I'm All for Romance, But...

There is so much wrong with yesterday's Marmaduke that I don't know where to begin. But let's ignore Dog Gone Funny in the last panel (I think we covered Kitty Korner adequately last week), and focus on the meat of the strip, titled "Dinner Date."

What kind of freaks treat their pets like this? If Marmaduke hadn't slurped his spaghetti (and how dare he!), were his owners gonna stand there and watch as the canines consummated their love? I will join World of Warcraft before I start living vicariously through my dog and his homely girlfriend. Two words for the sad human beings pictured above: sex therapy.

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Deconstructing Herman

I've found that Herman poses an unsettling query. Namely, what if we had noses instead of eyeballs? The answer, it seems, is that nothing would be funny, ever.

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Minority Report

While expanding my comics canon (can't rip on Drabble every day), I've stumbled across a few new strips. Above we have La Cucaracha, which spent the week spoofing Disney's acquisition of Marvel.

And below, a comic called Housebroken. Tyler Perry robots? I can get behind that.

It seems the success of these minority-themed strips lies in their willingness to mock pop culture. Probably because they're not written by 60-year-old white guys whose idea of pop culture is Tony Bennett and M*A*S*H.

To temper the optimism of this post, though, I leave you with a recent edition of Secret Asian Man, which, despite its promising title, sucks:

Themes of friendship and high adventure? *YAWN*

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Kitty Korner = New Hotness

Let's examine Sunday's Heathcliff, and skip to the end to a little weekly feature known as Kitty Korner. (You see, corner is spelled with a "K" because kitty is spelled with a "K." Get it? It's cute!) Wikipedia describes Kitty Korner as a regular Sunday feature "where unusual cats in the real world are described."

Unusual? Talk about the understatement of the century. The latest installment of The Korner, as we insiders call it, details the bizarre exploits of Salt, a cat who belongs to Kirsten Greenslade of Santa Cruz. Salt just loves to drink a certain liquid--and it's not milk. Nor is it juice, soda, whiskey or wine. No, this wily feline is batty over--get this--water! She'll drink water from pools, puddles, or even the sprinkler. She just can't get enough of the stuff.

It's worth remembering that Ms. Greenslade took the time to pen a note to Heathcliff's author saying that her cat loves to drink water. And while it would be futile to try and diagnose this woman's specific neuroses, it's clear that there's something going on here much stranger than a cat drinking agua (even from a sprinkler). That said, Ms. Greenslade dreamt of being in Kitty Korner, and damn if she didn't succeed. I dreamt of being an anesthesiologist, and I work at Adult Video 2 over on Memorial Parkway. They don't offer benefits.

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The Not Jackpot

I'm trying to decide which pisses me off more, Cathy or those Pizza Hut stuffed crust commercials where Jim Breuer shouts "Jackpot!" When I see those commercials, I want to punch Jim Breuer in the face. When I read Cathy, I want to punch myself in the face. When these two monuments of suck are pitted against one another, we all lose, America. We all lose.

You Gotta Love Casual Alcoholism

I thought today's Andy Capp was legitimately funny. It also made me feel better about being unemployed, and drinking in the middle of the day. Upstanding citizens, Andy and I.

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BREAKING HERB AND JAMAAL NEWS

Prepare to have your mind blown out your ass: the old lady from Herb and Jamaal has suddenly ditched her Star Trek coffee mug for a completely generic mug void of any movie licensing tie-in. If anyone has any information regarding this strange and disturbing development, PLEASE contact me immediately.

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Marmaduke Sucks at Watching TV

On the surface, today's Marmaduke is a forgettable gag about the dog occupying his owner's La-Z-Boy. But dig deeper, and you'll find something much more insane going on here. What the hell is Marmaduke watching on that fine flat screen? Is there some new modern art network I don't know about? Like, seriously, what is that? Change the channel, man! Your master is such a milquetoast he's just giving you the best seat in the house, and you're watching a bunch of incoherent lines and dots? Come on! Then again, it's possible that Marmaduke creator Brad Anderson is so talentless and lazy that he just drew a bunch of scribbles on the TV screen. But let's not even go down that road.

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Pickles Takes on Boner Meds

I'm usually checking my pulse by about the third panel of Pickles, but yesterday they threw me a sucker punch with this risque riff on natural male enhancement. Frankly, I agree with the old man. Those commercials make me feel awkward as hell. The only thing worse is when my girlfriend is watching Bravo and I catch drug ads for vaginal diseases I didn't even know existed. It's like, I'm trying to eat a sandwich, and I'm not actually gonna stop eating my sandwich altogether, but I have to put it down for a second or else the next few bites will taste really bad. And moist. Also, this seemed like a great way to get "Boner" in the headline.

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Burning Question

WHY IN GOD'S NAME IS THAT OLD LADY DRINKING OUT OF A STAR TREK MUG?

Seriously. Take a close look. Why? 'Cause I got nothin'.

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Please, Slow Down, I'm Retarded

Today's Drabble was particularly insulting, not because of the embarrassing art, or the lack of any real humor, but because Drabble author and creative mastermind Kevin Fagan spends three panels setting up a joke and then, rather than telling one... he just sort of explains what's come before.

So Ralph Drabble is chatting idly about barbecues with an employee of the awesomely named, if somewhat anonymous, "Trash Company." He then gets this sly look on his face and thinks to himself, "Guys love to talk about their barbecues." Yeah, no shit, that's what the whole strip was about.

At first I thought, goddamn, Ralph Drabble is one stupid guy. He is, after all, a mall cop. I haven't seen Paul Blart, but I'm guessing Mr. Fagan was brought on as a creative consultant. But after thinking about it some more (too much), I realized that this bit of exposition in the fourth panel was all just for us. Mr. Fagan holds his audience to be such cretinous turds that they require explication of the most facile and basic concepts.

"Hey, why is Drabble carrying on about his barbecue? I thought he just needed the damn thing picked up! And now the other guy is talking about his barbecue?! What does his barbecue have to--OH! Ohhhh..."

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God Bless Herb and Jamaal

This was today's Herb and Jamaal. You don't know Herb and Jamaal? Oh, it's awesome! It's about these two black guys named Herb and Jamaal. One of 'em has a crazy-shaped head (that's Jamaal). Unlike Watch Your Head or The Boondocks, Herb and Jamaal doesn't need contemporary black slang, or jokes. Herb and Jamaal is old school. "Cleanliness is next to godliness." The laundromat next to the church. See? That shit is cool. Herb and Jamaal. Kill me.

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