Qomics for Queers, established well before the Industrial Revolution and its bourgeois construction of gender

What a week's it's been! I'm beginning to feel a lot like Luann Powers, more and more work, less and less time, and the ghost of a tonalist artist floating around me forcing me to paint.

Well, all except for that last one.


Let's start with this Friday's Snuffy Smith:

I can't get over just how sad Jughaid looks in panel two. This is a break from Snuffy Smith convention, specifically the one where all the characters have to laugh in the final panel. Here are a few examples:





I, of course, think that this is just jealousy. Those are some pretty schnazzy shoes!

Especially considering Tuesday's:

Consider that frilly pink apron. Something tells me that Maw didn't make Jughaid put it on. I mean, why would she when he's just peeling potatoes? That's a whole lot cleaner than all of the other shenanigans Jughaid gets into. I'm sure he put it on because he likes it, and I say more power to him. Seriously.

But what gets me is the fact that Jughaid puts himself in Beetle's position in his fantasy. Coincidence or shout-out to the funny page's gayest couple? You decide.


Tuesday's Family Circus:

Left to his own devices, Jeffy's turned into a rage-filled zombie out to kill Thelma!

The next line was Jeffy's response, which I'm sure was something along the lines of "No, I won't hit anything with it, Daddy. There isn't a thing in this house that I want to hit."


This Saturday's Rex Morgan, M.D.:

"That will buy us the time we need! Rex is dumb as a brick and can't handle that whole press harder on the gas to go faster thing, so he drives at 10 miles an hour everywhere he goes! He'll probably get lost, too, on the way to his own home! Ingenious plan putting your husband's stupidity to work for us, June's talking breast!"

Well, the other way to interpret the final panel is that everyone assumes Hugh and Rex will find another way to pass the time on the way back from the airport....


We continue in the Tyler Jay drama from last week with this Thursday's Gil Thorp:

Here we see Tyler Jay at the only three angles that Frank McLaughlin can draw: the Zordon floating head in panel one, suave Superman close-up in panel two, and 11-year-old neighbor boy in panel three.

Tyler says he's cured, but enquiring minds need to know: from what??? Last week he came out, so to speak, and now he's been thrown into therapy. He pronounces himself instantly cured and repeats it over and over for community approval. Now he needs to play some sports and continue visiting a therapist to cure him of a "problem" that the week before he was proud of.

That's right, folks, Tyler Jay is being allegorically ex-gayed. The parallels are astounding.

Or, this whole strip might be working on a metaphysical plane way above my head. "You've barely started, Tyler Jay, transcending space-time to become one with the baseball. You bashed open your head, and now you must drink this tea to begin your spirit-journey."

Hold up, what is Tyler doing at coach Thorp's house?


And your Family Circus Audre Lorde rewrite:

Gil Thorp

Here we see Tyler Jay at the only three angles that Frank McLaughlin can draw: the Zordon floating head in panel one, suave Superman close-up in panel two, and 11-year-old neighbor boy in panel three.

Apparently he thinks he's cured, but enquiring minds need to know: from what??? We know he's a little messed up, but we never really got an explanation as to what kind of messed up. He had a great session with his therapist - what did they discuss? Why can't he play baseball? What's wrong???

This is probably working on a metaphysical plane way above my head. "You've barely started, Tyler Jay, transcending space-time to become one with the baseball. You bashed open your head, and now you must drink this tea to begin your spirit-journey."

Hold up, what is Tyler doing at coach Thorp's house?

Qomics for Queers, a product of a liberal arts education

What a week! Tyler confessed to beating himself up in Gil Thorpe, Vera seethes with vague and directionless anger in Mary Worth, and Tommie learns a thing or two about playing the field from Margo in Apartment 3-G. It almost makes you want to take a day off from reading about all this excitement, because it's just too much! But we have a little more here, Queerketeers, because there was a lot of queering it up going on in the funny pages.


Tuesday's Gil Thorpe:

Well, Gil Thorpe's latest story line came to a screeching halt this week. We saw Tyler walk into Paris's party with a bleeding head-wound, then Brynna blamed RJ for it and we all thought she did it to solidify her boyfriend Tyler's position on the basketball team, and then we saw Mr. Lazy Editor and Sleuthy McScoop (seen talking to Tyler's floating head in panel one) investigate, all to have Tyler confess to the whole thing. For no reason.

Even though I don't work within my major, college wasn't a complete waste for me. I wrote a paper on how coming out is a rhetorical act used as a tool to deconstruct the power behind Catholic confession. The long and short of it is that confession is a speech act used to reiterate Catholic teachings and strengthen them through repetition and by reifying the power relationship between confessee and confessor. Coming out is a speech act that builds a personal narrative with details about one's sexuality, but it focuses on empowerment of the confessee by seeking and expecting approval.

Yeah, I know, real original.

But anyway, here we have Tyler confessing really happily to being a big-time masochist. He says in the Wednesday strip that he wanted sympathy but that he had no part in blaming RJ. That makes about as much sense as the motion lines in panel two. No, here he is beating himself up and then proudly telling everyone. In an abstract sense of the term, he's coming out of the closet.

Of course, Coach Thorpe sends him to counseling in Saturday's strip, so I'm sure he'll find out that he's completely non-mascochistic, was just acting out, and is moving to the Midwest to study to be a psychologist.


Thursday's Beetle Bailey:

I don't even need to reiterate how gay Beetle and Sarge are. But now they're bickering like an old married couple. I mean, this is a conversation one would expect to hear from Helga and Hagar or Leroy and Loretta, not a Sergeant First Class and a Private under his command.

It gets even more intense on Friday:

I'm totally like, Oh.My.God. Beetle can't take the closet for another century and he's leaving the military. Because we know what "Maybe the army isn't for everyone" means when they're letting in high school drop-outs and convicted felons and still don't have enough people to fill the ranks. He may or may not have been asked, but I'm sure that if we could look one panel into the past here, he told.

Fortunately for Beetle, this unnamed officer doesn't believe in kicking out a soldier over DADT and is expressing his solidarity with the community in panel two.


And Wednesday's Dennis the Menace:

Haha, Dennis! You sure showed Margaret! Oh wait, no, no you didn't. Calling her ugly would have required a "no" answer. Asking if it's a trick question is just confusing. It presumes that there's no real way to answer the question. Almost as if he feels unable to judge female beauty....

Or maybe the joke has something to do with how Margaret has fused her legs together.


And this morning's Dennis the Menace:

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, Dennis, they're getting together to eat something, but it isn't on any Supperware....

See? I was right! I wasn't just making things up!