Manic Monday

by Hal Bent

Much apologies to the regular readers (all three of you!) for my self-imposed exile from the site--it was a week of adjusting to a new schedule and lack of free time just kind of snow-balled from there. So it seems appropriate to christen the week with just another Manic Monday and the Bangles and lead singer Susanna Hoffs <Insert *teen-age love-struck sigh*> rattling in my brain as we settle down for another week of the Daily Comics Review. 

For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston:

I like this new story-line where John and Elly have sold their daughter to a Hong Kong pimp in Toronto on business.  It really livens up the strip.  Sure, John gets his sports car he always wanted, Elly has the necessary capital to start her own home-based business, and Michael doesn't have the annoying sis anymore, but poor John is finally feeling the guilt of his decision creeping back to his thoughts.  The horror of what life she has now after he made his choice for the good of his selfish self and the rest of the cruel self-centered family.

Well, that would be a more interesting, Rex Morgan MD type story-line, but in the strip the kid is just sick and in the hospital with a high fever. 

(I usually don't comment on "For Better or For Worse" because I hate crossing over onto comics that the Godfather of Snark, Josh Fruhlinger, comments on at his ground-breaking/inspiration for this site/long-running humor site, The Comics Curmudgeon. However, his love of all things FOOB-related has dissipated and I can't remember the last time he snarked on For Better or For Worse.  He, like most comics fans, was likely appalled by the strip not ending, but instead re-booting and retelling/re-imagining the original, early strips.  I know I was appalled by it--another classic strip refusing to ride off into the sunset and allow an opportunity for another quality strip on the limited and shrinking comics pages of America.)


Adam@Home by Rob Harrell:
Don't screw around with me, Harrell. Don't hint at melon-nose dropping of a heart attack and his wife with that satisfied smile in panel four imaging the joy of cashing that fat life insurance check and the strip being renamed "Husband Hunter". Don't screw around with me, Harrell--just do it!

Strange Brew by John Deering:

Like, maybe a three-way? 


***

Hmmm, maybe today is "showing skin day" in the comics and no one told me. Check out this assortment of flesh:

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney:

Sven's arm is thicker than Fleurrie's torso.  Yikes.  I guess this is can count as female and male skin show.  McEldowney is always a flesh-fest, so he doesn't really count. 

Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson:

Arlo thought he'd find her with the mailman.  Now he has to delete the Letters to Penthouse email he was working on when he saw Janis go out to the backyard in her bikini while he was pretending to nap on the couch.  No wonder he's so angry in panel four!

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So are comics sexist? Check out the flesh the ladies and non-heterosexual men get stuck ogling today:

Monty by Jim Meddick:

For the ladies, they get Monty. Yuck! I agree with the replacement RobotMan. Cover your shameful beer belly, you be-goggled goon.

Alley Oop by Jack and Carole Bender:

Oh, God, these are some mighty unattractive men, even for cavemen.

The Duplex by Glenn McCoy:

Now that is one sexy man.  Really loved seeing that crotch shot in the second panel while eating my Cheerios. (Oog.)

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Thanks as always for coming back! Have a great rest of the (Mon)day!

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Manic Monday

by Hal Bent

I realize I should change the Monday Daily Comics Review title from Manic Monday to Monday Funday, if only because I spend the rest of the evening getting odd looks from my wife as I hum Bangles tunes like it was 1987.  Too late, I'm already humming along: "I wish it was Sunday!"

Fred Basset by Alex Graham:

Sorry, no choice but to cal you out: Now that's what I call mailing it in!  Somewhere a smart, new comic is deprived precious newspaper space to print this drivel. 


For Heaven's Sake by Mike Morgan:

What the? I don' t look anything like this "Hal". Though that is a rocking mustache.  While I'm at this comic (which I usually blatantly ignore) what is the deal with the main priest character? Is he a chicken?  Is he supposed to be a chicken-man? He looks like Garfield's Jim Davis was contracted to draw a man-chicken priest. 


Born Loser, The by Chip Sansom:

In comics news today,the entire community of print comics mourns the loss of Brutus, the Born Loser.  Now, the dead loser after having a catastrophic heart attack while at his annual physical, the strip has been renamed "the Dead Loser" and will focus on casket, mortuary, and funeral humor involving his widow, a man-beast of a wife, and his child, whose dutch haircut threw me off for the first ten years I read comics and this reader and commentator believed was a pre-pubescent girl. Wait...that sounds better than this boring comic that peaked in 1979. 


