Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

Looks like Something Is Going To Happen over at Funky Winkerbean.  Comic-book Guy, who’s always looked after Becky while her husband Wally was fighting oversees, or captured or dead, looks more despondent than the usual ‘Beantown denizen.  And Becky is rummaging around for something.

Personally, I don’t care.  But…when CC’s True Fable speculates on Becky’s quest, how could I resist?

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:

At least until Darth Margo gets wind of Gary’s plans…

Here I was, doing a one-time funny with wacky, wacky road-rage possessed drivers.  Hey, it’s funny, and it’s a one shot deal. Right?

Oh, how wrong I was!

I’m really not too sure what’s going on in Apartment 3-G.  Currently nurse Tommie is playing doormat for a doctor she’s interested in (I hesitate that Tommie has the “hots” for him, as she’d only ever exhibited a mild tepidity for anything).  How much of a doormat?  How about having his two kids dumped on her for babysitting without any prior notification?

Oh, Tommie, you angel of mercy!

You unbelievable sap.

Or maybe Margo Magee’s estranged father! And his friend Dr. Morgan! And his kissy-face!

What Margo really, really wants to know: Where’s my $&#*(@ pizza?!

I’m not a huge fan of Apartment 3G, but sometimes strips align themselves very nicely, kind of like the full moon last night.

…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.

…I was shocked! to discover that after a week of beating around the bush (or the corpse), that Alan, the resident drug addict in Apartment 3-G, really had been shot by a fellow drug addict.  Silly me, I thought there might be some weird, intriguing twist, and that Alan was still alive — and then I remembered that this was Apartment 3-G.

Well, so shocked was I with the discovery at the morgue that I completely missed the fact that Dr. Andy Reed (aka, Count Morgu) himself was doing the autopsy!  Thanks to CC’s Mooncattie for pointing this out.  I will endeavor to be more astute in the future.

Oh, I wrote a song, too.  Okay, they’re just lyrics.  And I swiped the music from Oklahoma.

Pore Alan’s dead
Our fav’rite junkie’s dead
All gather round the cold slab now and cry
He’s been pumped full of lead
It’s no wonder that he’s dead
He doesn’t have to worry ’bout getting high.

Pore Alan’s dead
Pore junkie-boy’s dead
He’s lookin’ oh so holey and inert (and inert)
We’ve got to find a plan
We can spring upon LuAnn
So she’ll know he’s just a little more than dirt.

Pore Alan’s dead
The bullet missed his head
He’s lookin’ not so tidy, but still nice
He won’t paint anymore
Not that he did much of that before
But what we’ve got should sky-rocket in price.

Over at Apartment 3G, Lu Ann is wandering through her druggie boyfriend’s apartment.  He claims to be an artist, but he’s really not much more than a drug addict.  Of course, Lu Ann, with all the mental acumen of an Irish setter, doesn’t know a thing about this.

Dean Booth from CC made the last panel for today a very nice cut-and-paste do-it-yourself project, so of course I just had to get out my pot of Le Page’s paste (the one with the little spatula mounted in the lid and smelling like pepperment) and safety scissors and go to town…

I did my best to limit myself.

In other news, not much has been going on in Morganville, other than Lenore teaching Rex the basics of sailing, like not getting hit with the boom.  Considering her feelings for her sailing nemesis Old Man Tweaks, I’m surprised that she doesn’t have a cannon mounted on her boat and is planning to beat him one way or another.  More later!

What do you need to know about Lu Ann from Apartment 3G?
She’s an aspiring artist.
She’s either been haunted by or has hallucinations about a minor 19th C. American painter living in her studio.
Her boyfriend Alan is a drug addict who’s currently thinking about making a career out of selling drugs.
She’s a ditz.

And in this original panel, Lu Ann had just heard that The Prairie Conservancy is interested in her wildflower paintings and that it was flying her out to SOUTH DAKOTA!!! Yes, she was this excited about going to SOUTH DAKOTA!!! If you had only one wish, that for an absolutely dream vacation, wouldn’t we all want to go to SOUTH DAKOTA!!!?

Anyone who’s that delirious about going to SOUTH DAKOTA!!! sets off all sorts of alarms for me…