorship — click here.

Mary Worth, 3/8/10

When I was a kid, some Buffalo Bills star or other had been suspended for failing a drug test, and I remember having a conversation with my father (who was then the director of an alcoholism clinic) about why someone would endanger their very lucrative career for an occasional high. He explained, in a formulation that has always stuck with me, the addict’s trajectory: first using drugs makes you feel good, then you need drugs to feel good, then you need drugs to not feel bad.

This statement really jumped into my mind today when watching the suddenly diminished Clan Weston hash out the aftermath of Kurt’s duplicity over yet another sandwich-based meal. These white-bread-and-baloney-and-mayonnaise sandwiches ought to be a comfort to Wilbur and Dawn in these trying days; but Wilbur is just shoving his in the general direction of his mouth without even giving it a glance, let alone pausing to savor the subtle interplay of flavors. He’s like a junkie in some abandoned rowhouse, shooting up because of his raw need and long ago forgetting the transcendent high that got him hooked in the first place, and his sandwich requirements have just become a semi-conscious undercurrent in his life now. He probably doesn’t even realize that he’s got a second sandwich all queued up on this dinner plate ready to go once the current one has been devoured. Did he even bother to put condiments on that one?

The really sad part of this scene is Dawn, who’s only of college age, and yet seems equally blasé about sandwich use. She appears to be using her sandwich as a prop for gesticulation, just waving it around for a bit until she’s ready to cram it down her gullet with as little chewing as possible. She learned it from watching you, Dad. She learned it from watching you.

Family Circus, 3/8/10

Many victims of repeated trauma eventually form a sort of bond with their oppressors; in hostage situations, this is called Stockholm Syndrome. Thus, after repeated exposure to Jeffy’s naked ass, I seem to have become inured to disgust and indeed experienced brief amusement at today’s Family Circus panel. Most experts agree that a swift and merciful death would be for the best.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/7/10

Fractured narratives that jump back and forth in time might have once been the province of snooty intellectuals and their avant garde literature and art films, but linear storytelling has become so passé that it now bores even the least discriminating of media consumers (i.e., Snuffy Smith aficionados). In today’s installment of this suddenly experimental strip, we begin with Elviney’s crumpled, distraught face, then immediately jump to her looking chipper and so eager to trade sordid tales about her friends that her tongue literally dangles from her mouth. What emotional devastation resulted in that grim visage in the first panel? Was this her past, or her future? Only at the strip’s conclusion do we come full circle to the beginning of the story, as the inveterate gossip gets her cruel comeuppance.

Judge Parker, 3/7/10

Judge Parker might have wrapped up its Bernie Madoff-ish plotline in painfully unsatisfying fashion last week, but there was still one detail left to attend to: namely, that none of the smug, irritating rich pretty people who rule the strip had been personally enriched by the action yet. And so, just as Dixie Julep’s death inevitably led to a pointlessly large advance for Judge Parker Senior’s dumb book, so now will Sam be handed a $100,000 check for his hard work violating as many bar association rules as he could think of. Sam is of course married to the richest woman in the state, and has no need for piddling six-digit sums; he will presumably cash the check and ask for the money in $1 bills, which he’ll then feed to one of Spencer Farms’ pretty, pretty horses.

Mark Trail, 3/7/10

This is obviously the greatest death-and-destruction-themed Mark Trail since the world-famous tsunami episode of 2005. Particularly impressive is how calm and manful Mark looks in panel three as Lost Forest is blanketed by a terrifying death cloud. “Rusty, there’s absolutely no need to to panic, but we’ll probably want to get into the Survival Chamber I dug out by hand underneath our cabin! Oh, and be sure to grab your transistor radio, so we can groove to the smooth sounds of NOAA weather reports all night long.” His sang-froid is all the more impressive when we see the hellscape the tornado has unleashed on the area in the final panel, with cars and cows flying hilariously through the air and wide-eyed squirrels skittering about in doomed panic.

One odd thing that jumps about at me about this strip, however, is the text in the first panel and at the bottom left of the bottom panel. It’s in Times New Roman or something, rather than in the meticulous hand of Jack Elrod. It’s the same thing that was done in the more information about licorice strip, and I have pretty much come to the same conclusion about it: that whatever Jack Elrod wrote there was too incendiary for America’s comics pages, and had to be replaced by some bland, inoffensive weather facts at the last minute. I’m thinking that the first-panel box originally read “Tornadoes are the wrathful fingers of God wreaking destruction on the Earth,” and the other box was an extended discursis about how a tornado can rip a beard right off of a man’s face.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/7/10

I admit that Rex Morgan hasn’t been all that engaging to me for a while now, but that all changed the moment this high-stakes Sarah-Toots negotiation began. My little joke about Sarah as a cruel monster came true more or less immediately, with hilarious results. And with Brooke, who never really seemed to care much for our stripey-shirted skateboarding bon vivant anyway, preparing to flee Chez Morgan in tears, Toots will have lost his only nominal ally, leaving him entirely at Sarah’s mercy. Look for him to spend the next two to five years living in the Morgans’ basement, with Sarah bringing down just enough food to keep him alive so that he can amuse her with his wacky hipster antics/pleas for mercy.

Slylock Fox, 3/7/10

I note today’s main Slylock mystery only to point out that it’s a sad sort of semi-aquatic rodent that has managed to go through life wholly unacquainted with the concept of “tides.” More interesting to me is the Six Differences puzzle, and the look of grim anxiety on the barber’s face. It’s as if this gentlemen has, for reasons of his own, been lying to everyone for a while about being a hairdresser, and now someone has finally called him on it and asked for a haircut; he can’t back out, but, as he approaches the young man, scissors in one hand and comb in the other and panic in his eyes, it’s becoming increasingly clear that he has no idea whatsoever what he’s doing. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it too much, friend; if the young dude’s current hair-blob is any indication, he has little or no interest in aesthetically pleasing grooming.

Spider-Man, 3/6/10

Oh, in case you were wondering, Spider-Man chose to adopt the costume of a minitunicked spirit being, which could have some amusing results, like an outburst of some of the most misdirected spirituality the world has ever seen. “And God so loved us that He sent us his Messenger, whose wings were golden and wondrous! And this Messenger did help us out once in a while, but often He would mope, or complain, or forget where He was or what He was doing. The disparity in earning power between Him and His wife was always a source of tension…”

Note that, in only his first rescue mission, Guardian Angel is already starting to molt. I certainly hope that Miami’s newest superhero just becomes more and more hilariously bedraggled as this silliness continues.

Beetle Bailey, 3/6/10

“Yes, sweet, sweet unconsciousness! It’s certainly preferable to anything the world has to offer, and it offers a glimpse of how awesome it will be to die and leave this vale of tears behind forever for nothingness’s sweet embrace!”