Birdbrains by Thom Bluemel:

I really don't know what to say about this comic.  I can't ignore it, but it's not really funny or anything. Maybe it's that the creator drew a female bee with boobs (they're not boobies, they're bee-boobs); maybe it's the waggling antennae, slumped forward posture, and drool from the horney bee; Maybe its that hiney bee is so out of place.  How about a harpy bee, with claws and bird of prey design?  No, it's definitely the drool.


Alley Oop by Jack and Carole Bender:

After an entire week of a caveman lawyer introducing himself to various cavemen and being disgusted that none of them know what an attorney is and does, the "joke" continues this week with the "hilarity" continuing, just in case anyone missed all the "humor" last week. After investing more time than this "hilarious" strip deserves, I will be very, very angry if this ends with anything other than this Mel Brooks look-alike lawyer getting what all lawyers deserve: his head prominently displayed on a pike.

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Sunday Funnies: Satchel, Baseball, Bass, Lake Ass, and more Dinosaur Fights!

It's Sunday! Time for full-color, expanded panels, and...MORE DINOSAUR FIGHTS!

Alley Oop by Jack and Carole Bender:

On Sunday, the comics either have their extended space utilized to diverge from the weekly serial, introduce a new serial, or wrap-up the week for the Sunday reader.  Today, Alley Oop did the weekly wrap-up, which usually I abhor as laziness.  Today, however, it allows more Dinosaur Fights! YES!!!


Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce:

Big Nate hits a home run today. As you can see by my website/email/other blog, I am a huge Boston sports fan. As a kid, I did this exact report, but used the 1896 Baltimore Orioles National League franchise (I was a MUCH bigger nerd than Nate). I feel for him, because the rest of the class and teacher obviously thought I was a bizarre weirdo. That said, I remember my sophomore year in high school, I did my first assignment on baseball and the teacher made a comment that she detested baseball and hoped that I would something better to write about. After that, I made sure every assignment I could include baseball in any way would happen.  Whether it was sabermetrics, the 1944 World Series, the Sporting News, or the previous evening's baseball game on television, I was going to write about it, and do it well so she had to grit her teeth and give me a good grade.  

That said, the whims of a teen-age boy change like the wind.  Music, comic books, girls, video games, and work began to intrude on my time and baseball began to fade to the background for a while.  Here in the comic strip, however, I completely agree with Nate: $13 million for Shane Victorino is a bit excessive considering the Red Sox were bidding against themselves for him and paid him double what anyone else would pay. Also, Nate is absolutely correct as well in stating that Bobby Valentine was an absolute clown last season as the manager in Boston.  If there is any consolation for Nate and his Red Sox/Baseball oppressing teacher, at least the Yankees are lined-up for a down year due to age and injury.


Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley:

I just love Satchel.  The perfect capture of a big, sweet dog. In Satch's defense, my poor dog is abused by the cat just as much as him. 



Brevity by Dan Thompson:

Six for six, bee-yotches! Got 'em all.  All those music videos, all those hours alone in my room listening to music, it all pays off now: Michael Anthony from Van Halen rocking the Jack Daniels bass, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue, Gene Simmons and his omnipresent tongue from KISS, the great Paul McCartney of the Beatles with the left-handed bass, and Bootsy Collins getting the funk on for the P-Funk with George Clinton/Parliament.  I will now issue the only criticism I can muster: Where is Adam Clayton from U2? C'mon, he should be there. Is that him being roasted over the fire? 


Little Dog Lost by Steve Boreman:

Being intimately familiar with Lakeville, MA I cannot ignore any pun utilizing the pond (yes, Lake Assawompset is a pond) that I used to skip rocks in when my Dad finally let me skip out of Palm Sunday Mass at the church across the street from the pond.  My mother is Catholic, but we went to a Baptist church (it was in walking distance) and now am a Methodist (No, none of it makes sense, I know), but on Palm Sunday my father always relented to my mother and we went to the church across from Assawompset Pond for our one day pretending to be Catholic. As I got older, I got to skip out with my Dad (he wouldn't sit still for an hour for anything) and go across the street to skip rocks. 

