Snark It Up, FuzzBall!

We’re pretty sure it was put there to add drama to a critical conversation.  Well, that’s what some people believe.

I like to believe that Lu Ann is as dumb as a bag of hair.

Lu Ann Powers (blonde resident of Apartment 3-G) shares a birthday with another famous favorite beloved comic strip character! Lord only knows who’s more honored and/or horrified…

And if it isn’t bad enough that we have to stare at Lu Ann’s vacant visage, in addition to Ziggy’s sweet, sweet ghastly one, the Comics Curmudgeon’s faithful commenter Red Greenback revisits the Linski estate for more confectionary horror (Go, Red! Go!):

And definitely NOT saving the best for last…

Be professional!

I admire cartoonists/illustrators/artists who can produce work on a very constant, rigorous schedule — it can’t be easy, particularly when one is cartooning less and illustrating more (like most of the folks who work on serial comics like Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, etc.).

But gee whiz, take a step back and LOOK at your work.  Mis-sized heads set at weird angles make an interesting scene laughable.  (aka, Where can I buy a Lu Ann bobble-head?).

And while the Keanes have been phoning it in for some time, there’s some real artistry here and a sense of movement,  muscle tension and orientation between two bodies.  Unfortunately, there’s an innate creepiness with Daddy holding a resistant Dolly (kind of looks like our cat Tobu when she sees the nail clippers…).

I think Tommie Thompson’s Aunt Iris is supposed to be a modern-day Mary Poppins.  When she mysteriously shows up, mysterious and wonderful things happen!  Tommie makes the acquaintance of a handsome, mysterious young man!  She meets a mysterious, hairy and famous record producer!  Her musical talents are mysteriously unveiled!  Her boring, daily job as a nurse mysterious disappears!  And when all these mysterious, amazing things have occurred, Aunt Iris mysteriously leaves!

Or something like that.

I was planning on mashing this up just because I thought Giella had gotten lazy and substituted one character for another (weird mother for hippie record producer) in a strip published only a couple of weeks before (and then merely changed the dialog).  Imagine my surprise when I realized that the early strip had feature Lu Ann and her bland cypher of a blond boyfriend, NOT Tommie and her bland cypher of a blond boyfriend!  Proof positive that although I can distinguish between the women of Apt. 3-G, the homogenized young men callers are one and the same to me. (Yikes.)

Of course I had to follow through, no matter how weird it got…

(“Naked hobo” is something I can so easily hear TV’s Craig Ferguson saying, too…)

The Phantom (aka, Stripey Butt, aka, Ghost Who Talks Way Too Much) has a two-week-long, knock-down, drag-out confrontation with Chatu (aka, The Python, aka Villain Who Also Talks Way Too Much).  The Phantom finally knocks his worstest enemy ever! out and removes him from prison.  The next time we see The Phantom, there’s no trace of The Python!

Where the deuce did he go?

Unless you give us some exposition, Kit (which I’m guessing he will), we’re forced to draw our own conclusions:

The Obvious:

The Intriguing:

Tolstoy? Some ZZ Top dude? Leon Russell?  You decide!  I’ve found my own, personal, Je… oh, never mind.

Sometimes these things just write themselves (or are written by the actual cartoonists):