Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

…Happiness is so many different things to so many different people.

It can be a warm puppy, or a rainbow, or a ray of bright sunshine.  For Apartment 3-G‘s young (*coff*) career woman Margo Magee, it’s snooping through her fiance Eric’s apartment, finding a mysterious red blue box from Tiffany’s in his closet, stealing his answering machine, and then forgetting the Tiffany box! With her vociferous complaints about her “naked, ringless fingers,” maybe Eric proposed months ago, and she merely forgot.

Ah, but let’s be generous and note that eventually Margo does remember the Important Things in Life.  Which is what Charlie Shulz and the whole Peanuts gang focused on for many happy years.

The 11 January 2009 serial strips were particularly lead-footed today (and Sundays afford multiple panels for exciting action!).  Lynn and her Mama Rose of a coaching dad continue to natter in Mary Worth.  Sam is stuck in the airport with a two-hour layover in Judge Parker (oh, please, God, don’t show us his flight home).  Not much has progressed in Rex Morgan, either, other than June finally believes that Sarah has Seen Something on deck and has gone outside to investigate (way to build your kid’s self-esteem, June).

Still, Mrs. Morgan manages to strike quite the colorful pose in the homey glow of a port-hole, leading to some speculation by CC’s commodorejohn and myself that dropping June into any comics strip would improve it.

Look! An experiment!

Oh, Creator Lords of Rex Morgan, M.D., we are not worthy of your bounty of sights and sounds!

We will, nonetheless, run with it! Run like the wind!

(Are Nolan and Wilson on to the snark? The Dunsmores…and Guido…and the whole S.S. Surly/Loathe Boat/Rex Morgan, Cabin Boy plot are just too good.)

Brooke McE.’s “hands” are an interested analogy, but in all honesty, I think the too-often repeated use is coming close to being parody, rather than having a touching sweetness.

And a hearty “Yo Ho!” for Nolan and Wilson for reintroducing yet another component of this Wackiest Cruise-Ship in the Fleet storyline:

Apologies to Bob Weber, Jr. (Slylock Fox’s dad), who does a keen site for kids and encourages to draw and cartoon.  For no good reason at all, I can apparently channel the mind of a 10-year-old boy.

I’d like to think that this is a mere coincidence, kind of like three comics spotlighting swans (of all things!) on the same day.  But earlier this week, the official Hot Bloggers Calendar for 2009 was published, featuring the Comics Curmudgeon himself, Josh! (Yay!)

Although this isn’t the photo used in the calendar, please note the haute couture that Josh is modeling in an exceptional display of sartorial splendour. (Yes, this is so classy, I must use splendour rather than the far more mundance splendor.)

And dang, if Ziggy isn’t horning in on Josh’s lingerial turf!  Ziggy, you squat little sentient mushroom! You’ll never be in Josh’s league — you may as well stop right now. (It’s a little disturbing, that never having mashed Ziggy before, I do two in one week. I do not want this trend to continue.)

The 11 December Ziggy had a funny ( [craigferguson] I know! [/craigferguson]) strip.  The spastic swan made me laugh and laugh! Strangely enough, at least two other comics referenced swans in some manner; they don’t have anything to do with our PBS moment.

Here’s the Ziggy strip.  Its creator is Tom Wilson:

Dennis from Comics Curmudgeon wrote: “I’m a classicist, and so “the battle of the swans” juxtaposed with the diminutive Ziggy naturally put me in mind of a motif from classical Greek and Latin poetry: the battle of the Cranes and Pygmies. “.  It’s true! The story is referenced in the Iliad.  It was evidently a popular tale, and it’s even reproduced in art of the period:

This is an Attic red-figure chous,  430–420 BC,  in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain.  A chous is a jug.  Classy, huh?  Not much is funnier than a Pygmy.  Unless, of course, he’s riding on a goat, which the story says Pygmies would ride upon when they went to war against the Cranes.  Kinda like those little rodeo monkeys that ride on border collies.

Of course, leave it to me to sully classy name of ancient Greek literature and art with a recent acquistion of the Getty — the Estelle Getty Tea-cup Museum and Motor Lodge:

We now return you to WWF Smackdown! Thank you, and good night.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, which means folks that are walking the razor-thin edge between civility and losing it entirely are teetering even as we speak.

It was about 18 months ago when I mashed it up for the first time.  And yet love is… persists, like warts. Unchanged. And as creepy as ever.

Well, fine.  Two can play at this game.  Looks like someone got tired of his little prepubescent girl-friend….

(Wouldn’t it be easier if they were called “Halloweens,” like Valentine cards are call “Valentines”? Eh, I dunno.)

I don’t know if I’ll do one with our two cats Hoho and Tobu (putting them together on a card is probably the only safe way of getting them together), so in the meantime here’s Count Morgu and ‘Count Catula’:

Wow, that shadow really has Mary cowed!  The mysterious, the vague — they all contribute to a sense of foreboding (well, except for The Phantom, who might be a little more menacing aside from his penchant for wearing purple leotards). I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for That Shadow, though…

Duh-duh-DUHHHH!!!!

Actually, I love the idea of something managing to catch the omniscient Mary off-guard…and no one would suspect Mooncattie.