Ahh, a slightly funny pun leads to stories of ponds disguised as lakes, a riff on the breakdown of the protestant and catholic rift, and a short history lesson on the area (here it comes!) as Lake Assawompset is currently a reservoir for the City of New Bedford (don't pee in the water, people drink that water there, we were often told), was largely involved in the start of King Phillips War (dead body hidden under the ice! Whooo! Wait, no one outside of this area knows or cares about a minor dispute between Puritan settlers and Native Americans), and IT IS A POND, NOT A LAKE!!!



OK, I'm done. Have a great rest of the weekend, and thanks as always for reading!

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Hump Day Equals DINOSAUR FIGHT!

It's already Wednesday? This week is flying by at high speed.  No time to waste: On with the show!

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis:

Wait, Pig eats bacon and sausages??? NOOOOOO!!!!!!! Pig, you cannibal!  On a side note, I bet real pigs would eat bacon and sausages without any understanding and compunction.  They really do eat anything food that you throw in front of them.  Of course, I think this used to be my diet back in the day. The unfunny part is that I probably deluded myself in the same way as Pig!


Soup to Nutz by Rick Stromoski:

I add Soup to Nuts here, not to bemoan that the United States still fails to grasp the metric system (rebels, baby! we're a nation of rebels!), but rather to mention Andrew's use of kilometerstone rather than milestone.  Really, it's an intelligent and accurate usage. Milestone dates back to the Romans marking the roads in the 3rd century, which means they weren't exactly using the United States mile as the unit of measurement. 

I also bring it up to highlight an embarrassing episode from my youth, where when learning about the metric system, I understood kilometer having read about it, but never used it in conversation or heard it on TV (I was allowed to watch baseball, not much else, in my youth as TV, per my father, was the idiot box rotting our brains).  So when talking about it in the class, I had no idea what the teacher was talking about with kilometer, as I had it in my mind as a "kilo" "meter" (that is, I pronounced it kee-loh mee-tuhr instead of kil ohm eh ter).  God knows what my classmates thought of me mangling the words, but I wanted to dig a hole under my desk and crawl away.  Funny how a memory like that stays with you into adulthood. 


Alley Oop by Jack and Carole Bender:

I'm not a big Alley Oop fan (at least, not since I was 8 and found a collection of classic newspaper comics at my grandfather's house...I still preferred Terry and the Pirates, The Katzenjammer Kids, and Thimble Theatre), but...DINOSAUR FIGHT!!!  WHOO-HOO!!!


9 to 5 by Harley Schwadron:

Gotta hand to Shwadron, that's EVERY company's business model.  I should have scrounged capital in the late 90's and started a crappy tech company to pump full of venture capital cash and get a rich business to shell out a ton of cash during that six-month period in 1999 when any company an "i" in front of it.  I was THAT close to being that greedy CEO in the cartoon. 


The Meaning of Lila by John Forgetta and L.A. Rose:

I like the Meaning of Lila. It's semi-hip, entertaining, and doesn't pander to the audience like some of the horror-shows that remain in syndication.  I add it here because it reminds me of my wife: she always had said to me "you're really a nice guy.  You must have some evil side. Where do you bury all the bodies?"

Of course, I never tell her where I stashed them all...

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Alley Oop Plays Quidditch

Alley Oop

Like Quidditch in the Harry Potter universe, this appears to be another poorly designed game where most of the game play is rendered moot by a single action.  Also like Harry Potter:  Alley Oop, a newcomer to the sport, is being set up to be the hero.

Andy Capp

How could Flo forget?  Andy exists in one of only two states: drunk or hungover.  At least she appropriately blames herself for this lapse in judgement.

Ballard Street

Arthur isn't horsing around.  He had a heart attack after laying out his clothes for the day.  His wife, in her demented state, fails to notice.

Scary Gary

For a comic that starts off discussing the history of vampires, the old joke of a punchline is especially disappointing.

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Wednesday Roundup

Alley Oop

Really? It's been nearly two months since this "I can't tell which of these women is my special lady friend because I'm pea-brained moron" plot-line started. That's two months for a roughly five minute conversation. Is this cartoonist so bereft of ideas that such an inane plot-point must be stretched out ad nauseam? On the plus side, we should get about a week's worth of strips depicting Oola slapping Oop across his fat face for guessing incorrectly.

