Candorville

Three perfect examples of silent penultimate panels today:

Bo-Nanas by John Kovaleski
Candorville by Darrin Bell
Red and Rover by Brian Bassett

Poor Darrin Bell. It's always hard to time a daily strip with current events. With a two to four week lead time, it's easy to appear entirely out of step with the current zeitgeist. (Not that this has ever bothered Mallard Fillmore.)

But how can you go wrong with jokes about O.J. Simpson's maybe-I-really-did-do-it confessional? These strips were to appear right at the height of the story, just days before the book's release and the Fox TV special. The timing was perfect, nothing could go wrong. But who would have expected Rupert Murdoch to have his first second thought ever. That, combined with our collective desire to wash our hands and face and body in a hot, high pressure shower of all this nonsense, makes this week's Candorville look as dated as a joke about Dick Cheney shooting an old man in the face. It's enough to make you want to give up and just do a strip about nothing but lazy animals.