Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

There’s no real reason for this post (yeah, like there are for the 200 others), except to compliment the colorists. The daily strips often suffer the Wrath of the Color Monkeys, understandable because of time constraints, but many times, the C.M.s are just as bad on the expanded Sunday strips. It sometimes seems things would just be better, and the artwork wouldn’t suffer, if they were simply published in black-and-white.

Sunday’s Judge Parker has some lovely shading work, amidst all the havoc and mayhem. And the last panel with the close-up of Gloria is glorious (no pun intended). Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this sultry vixen is delivering a verbal smack-down to Samira, Scourge of the Suburbs.

I promised myself…oh, never mind. I promise myself a lot of things, and a fat lot of good that does me.

Anyway, I figured that Judge Parker’s current dealings with a crazed terrorist who is holding a wheelchair-bound old woman and a double amputee hostage could get along just fine without me (other than hoping that Gloria Sanchez might call her bluff and refuse to cooperate with her whacked-out demands). Lo and behold, Gloria did just that in the Sunday strip, which I’m sure is going to have interesting consequences in the Monday strip.

Of course, in the name of Immediate Gratification, I wasn’t especially interested in waiting until Monday. And it didn’t help that Little Guy from CC had a wonderful comment that led to all sorts of things, or at least one mash-up (thanks, Little Guy!).

Abbey Driver is filthy rich. Would it kill her to hire a small jazz combo, or even just a drummer to emphasize her moves as she strikes one alluring pose after another? Such audio clues might even get Sam to take notice…

Meanwhile, here comes the teen-age angst!

I’d say that at least 80% of the syndicated cartoonists did an Earth Day strip today (22 April). Some were seamless (Mutts is doing a sweet Earth Week series), some are clunky, and some like Judge Parker and Rex Morgan, gave the staff the day off and posted what looked like bumper stickers. How lame!

This is my effort to at least remedy the JP short-cut.

Before Abby rides off into the sunset, there’s always time for one for the road…

Loramir from CC brought up an interesting point: several characters in several soapy comic strips share the same name.

It’s not like there’s a chance that we’re going to run out of “normal” names anytime soon. And evidently there’s a trend, at least in the U.S., of giving companion animals “human names” rather than traditional names like Fido or Fluffy or Getthehelloffofthat. I don’t know why…I asked a fellow who owned a dachshund, “Henry,” why he’d named the dog that: “Because pet names are stupid.” Okay. For the record, I’ve also known a dachshund by the name of “Daniel,” so maybe it’s a thing with wiener dogs.

Anyway, this is sort of a PSA/field guide to some of the potentially-confusing character names in our favorite soaps.

Where does the time go? A massive tip o’ the sombrero to the clairvoyant Dean Booth from CC!

…particularly if we’re talking about Sam Driver. Does he ever start?

I really enjoyed doing these. As a rule, I have no clear idea where a snark strip is going to go (that might be painfully obvious, I dunno), but if the illustrations look tempting, I’ll give things a try. My gosh, how can you resist Sam’s face and his stretching? I’ll bet Gloria is one of those people at family reunions who always ruins a group photo by closing her &#*#& eyes, too! Every. single. time!

It doesn’t hurt that so many clever comments are made at CC that it can be pretty easy to follow a lead or a turn of phrase. I try to credit folks who have inspired a post, and if I miss someone, I apologize.

Photos of Angelina Jolie tend to spook Sam, too…

I loved doing these! I don’t know that there was that much “action” going on in the story, but there was a lot of opportunity for screwy dialog (my favorite!).

Sam got a bit of a face lift (ahem) in the third strip, too.