11/10 comic quickies

I like comics with morals. Like this one's - don't let old people use the internet.

Soon I'll be treated to a plot that centers around this old lady searching for cans to recycle to pay off her "the Amazon site" debt. And it'll be funny. Oh, it'll be funny.


What's interesting here, besides the sexy, sexy animals all looking right at you (if they weren't sexy, how would you know that they're all female?), is that cat. She's a pussy with one thing on her mind....


So this is what straight sex looks like? Good to know.


Another Sunday, another anti-sodomy sermon.


From the How It Is Dep't: Dr. McRealPerson spends his whole day away from the unwashed masses.... Can't be too clean, I always say...

But sometimes he has to interact with janitors in his building... Oh yeah-h-h-h-h! Hallo, Doc... How you are? Put it dere..

*Urge to repeal the estate tax

Some things stayed the same...

In my two months of absence, I missed a lot of comics, but I just read them and I'm finding that the French expression, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, is actually really, really true.

Check out today's TDIET:

They're still sticking with the "deranged and whiney people complaining about problems that no one really has" take.

Slylock Fox is still digging the you-have-to-stare-at-them- for-half-an-hour-and-have-a-newspaper-with-amazing-resolution- and-color-quality mysteries. (And Farmer Hog even asked Shady Shrew to watch his road-side stand! As if there was nothing to clue him off to the possibility that Shady would steal from him, besides the dude's name. Seriously, if I were the pig, I'd be a whole lot more worried that Shady, y'know, stole the money in the register instead of a few apples.)

Gil Thorp is still a bunch of boxy lookin' kids whose names I'll never remember sitting around gaping abysses getting excited over not really but kinda sports-related themes. (I'm thinking that Cully Vale is new. Am I right? And what happened with all that Gale Martin drama? Was it the bassist?)

Whoever writes DtM still thinks, "Decade-old pop culture reference plus reference to Dennis equals nap time!" (Can't you just unbutton one button, Henry, to show that you're relaxing? I mean, I know that it's supposed to be a Rockwell inspired comic, but I think that late at night, after the kid goes to bed, you're cuddling with your wife on the couch, you'd probably want to unbutton at least one button.)

And Beetle's still stuck in his abusive relationship with Sarge.

Wednesday's They'll Do It Every Time

You know how sometimes people don't like a present they get, but they're polite anyway? What weirdos, thinking about other people's feelings and shit. I'd have told Elpie and Ferdie just what I thought... and probably ended up like Ziggy.

They'll Do It Every Time

You know how grass grows? Well, sometimes, if it grows in front of an object, you can't see that other object! *The urge to mow that lawn*

But seriously, the "grass growing" complaint has to be one of the lamest that TDIET has taken on, ever. Although I have to admit that it's funny seeing a dude walking by a sign that says "Welcome to Dorksburg" and saying "Wow!"

Saturday's Gil Thorp

Oh, my. You all were telling me about eh crotch-shot coming in Gil Thorp, but I wasn't expecting this. I mean, man, that's a lot of crotch. What's the fold above Bill Ritter's right leg? Is that...? Oh my, the comics' first cock-shot. Right there. In Gil Thorp. Not what I expected at all.

The bigger question is Why? Shouldn't the focus be on both Gil Thorp and Bill Ritter? Or just Bill Ritter since he's the one who's talking? Or his legs (not the third one, haw haw) since he's talking about his legs? Is Frank McLaughlin just in a crotch-drawing mood?

Or is this that certain artistic technique McLaughlin engages in every now and then: character cam! He did it this past week with Assistant Coach Kaz and recently with Branden Zoller. Is this.... Thorp-Cam?

I, of course, totally want this to be true. Then again, I won't be satisfied until there's been a gay orgy in every comic, including TDIET.

From the Like It Is Dep't: Lugbutt doesn't care about condoms when he tops.... Don't worry, I'm clean, I never bottom, I just got tested four times last week, I never have sex with anyone else, I eat squid every day, etc., etc.

But then, when it's his turn to bottom, guess who's the health nut? Oh, YE-E-E-E-AH! I can't believe you'd even think about barebacking! That's so irresponsible, demeaning, disrespectful...

