Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

(Well, Wolverine is tres cool.  We just saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine at the cheap seats  (one thin buck after 9 PM!)…mmmmmmm.)

Everyone has a little mutant in them; sometimes he just needs a mentor to help let it out. Or talk. Or make fun of a current storyline.  Like “Horndog” and Wolverine.

Or Meddler and Wolverine.

[Yes, you really DO see Hugh’s ass in Wolverine!]

Sure, Sabertooth might be Logan’s brother, but it’s a very obscure fact that Ian Cameron (aka, “Narwhal”) is a distant cousin.

Kind of like the real X-Men, the number of mutants is staggering, particularly at Charterstone (it’s like Professor X’s Home for Craptacular Mutants), including the lovely Toby Cameron, aka “Velour”:

And last but not least, a one-time denizen finds her way back, lost and confused.  So much for being a smarty-pants, eh, “Prodigy”?

Meanwhile, Mary (“Meddler”) just loses it altogether…

…I’m a mashup whore.

I like to think I’m loyal to Rex Morgan (“if I were on a desert island and could only mash one comic strip” sort of thing), but gee whiz, when an exciting, multi-layered, June-bikinied storyline is usurped by unhappily-married young couple, I start looking elsewhere.

Sometimes Judge Parker is fun, particularly when the temperatures are on the rise and shameless hussies like Dixie Julep and Godiva Danube (and even Det. Roberts) are va-va-vooming around.

And while Mary Worth‘s recent plots have been yawners, THIS is how to do an unhappily-married couple!  Throw in an old flame who threatens to trample the last threads of the marriage AND give Mary a stroke! I <3 you, Charley!

Still, Mary is not one to go down without a fight.  Delilah’s welfare was entrusted to her (not that anyone asked, mind you)…

[Ice cream truck courtesy of Crankshaft, whose only redeeming feature has been the appearance of Le Chat Bleu’s earthly-plane counterpart, Barney the DEATH CAT!!]

Mary does have her limits, however.  In the 10 July 2009 strip, her mental prowess fails her at last, and she physically pulls Delilah away from Charley! (Several have speculated that this is known as “Full Contact Meddling.”)

AS IF! Delilah is far too enchanting, and Charley way too horny, to allow a little “yank the skank” (to quote CC’s eloquent Vakar) to get in the way.  And then there’s Chinbeard’s surly cousin to consider…

Come on…the hair with a messy center part, the oily smile, the smarmy dialog (not even mine!), the boldly-striped, casual shirts…evidently Santa Royale is just up the road a piece from Malibu, where Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen) holds forth in the hit CBS comedy “Two and a Half Men”.   I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Oh, and the title?  CC’s irrepressible Dingo notes from the badly-concealed loathing between Mary and Charley in Panel Two:

I’m sorry but the only way for two people to have that much contempt for each other is if they’ve slept together at some point in the past. Maybe he yanked her pearls at the moment of orgasm sending her breasts flying into porcelain swans. Maybe she commented on his “size.” Either way, these two bumped ugly in the night and Delilah had better watch out.

Well, maybe so…

Still, when passions like these diverge, there’s usually no hope for a cordial relationship, much less a friendly one:

Of course, the week plods along, with the highlight being the exchange of telephone numbers.

Normally, this would be IT in a typical Mary Worth storyline, but the appearance of Charley Smith and Mary’s knee-jerk reaction to him is pure, unadulterated Joy.  Well, probably adulterated, in Charley’s case.  Anyway…go, Charley, go!

You know your comic strip sucks when the most personable person in it is a furson (Exhibit A: Funky Winkerbean; Exhibit B: Crankshaft; Exhibit C: 9 Chickweed Lane; Exhibit D: Gasoline Alley).

If your main character is a cat, the cat isn’t likable, you are so, so screwed.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I give you Exhibit A:

But wait! It’s worse! The next day’s strip, when it’s been made plain that Cayla is mentally unbalanced and finds Les attractive, has Les asking her to slow down: “…let’s not skip ahead to fast. Endings have to be earned.”

Seriously, WTF?! No matter what the guys in Vatican City want you to believe, Les,nobody likes a martyr!

Move on, Cayla. Please.
And Les? Be a martyr. Die.

Okay. Well. If you want to stick around, Cayla, at least I can offer some entertainment for you…

Just when you think it’s a small, weird world, you find out that the world of the comic strip is even smaller and weirder.

Margaret Shulock is the current writer for Apt. 3-G (yep, she’ responsible for all those wacky goings-on…LuAnn in one of the Dakotas, Tommie wanting a man so much it hurts but noiwon’tmarryyou, Cousin Ruby, and most of all, Margo Magee, second only to Mary Worth in possibly initiating the End of the World!).

Well, that’s pretty keen. But Shulock is also one of the “Six Chix” who produce the comic strip known as Six Chix. Also quite keen.

Her blog has just let slip the fact, though, that she’s one of the three people behind the Barney Google and Snuffy Smith comic strip! WHAT?!? She’s writes both the oh-so-cosmopolitan Margo AND the oh-so-backwoodsy Snuffy and Maw and Tater and Jethro and Ellie May?!? (I’m not so sure on the names.) The woman is a dynamo!

We could only hope for an in-house crossover! Yeah, that’s the ticket…

For the record, I always kind of liked the wagging tongues in Snuffy Smith. They’re kind of the Ozark equivalent of “applause” signs.

Then again, there can be too much of a good thing:

…they’re cartoon characters.

Oh. Wait. So are you.

Carry on. (And thanks to the Comics Curmudgeon’s Hogenmogen for the inspiration! You just know Shady’s up to something…)

Don’t tell me that Mary Worth doesn’t look for a silver lining!

It seems at times that cartoonists should pool their talents, for the good of their art and their readers. Look at Judge Parker, Rex Morgan, and Mary Worth — serial marriages made in heaven! (On the other hand, don’t look at Family Circus, Crankshaft, Marmaduke…)

If only this week’s contemplation by Garfield and Jon had melded with last week’s introspection by Funky and Les! What masterpieces could have been accomplished!

WHY? WHY? WHY?

The blast is courtesy of the lovely Janice Malloy, Max “The Ax” Malloy’s wife.

How sad is it when a simple misspelling is more unintentionally humorous than several years’ worth of Keane Kids misprouncements?

The Charterstone pool party continues to pack ’em in (no matter how loudly they scream for mercy):

You might scoff and think Mary is just as meddlesome as she ever was, but little signs are everywhere that her Powers could be waning.

The Friday strip confirms it (12 June). A whole week of pool party — something had to happen! Some rapscallionry, horseplay, running around the pool, a Charterstone resident getting a little too loaded on cheap wine coolers.

But, no…
*Some guy pours himself a drink from a 2-liter bottle of soda while regarding the mustard-glazed donuts with suspicion.
*Toby’s lazy eye goes on a stroll.
*The fellow to Mary’s left is looking for Love Connection — and it doesn’t involve either Mary or Toby.
*And a sudden eclipse plunges Mary’s face into shadow, dramatically illustrating the loss of Mary Worth’s influence in Charterstone, to say nothing of Santa Royale…or The Valley.

Like the sun’s dangerous ultraviolet rays, Mary meddling abilities are cast have been dulled.