Weekend report.

I don't know if this is new, but I just noticed it. Check out The Born Loser from Friday and Saturday:



When the POV is really close to his face, the lines are thicker. There's a handful of possible explanations for this, but I'm pretty sure it's one of two things. Either Chip Dunham Sansom^* drew every panel from a "normal" wide shot POV, and then zoomed in on the face (which could mean that he's not capable of drawing a close-up properly), or he used a thicker pen when inking the close-ups, because he figured that it made some sort of sense regarding the perspective. Well, people don't have lines drawn around their features in real life, so if you "zoom" in on something, there are no lines to get thicker. In every other comic strip that I looked at for both of those days, the line thickness was a constant, regardless of POV. I know it's a stupid thing for me to obsess about, but now I really want to know what the heck is going on here.

Anyway, on to other things, like Saturday's Between Friends:


Her last name is Crow. It always bugs the heck out of me when people screw up celebrities' names. The names are heard on TV and radio and seen in print so much, you'd think it wouldn't be that difficult to get right. I can remember back when people kept pronouncing Cyndi Lauper's name wrong, and to this day people still want to spell "Weird Al" Yankovic's last name with an 'h' at the end.

Two post-scripts for this one, by the way. First, today's strip continues the reference to Crow's "got milk" ad, and this time they got the name right. They even said it twice, possibly to make sure we noticed. Second, I saw the ad, and it's nothing special. I'm not saying it's bad, and she is a nice-looking lady, but I didn't see anything spectacular about the ad.

And one final note, from today's Frank & Ernest Mother Goose and Grimm^*... remember, folks, there was a time when adjusting your clocks due to the DST changes wasn't as simple as it is today.



^* - Thanks to Charles Brubaker for catching my mistakes... Chip is a weird enough name, having two completely different cartoonists share the name is mildly annoying. Also, Frank & Ernest and Mother Goose & Grimm are similar in that they both often have strips that don't involve any of their central characters, but the styles are very distinct, and it was a little foolish of me to get them mixed up.

COFFEE!!!!!

Yesterday's Lio was another awesome "external reference":


An excellent addition to my growing collection of various Family Circus "burns".


If you enjoy coffee-related humour, you should check out this week's Dilbert (but start on Wednesday if you want to skip the drudgery that led to the coffee story arc). Even yesterday's Garfield provides a caffinated chuckle (and any genuine chuckle from Garfield is a rarity, so relish it while you can).

Hump Day miscellany

Obviously, low-brow humour is not a rarity in the funny pages, but it is delightful now and then to get a strip like this. Unabashedly silly, but genuinely funny.


The king's a little guy, you say? Is this perhaps a prelude to a Wizard of Id crossover?

unwritten laws of comics

I was surprised to find out recently that Nancy is still running. It is second only to Family Circus in lameness and general banality, but, like Family Circus as well as Marmaduke and about a dozen other long-lasting titles, it just keeps going and going, supported in part by people who think that Will Farrell is funny and the humour in My Name is Earl is "too sophisticated". As you can probably guess, the only reason I read it at all is in my unofficial role as assistant to Matt, and like Cathy, I usually glance at it to see if there's an SPP and then move on. Quickly. Anyway, see if you can tell me what is wrong with today's Nancy strip:



If you can't find it, take a closer look at the "throwaway" second panel:


That's right, kids, mom's shirt says BADFINGER in big bold letters. Isn't there fundamental law of nature that says that characters in incredibly awful comic strips aren't allowed to own memorabilia of really cool bands? The next logical step, of course, is for the Family Circus parents to dig out their old Tom Waits records, and Heathcliff's owners will start reminiscing about the first Pink Floyd concert they went to. It's all going to hell, people, the lines are blurring.

Oh, Mr. Watterson, what have you done?

wadda coinkydink

I couldn't let a coincidence like this pass by without pointing it out. Maybe Poncho actually encountered Hank.

timing is everything, even when it's unintended

Today's Garfield is so incredibly lame, predictable and utterly superflouous that today's Lio is sheer spiteful delight.

huh huh... he said "Dick"...

Whenever a well-known comic celebrates a landmark anniversary, you can count on several other strips either mentioning it outright, or somehow paying tribute. If it was not for this inevitability, I would not have known that today is the 75th anniversary (or "birthday", depending on who you ask) of Dick Tracy. I never actually liked the comic strip, but the movie with Warren Beatty was pretty kickass. Anyway, here's a roundup of the relevant strips I saw today.






The "tribute" in Shoe is my favourite, because it's basically an Easter egg.

Between the 2 comic syndicates and the 2 newspaper sites that I check every day, I have access to 241 strips, but I only keep track of 62 of them. Of those, only 4 had Dick Tracy tributes. Compare that to the Blondie 75th anniversary when I saw at least 20 strips with various crossovers and tributes.

Duplex again...

The Duplex by Glenn McCoy is pretty much hit-and miss. Sometimes it's funny, a lot of times it's just dumb. Any time a comic strip decides to "break the fourth wall", that's also hit-and-miss. Sometimes it's a good gag and/or commentary on comics, and sometimes it's just a cheap way to avoid writing any actual joke or story. Today's Duplex straddles the fence on all counts. It's not the funniest strip I've read today, but it's not terrible either. If nothing else, McCoy at least deserves kudos for giving it a shot and not falling flat on his face.

Constable had to come and take him away...

If I ruled the world, I would pass a law that anyone who considers themself a music fan would be required to listen to Pet Sounds, all the way through, at least once. It's sad to say that when most people these days think of The Beach Boys, they think of inconsequential "bubblegum" music, remembering the hits like "Surfin' USA", "California Girls" and "Fun Fun Fun". Although there's actually nothing really wrong with those songs, it's too bad that they overshadow the absolute brilliant experience of the album that is Pet Sounds. I mean, it made the #2 spot on Rolling Stone Magazines "RS500" greatest albums of all time. Also, the song "Pancreas" from Weird Al's latest album (which is released today in Canada) is mostly a tribute to this era of Brian Wilson's brilliance.