Am I missing something here?

Friday's They'll Do It Every Time

I've worked with mothers of small children, and I've never heard them do this.

It might have been helpful if Scaduto, in his example of Loopina spelling out food names, didn't make her say "BLT", because that's a little confusing.

They'll Do It Every Time

I've never noticed the difference in magazines between the optometrist and the dentist. Is this common or just another Scaduto fantasy that optometrists have all the good magazines? And why are all the "good" magazines about golf and fishing?

On a related note, do you all remember that one Seinfeld episode where Jerry's dentist had porn magazines instead of the normal Time and NewsWeek? And then he thought that the dentist and the hygienist had sex in the exam room while he was knocked out.... I think someone should send that in to TDIET and see if they can get it published.

On another related note, I need to think of something really gay to send into TDIET or Plugger. Hmmmmmmm.... A plugger's buttplug is found in the produce section?

Or how about this: Livin' on the Edge: Catastra can't get hubby Lugbutt to teach her golf.... Oh, honey, golf is for men, it's my time away from home, why don't you find some women to do girly things with, patriarchal yak, yak, yak.... But then look who asks her for putting tips when she's left him for one of those women to do girly things with? Oh, YE-E-E-E-AH.... Wait, so am I looking at the hole or beyond it? Should I keep my knees bent? Etc., etc., etc. Am I missing something here?

Tuesday's They'll Do It Every Time

Hey! TDIET's doing Debbie Downer!

They'll Do It Every Time recaption

Living on the edge: Rotunda's empty life and loveless marriage mean she can't keep her hands off the food...

But then remind her of her own mortality and just watch the anorexia set in... Oh, yeah!

Qomics for Queers - The Office Closet Case

While it's easy for the rest of us (or maybe just me) to judge the comics as not quite queer enough, when you think about them as being stuck in a time-warp, you realise you have to look a little closer at the closet cases involved in order to pick them out. Television might have its L-Word's and Will and Grace's and lesbian sisters of Jamie on Mad About You, and the silver screen can have its fancy pants Jack and Ennis and Kissing Jessica Stein, but the comics are just fine without all the bells and whistles. No, they don't need your pity; all they want is your respect and your time as you kids look more deeply into them for their queer folk. Yeah, it might not be as easy as calling someone on your cell phone or whatever it is the kids are doing these days, but if you read between the lines, reinterpret the artwork, and just make things up, you can find the representation you're looking for.


First, check out this Friday's They'll Do It Every Time:


Don't let the fashion fool you; this is supposed to be now. This single panel is about a guy who calls the women in his office "sweetheart" and "m'love". And he's somehow singing at the same time. Now there's really only one sort of guy who can get smiles for that sort of behavior - the office "glad" (maybe Scaduto means that he's just happy?).

I just reread Richard Isay's Becoming Gay, and I must say that even though it was written in 1991, there is a cultural difference between the gays of his time and mine, so much so that I can't wrap my mind around a statement like this: "[I] was concerned about the effect coming out would have on my marriage" (37). The clothes tell me that Buttbrain here might be a part of that generation.

So TDIET, like an anachronistic Seinfeld, is supposed to poke fun at different types. This type, with whom those two guys in the Bronx are so familiar, is a great guy deep down inside. Buttbrain is that type of person who has just come out to himself, later in life, and has come out to some of his women friends far from home and has become a sort of desexualized confidant and office mascot because of it. But being partly in the closet, especially to one's close family, is only going to help build his self-esteem about this one part of his identity and create resentment towards compulsory heterosexuality, which ultimately will be transfered on the most visible representative of The Opposite Sex in his life - Helgar. I've seen this misdirected anger a lot among partly out queer people; in fact it seems that's the fuel of the Catholic hierarchy.

So what's Buttbrain to do? Well, he has to take that final step. No, it won't help his relationship with Helgar, but maybe he can become a better role model for his son who can't stop wearing the same blue-vest-striped-shirt outfit.


This Friday's Blondie:


Aversion therapy for heterosexuals.


And your Judith Butler rewrite of The Family Circus: