He's a Big, Lecherous Dog

Complaining about comic strips quickly can mark one as the kind of crank who writes letters to the editor when the female news anchor on Channel 2 gets a new haircut. ("Why couldn't they leave well enough alone? Until Jennifer grows her hair out, I'm not watching any more.")

Still, I have so few real pleasures in my life (among them, cold beer with Italian food, and scratching my back with a plastic knife ... ahhhh) that the comics are something I really look forward to each day. (I've often thought that The New York Times would amount to something if it ran funnies.)

Thus, it pains me that One of America's Great Newspapers recently began shrinking one page of its comics section to near subatomic size. Even worse, on the opposite page, they're unconscionably stretching some of the strips, including one of my favorites, "Get Fuzzy." That's strictly bush league stuff.

The Trib, which used to have a terribly weak comics page (anchored by "Marvin" and "The Phantom") has added a number of very good strips and is close to parity with the P-G in funnies, if not a little better; it's a pity they insist on running the (badly) colored versions.

The News has always had a quirky mix of comics, often running strips that I've never seen anywhere else. One recent addition to the News that I really enjoy is "Big Top," and against my better judgment, I've gotten hooked on "Funky Winkerbean," which is a odd mix of a soap-opera strip and a gag-a-day comic.

On the other hand, there are a number of strips that don't run in any of the local papers, and even more that do run locally that are utter krep. It's sad, but there have been many, many days recently when the best comic strip in the newspaper was a 30-year-old "Classic Peanuts."

For instance, has anyone ever even smiled at "Mallard Fillmore"? To quote the liner notes on an old Tom Lehrer album, it seldom has any points to make but obvious ones. Recently, its creator, Bruce Tinsley, has been on a rant about Jon Stewart, who parodied "Mallard" in America: The Book. Tinsley is convinced that his regular readers (all 10 of them) were confused, and might think that he (Tinsley) was actually contributing to a Jon Stewart book.

This proves that Tinsley not only can't write satire, he can't recognize it when he sees it.

Then there's "Beetle Bailey," ostensibly set in the Army, but it's clear that Mort Walker's memories of Army life are becoming increasingly dim, and no one else working on the strip apparently cares enough to do any real research. Thus "Beetle Bailey" now does little more than rehash sight gags that were old and tired when Milton Berle first stole them.

"Garfield" needs to be taken to the vet and put down; it had one joke that has been repeated endlessly for the past 27 years. He's a cat. He's fat. He likes lasagna. He hates Mondays and dogs. And please don't get me started on "Ziggy," "The Family Circus," and the rest of that lot of "family friendly" comics. "Family friendly" need not necessarily equal "unfunny" (see yesterday's Almanac about Bob Newhart), but "Family Circus" is spectacularly unfunny.

Every time I read a "Family Circus" panel, I can actually feel a few brain cells die. Yet there it sits, on the comics page of nearly every newspaper I regularly read. It's impossible to avoid, so I end up reading it, and then I groan. "Well," I think, "there went 30 seconds of my life I'll never get back again."

Luckily, the Internets have liberated me from newspaper tyranny. Not only can you discuss comic strips with like-minded geeks at newsgroups like rec.arts.comic.strips, or read the commentary at sites like "The Comics Curmudgeon," you can now download whatever mix of comics you like using programs like Comictastic.

My current daily reads include some fairly obscure syndicated comics like "Arlo & Janis," "9 Chickweed Lane," "Brevity" and "Barkeater Lake," along with web comics like "Medium Large," "Kevin and Kell," "Sinfest" and "You Damn Kid." And I get them in nice vivid colors, unmolested by stretching or shrinking.

If you're not that computer savvy, visit the website of your favorite newspaper and build your own comics pages. The San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and Washington Post all have comics page options; most of the major syndicates also put their comics on the web.

Also using the 'net, I can also avoid the comics I can't stand, which means I haven't paid any attention to "Marmaduke" in months. Like "Garfield," "Marmaduke" has one joke. The main character is a big dog who gets into comic misadventures because of his large size. Hilarity, theoretically, ensues. I have never, in my life, even smiled at a "Marmaduke," but unlike "Family Circus," it seems to be easy to ignore.

Thus I missed several recent "Marmaduke" panels that could make you wonder exactly what's going on in the "Marmaduke" family. (Marmaduke's owners are actually named the Winslows. You could, as they say, look it up.)

Here's the first "Marmaduke" in question, which ran on July 9:

Hundreds of papers ran that strip, and yet I can't see any plausible joke there except for the obvious double entendre. I mean, is he trying to make soup? Eh? I've never known a dog to want food heated, and after all, dogs don't really eat bones; they lick the marrow out of them and chew on them. So it ain't funny ... except on the filthy, unintentional level.

Or was it unintentional? Because a few days later, on July 11, along came this "Marmaduke" panel:

Um ... OK. "Woof on my shoulder" makes it sound like he's going to barf on her, and indeed, he's got his mouth (snout? muzzle?) hanging over her back. But the embrace seems fishy, especially given the fact his girlfriend (a poodle, which must make for some interesting ... er, mechanics) just dumped him. Is he looking for a rebound girlfriend?

You may think I just have a sick mind (and I do) but yesterday, this "Marmaduke" ran:

Good Lord! They're having an orgy, and the dog wants in!

This is exactly what conservatives have been warning us about for years. Rick Santorum said that if you allowed gays to marry, the next thing society would endorse was "man on dog." Who knew that it would happen on the funny pages? Paging Dr. James Dobson, stat!