Saturday night

Okay, two minimal updates in a row. But I know you're just here for the pictures.
Today we have Baby Blues by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman

Tomorrow's update will address some of the readers comments from the past few days.

Goodnight.

Mutts

Sorry folks, I don't have much time tonight so I have to be more succinct than normal.

One today:
Mutts by Patrick McDonnel

Josh pointed out one that I missed yesterday:
Piranha Club by Bud Grace


Ugliness Man noticed today's Calvin & Hobbes re-print:

And we have another booger:



That's all for now. See you in the funny papers.

Baby Blues

Just one today:

Baby Blues by Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman

That's two days in a row for the Scott comics empire.

Also, we have a fourth day in a row of Bucky Cat saying, "Booger." Darby Conley is pushing convention here. Standard rules of funny would have dictated two days of perplexing set-up with an explanation or punch-line on the third day. By going four days in a row with this, Conley is testing the readers patience. He has two choices now, either a killer puncline totally out of left field on Friday or Saturday, or continue on like this for the rest of the week and make the fact that there is no gag the gag. We'll see.

Pearls Before Swine

Three silent penultimate panels today from the L.A. Times and around the internet.

Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Betty by Delainey and Rasmussen
Piranha Club by Bud Grace

Ugliness Man, my Betty informant, insists that Betty is normally pretty good. And looking over some of the past strips, I agree that it is not horrible. But today, we have another aggressively lame joke. It's lameness just lashes out at you.

Elvis/Carol King? Really, a gag confusing Eminem with M'n'Ms would actually be funnier--and only half a decade out of date rather than three.

And did I see today's Pearls Before Swine? Heck yes, I did. I don't know if Stephan Pastis reads my blog, but I don't mind pretending that I had something to do with this:

I'm so proud.

Also, Piranha Club, making its debut here, is one of my favorites. It's terribly under appreciated and I don't know why it doesn't get more attention. Yesterday's was particularly funny, making an old joke new again.

Peanuts

Two in the LA Times, one from elsewhere today:
Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
Peanuts by Charles M Schulz
Stone Soup by Jan Eliot (Thanks to mjolnir_babe)

(Does anyone know where to find the 1990s Peanuts reprints online? Snoopy.com, Washingtonpost.com and Houstonchronicle.com all display the earlier reprints)

With Stone Soup, it looks like we have a wholly original setting for a joke--women shopping. It's an un-picked orchard of hilarity, just waiting to be harvested.

If Charles Schulz didn't invent the silent penultimate panel, he certainly perfected it. The SPP has likely become such a cliche in part because of Schulz's influence.

As you may have gathered, I love Peanuts and a few late-career SPPs won't change that. I have trouble sometimes explaining why Peanuts is so great. For me the brilliance is so apparent that, like the music of the Beatles, or the short stories of Raymond Carver, it needs no justification. If you don't understand why Peanuts is the greatest comic strip ever, you are either a) not paying attention or b) have no soul.

Elsewhere, Bucky Cat says "booger," again.

Ziggy en Espanol

Shut out again--that's twice since the Boondocks hiatus began.

We do have some silent first panels:



And some single-word penultimate panels:


But no silent penultimate panels. So...


Maybe I can retire early.

And how about this: Shannon Wheeler, the creator of Too Much Coffee Man, apparently added a silent penultimate panel because of me. Holy crap, does the internet make the world small. Shannon, I've been a fan for years, thanks for reading and plugging my blog.

Back home again

I just finished a six and a half hour drive, but that's not going to stop me from alerting you of today's silent penultimate panels:

Cathy by Cathy Guisewite (explanation below)
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley
Candorville by Darrin Bell

Cathy may not belong here. The silent reaction panel is actually the third to last panel:

But it serves the same purpose--it's a useless reaction shot used only as a crutch to create "comic" timing. Cathy is one of my least favorite comic strips. It's part of the axis of drudgery--along with Garfield and Mallard Fillmore--that saps all energy and intelligence out of the comics page. Cathy is so bad it can't even get a standard cliche like the SPP right.

Candorville (which I don't hate) doubles up on the silent panels, but keeps them apart. If one silent panel is a cliche, two silent panels spaced apart actually help to illustrate the awkwardness of the conversation. But still, this is your third Sunday in a row here, Mr. Bell.



From the world of alternative weeklies, Sarah points out this week's Too Much Coffee Man. Thanks, Sarah. (I'm so cool, I bought Too Much Coffee Man #1 at the comic book store back in 1992.)




And Ugliness Man was kind enough to update me on the Betty storyline I was confused about earlier this week:

It looks like their ink problem has been solved. They bought a new printer. What an exciting week in the world of Betty.