I can't take it anymore: the Sunday comics edition

By Todd Stadler · Tuesday, September 5, 2006 2:09am

I like the comics. After a teeth-grinding hour or so of reading the rest of the paper (including the letters to the editor, or "blogs for old people"), there's nothing quite like several pages of crude or crudely-shrunk panels of clichéd jokes about raising children and golf.

Oops. That last sentence there betrayed my thesis. Fine, I don't really like-like the comics.

About the only one I truly enjoy with any regularity in the Oregonian is Get Fuzzy, and even that one tends to elicit far more laughs in its first panels than in the last ones. And I can't tell if Doonesbury is often funny, or merely a respite from the dumber political ideas that prevail in the rest of the paper, creating an anti-anger that is similar to, if not exactly, humor.

And yet, I read the comics as if I liked them, because in spite of how annoying they are, um ... I have too much free time? They fulfill in me a need to feel superior to others? They create multiple conversation starters for dinnertime talk? They help me connect to a simpler, bygone era, when most of the comics' creators were actually alive?

Look, the point is that this past Sunday was the last straw for me as a comics reader. Not that I'm going to stop reading the comics — heavens, no! But it got to the point that my emotions had welled up so much that, well, I had to blog about it. And faithful readers of this blog know how much inertia had to be overcome for it to come to that.

And now, several paragraphs of opening filler later, I present my comics catharsis.

Fig. A: A portion of Slylock Fox for Kids from Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

Since the comics-displaying crappiness of the newspaper is rivalled only by the Web, I'll type out the text of this, the "mystery" portion of Sunday's Slylock:

A witness called Slylock Fox to report she observed Terry Turtle steal a hotel card key. Terry says that is nonsense, and that this is his hotel room. What evidence did Slylock observe that led him to suspect the turtle is lying?

If you want to puzzle this out yourself, take a moment to do so now, because rather than forcing you to hang from your ceiling and squint to read the upside-down solution, I will type it out here:

There's a toothbrush in the bathroom. Since turtles don't have teeth, it would appear this is not Terry's room. Faced with the evidence, the turtle admitted he is the burglar.

Oh. Of course, how stupid of me. The toothbrush ... now that I see it, it's a dead giveaway. I mean, seriously, turtles have no more need for a toothbrush than, say, mice do for a curiously femmy matching purple shorts/bowler hat set. Oh, wait.

I mean, I can understand how a comic strip writer can (and often does) get tired of his own strip's conceit. Perhaps lacking knowledge of the setting his characters supposedly inhabit or maybe just short on creativity, he finds himself making jokes about things he does know about (i.e., golf) or other topical subjects.

So it is that Garfield is not so much a strip about a cat as a short, cat-shaped observer of a man named Jon. And the serfs in the Wizard of Id crack wise about tax brackets. And the cavemen in B.C. read reference books that mention Vaudeville. Because nothing says "topical" like a Vaudeville joke. And it's well worth junking the whole prehistoric concept if the humor's that good. I mean, if there's one thing more inherently funny than cavemen, it's Vaudeville. And anachronisms. Especially if they involve Vaudeville.

Ahem. My point being that most strips only bother to be visually constrained by their concept, while their plot lines or "jokes" are about whatever the writer darn well feels like writing about. And Slylock Fox is no different. Which is why it's so annoying that Bob Weber, Jr. here chooses to suddenly and strictly enforce the rules of reality in this "mystery" bit.

I suppose it's "educational" to know that "turtles don't have teeth," but unless my herpetology thesis advisor misled me, it would also be educational to note that turtles also:

• Do not walk upright or bipedally, nor do their legs end in shoe-shaped blobs
• Do not have fingers, much less opposable thumbs
• Do not talk, and probably have no realistic concept of language, much less with animals from the class Mammalia
• Have minimal need for fashion accessories such as hats and neckties, especially as the latter are impossible to tie without opposable thumbs (see above)
• Have minimal need for a hotel room as they are quite capable of and prefer living outdoors; hotel rooms, in contrast, present many difficulties for turtles, such as the need to open doors, especially and notably if they require the use of a card key
• Wouldn't know what to do with stolen goods if they could pick them up, which notably they can't

In short, even though I lied about having a herpetology doctorate, I clearly know more than Bob Weber, Jr. does about turtles.

Furthermore, I know this: Terry Turtle is being framed. Of course that's not his toothbrush, because this isn't his room. But, as outlined above, he lacks not only a motive, but also the means to commit this crime.

Waaah, I hear you protest in your ignorant way, Terry Turtle admitted he is the burglar, so case closed. Burglary, he wrote!

Puh-leeze. As I already noted, turtles cannot talk and certainly cannot communicate such high-level concepts as guilt and misappropriation of private property. At best, Slylock might have given the appearance of caring about justice with a tortuous statement like, "Terry Turtle, I charge you with burglary; speak now if you are not actually the burglar ... so you admit you are? ... My work here is done. Max, take the, er, evidence down to the ... crime-fighting, you know ... lab ... place."

In short, while Slylock Fox is obviously not a real detective (or else he might have done enough research to realize that modern detectives do not dress in luridly monochromatic getups from the late 1800s), I can do enough sleuthing to suggest who might be behind the burglary: Slylock Fox himself!

Think about it. Does Slylock have a need for expensive goods? He's using a mobile phone in the picture. And that fancy ring that Max Mouse is gazing at lustily? There's your motive right there!

And Slylock's story? Bob Weber, Jr. might have bought it, but not me. An unnamed "witness" sees a turtle steal a hotel key card and calls whom? The hotel manager? The police? No. Conveniently, he calls Slylock, who then heads straight to the hotel room to apprehend the would-be burglar, whom Max probably had set on his back so he could not escape until Slylock arrived. Strangely, Slylock, just like the alleged "witness", didn't feel the need to work with the hotel management or the police in doing his work. He felt he could "handle it on his own", without the "authorities getting in the way." Even more strangely, Slylock somehow made his way into the room, although all rooms with key cards have doors that automatically close and lock. And clearly, the hotel manager didn't give him an extra key, since Slylock didn't bother to talk to him.

So there you have it, kids. Bob Weber, Jr. not only bungled the case, helping to frame an innocent victim along the way, but he also emphasized his un-American ideas about vigilante justice and the naivete of due process. Oh, and he forgot to evenly apply the rules of logic, much as I've clearly forgotten what it was that upset me about this strip in the first place.

In short, my point is this: no way are you going to learn how to draw a roller skater in defiance of her own center of gravity by looking at the Slylock Fox segment on "How to draw a rollerblader". If I could draw that first panel properly, I wouldn't need you to teach me how to draw, Bob! Please stop hurting the children!

All that said, my next comic strip critique is refreshingly short.

Fig. B: A portion of Hägar the Horrible from Sunday, September 3rd, 2006

I've spared you the hilarious "punchline", but, um, does Chris Browne know what "port wine" is? Because who orders a salad and roast beef with port? Bleah.

I'm sorry, Chris, but just because you had a bad experience at a restaurant and want to channel your anger into a thinly veiled complaint of a comic strip, doesn't mean you get to gloss over details like this.

If you want to vent your frustration with something in a ham-fisted, poorly-thought-out way, the proper venue for that is a blog.