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!

* * *

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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The Daily Comics for 7/29/08

Do you feel that there should be daily comics in color in newspapers? It's more effort to force on people who are already working hard every day, but in my opinion, the color adds so much! There are lots of traditional comic strips available in color, and most web comics are in color too. Is it time for grayscale daily comics to go the way of the dinosaur? Are there certain comics that benefit from black and white only? We'd love to hear your opinions!


Marmaduke 7/29/08

"You see, he is gigantic! Don't you get that Marmaduke is a HUGE dog? I've got to scoop his crap with a snow shovel! Someone kill me."


Nancy 7/29/08

There must be a missing panel right after the first one because this doesn't make any sense otherwise. I'm guessing, just from reading this strip the last few months, it went something like this: Sluggo stands over Nancy, kicking sand in her face and saying "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."


Pearls Before Swine 7/29/08

Maybe this is why I've always had a problem with those people, they're just unnatural.


The Fusco Brothers 7/29/08

Here we see how going from irrelevant comics to creepy sexual innuendo comics is one of the best ways to get yourself featured on Daily Comics Review. It's more enjoyable to read Fusco Brothers if you imagine they speak in a low gravely deep voice, real creepy slow like. Try it!


Alley Oop 7/29/08

Alley Oop is on a quest to contact his creators for some boring reason and has finally found them. Turns out they are two flat, featureless gradient-maps shaped slightly like humans.


For Better or For Worse 7/29/08

We present the first and hopefully last comic to feature an old man biting his own nipple. And people say For Better or For Worse is past its prime!


Dick Tracy 7/29/08

I've bitched a lot about the rediculous lack of gun use in superhero comics where cops are often present (see the whole Spider-Man plot currently running) but Dick Tracy is a detective. He has no super powers, but doesn't use his gun in the most obvious situation. Let me set it up for you: You are being attacked by dogs that are trained to kill people. You have a gun, but you decide to give them a steak instead in the hopes of distracting them. Either Dick's writer is losing it or Mr. Tracy is really a sleeper operative for PETA.


Overcompensating 7/29/08

Best comic today. We lean kinda left, deal with it.

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Sundays Comics Done Differently 6/22/08

I know we usually just bring you the best of the comic strips here on Sundays but I wanted to mix it up a little and talk about what I see as the biggest problems with the Sunday funnies. But first I wanted to point out a great strip that is running for its last day today:

Single and Looking 6/22/08

If you ever enjoyed this strip, as I did often, visit the website and drop Matt Janz a line and some appreciation for his hard work over the years. I personally hope he continues publishing the strip in different format like a web comic so that I can continue to follow the adventures of his great characters. Now on to our other Sunday feature.

As formulaic as most daily comic strips are, Sunday comics offer more space and less restraint of creativity than the other 6 days a week. Unfortunately, many comic artists either too lazy or just don't know what to do with the space.

Adam @ Home 6/22/08

Adam@Home is a classic example of a strip that poorly uses it's space. The giant throw-away name panel and then four dialog-free panels that could have been minimized in to one good perspective shot, but instead we have a lot of filler with a lazy punchline about gas prices. Haven't heard that one before.


For Better or For Worse 6/22/08

Another strip that recycles the same thing almost every weekend is FBOFW. Tons of short action panels with the joke in the last frame. When you have an identity crisis like this strip does with never knowing if it's a humor strip or a soap opera, having the same old formula for big old scary Sundays must give some comfort. At least you can go back and read the strip again and it's almost funny if you think he's getting a blow job instead of sitting in a massage chair in the mall.


Alley Oop 6/22/08

Alley Oop is another example of how many ancient strips slack off on the weekend. All this week we have already been reading this story, and now on Sunday we get the entire previous weeks-worth of panels in one condensed form. Maybe the artist does this because the strip is run in lots of papers as a Sunday only strip, but do you really need to give continuity to people who only read your strip once a week? It's not like they're going to remember what happened last week. You should either continue pushing your storyline ahead or do a Sunday comic totally unrelated to the on-going story and be creative with it. I guess your strip still has to have some life left in it to do that though.


The Norm 6/22/08

Here is what the Sunday comics should be about: mixing up the style and making lots of jokes. Yes you've got a large name panel, but there is a great utilization of the rest of the space and it's not done in a cookie-cutter frame style either. The jokes are many and spread throughout the strip. The Norm really shows that if you delve deeply in to a subject, in this case the ridiculousness of flying right now, that you can get a lot of humor spread all through your comic and it actually makes for a good read, unlike the short, trite coverage of gas prices seen in the Adam@home example above.


Maintaining 6/22/08

Comics don't have to be that hard! Take a silly/absurd idea and build a well illustrated conceptualization of that idea, then color. Maintaining has only been running in syndication since spring 2007, but Nate Creekmore has shown immense talent and I look forward to his comic every day of the week. If Maintaining isn't running in your local paper, contact them and urge them to add this great strip.

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Saturday comics are always the worst 6/14/08

Long live the weekend! The weather is beautiful and there is nothing to worry about. I hope you enjoy your dose of the daily comic universe!

For better or For Worse 6/14/08

Of all the confusing, contrived strips in existence, FBOFW is the worst. I could write about it almost every day but I have a hard enough time being funny when I can understand what is going on. If there was ever a recipe for wedding success we'd have it here: rushing marriage for someone outside the relationship plus being a douche bag proto-hippie who thinks he can make allusions about Woodstock even though he wasn't even born when it happened.


The Amazing Spider-man 6/14/08

After spending all week blabbing on and on above New York City we learn the next plot curve is a liquid nitrogen handgun? Are you fucking serious? He's a villain! Why not shoot Spidey in the face with that thing instead of his webbing? Oh yeah, because that would make sense.


Cow and Boy 6/14/08

With equal portions of creepy and silly, todays Cow and Boy was one of the few comic strips this Saturday that made me chuckle.


Judge Parker 6/14/08

"Nothing makes me grin quite like a nice glass of wine and dreaming about my frumpy horn-dog secretary and leg-less, war vet lawyer boning all over the office LOL." God damn Sam get a grip.


Mallard Fillmore 6/14/08

Duck and Cover (link) does a great job dissecting this awful strip daily and I'm hoping if I plug them they might add me to their link list of things worth reading. We'll see! If anybody is disconnected from reality it's MF. I went to a small liberal college with lots of liberal professors and I never heard a positive word about communism. Also China is only communist in name anymore. But that's OK Mallard, just keep living in your own universe.

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