The Argyle Sweater

Justin Bieber invades the comics page. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe.

Betty

Pretty Humdrum if you're just watching TV and not using your phone to talk to your friends or to look up directions to someplace more interesting than the local Starbucks.

Bound and Gaged

I'm no expert on fairly tales, or even the Disney adaption of those fairy tales, but I'm pretty sure it was Snow White lying in a glass casket in the middle of the forest. Sleeping Beauty had nice digs in a castle somewhere.

Break of Day

While literal interpretations of common expressions can be a good source of humor and can result in some delightful absurdism, I'm fairly certain this strip illustrates the exact scenario from where this saying originated, and thus is not funny at all.

Love is

Run away, androgynous cherub-man! Run away!

Overboard

Lame pun aside, kudos to the Overboard crew for doing some actual pirating. It's been a long time.

The Grizzwells

Stomach churning innuendo of forest critter on forest critter action? Check. Irrational discussion of workplace activities despite no depiction of anything actually resembling work? Check. Yup, today's Grizzwells covers all its usual topics.

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Leap Year

Happy Leap Year! Time for some comics review!

Agnes

Uh... it's every four years. Since Trout seems to know so much about this day, you'd think she'd be aware of that.

Alley Oop from 2/27/11

For the last time: THEIR DRESSES ARE TWO DISTINCT COLORS! Differentiating the two requires only a minuscule amount of memorization. Or if you can't see color, the shoulder strap of one dress is on the left, the other is on the right. Okay, no more excuses.

Bob the Squirrel

My vote is for "February Supreme."

Brevity

"Last!"?? You can't have a "last" comment. Does anyone do that? Someone would just comment right after. A "first" comment would have been more true to life. TECHNOLOGY JOKE FAIL!

Broom Hilda

Looks like the maître d' should be the one more familiar with the concept of eating for three.

Rose is Rose

Are there actually any leap year celebrations out in the world? No so much of a holiday per se, as just an extra day. Though perhaps it should be.

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Passing Stones

Peter here again. Today was a busy day, but on to the comics review!

Adam@Home

So Adam's injury turns out to be a kidney stone. I'm glad it's not some lingering back injury or something like that. Adam whining like a baby while his family waits on him would have been played out in maybe a day or two. Now we'll all be treated to the how-can-it-miss? comedy gold of Adam passing his stone.

Animal Crackers

News flash: you're the only tortoise with a sunroof because no one else wants to drill a hole right into his spine just so that he can stick his head out like some ridiculous sock puppet.

Alley Oop

I'm certain the different colored dresses will make figuring out who is who easy enough. Now as for figuring out Alley Oop's ridiculous plot? Not so much.

Break of Day

Uh... yeah it does. At least try to.

F Minus

Wow. That little girl must be really dumb if she's sticking fries in her eye instead of her mouth.

Tank McNamara

No name? I'd call it "Whiny Little Twit disease."

Okay, that's all for today. See you next week!

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Revisiting Old Foes... but not really.

Meekrat is here again, and soon I will have things to promote again! MWA HA HA! For now, just read these reviews.


Pearls Before Swine

First off, Stephan Pastis is doing a reader interaction thing. There's no voting thing on his Facebook page yet, but soon, maybe? I wonder if the strip actually takes place in Pearlswood, though. Also, there's a Neighbor Bob AND a Bob and Patty? Methinks one of those Bobs needs to be taken out.

Frazz

You're not British, Frazz. Don't call it a loo.

Frank and Ernest

Frank and Ernest have a serious problem if, upon discovering the Lost Continent of Atlantis, their first instinct is to make a pun about a letter that has fallen off the sign.

Alley Oop

I just wanted to point out that guy in the second panel. Not many of these people have realistic body structures, but look at that guy. He has a tiny head and his body is all lumpy.

For Heaven's Sake

I guess this was a weekly thing or something. It's worth noting that the character in the second panel looks just as surprised at the terribleness of the joke as I was. I'm sure this won't be the last time we see this strip here on Mondays, as it's replaced "Girls and Sports" as my most hated strip, especially since that strip is gone now. Looking at that made me nostalgic for my old enemies, like The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee and the strips I used to blog about on my own time. Out of all of them, only The Phantom was interesting at all:

Not bad, but hey, luchadores. That's worth noting.

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