The slippery slope, without the required banana peel

Looks like we're going to have to send the Comix Police out to round up a few scofflaws:

Jef Mallett is not simply a repeat offender but verges on being declared a career criminal.

It's not enough that, in today's Frazz, he violates one law of comic humor by offering up a pun without a final panel in which a character denounces the gag, or at least faints, feet flying up in the air, surrounded by plewds.

No, he not only violates the "Always Apologize For Your Puns" law, but then compounds the felony by throwing in a second gag, and one that is accessible to all but much funnier for people who are widely read.

And he seemed like such a nice boy. 

Meanwhile, over at Betty, we have this scandalous violation of Comix Law:

Dear lord, where to begin?

First of all, healthy food sucks. Nobody likes it, except ditzy women who exist only as comic foils for the men who represent the actual readers of the comics. Comic page wives serve up healthy food and the husbands and kids hate it and even the dog won't eat it when they try to sneak it to him under the table.

That's a law, dammit. 

And not only is this kid polite, well-spoken and open to new ideas, but he doesn't even have ear buds in at the table or a backwards ball cap.

Yes, I understand that the joke is that the parents are surprised by all this.

But it's nothing to joke about.

Dammittall, this gag is a violation of all that the comics page holds dear. Without well-worn, familiar stereotypes, we have no common language for expressing humor.

And I realize that I'd do better to concentrate on all the comic strips that got it right today, instead of focusing on the negative minority of lawbreakers. But it always starts with a few bad apples, doesn't it?

You start letting in the intelligent humor and the violations of stereotype and pretty soon everybody is exercising wit and making jokes about realistic people and real things, and then where are we?

 

 

Meanwhile, over in the educational section:

I was talking to one of the grandkids the other day and trying to explain to her the difference between "a long car ride" (boring) and "a road trip" (not in the least boring) without reference to illegal substances or activities.

I talked to her about not having a schedule and stopping whenever you felt like it and taking odd sidetrips if something caught your fancy, but it's hard to explain these things when you really, really shouldn't use examples from your own experience.

Road trips are kind of hard to explain on a non-scandalous level.

Hope and Crosby are long gone, and their movies don't hold up all that well except as nostalgia.

And now Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" has been revealed to be a phony.

Thank god for Rip Haywire, where irresponsibility and bad behavior are pillars of the narrative but everything is kept in the plausible deniability zone required by syndication.

Hipsteresque comic fans complain about the PG level of the comics page, but it's really just PG-13.

In recent strips, we've seen Monty sleep with a neanderthal, Pajama Diaries feature a kid walking in on her folks having sex, Rex Morgan have a stripper drop her towel (and not 'cause he's a doctor), and Edge City riffing on the wife inviting her husband into a little soft bondage.

And today's Arlo & Janis had Janis sunbathing in the nude.

You just have to exercise a little subtlety. 

This may be the first time the terms "subtlety" and "Rip Haywire" have appeared on the same web page, but you get my drift.

Comments

[Owen]

Would it be wrong to say I envy Arlo's empty-nester life? I mean wife? I mean life?

[Lost in A**2]

Thank you, Mr. Peterson; I hadn't known the source of the quote in Frazz, although I did recognise it. :)

'Tis never wrong to confess a sin, Owen. :)

[Mary in Ohio]

What flummoxed me about "Arlo and Janis" is that, when Arlo removes her coat from the hedge, HE is wearing a coat and hat. Even with the sun out, that seemed to indicate it was pretty cold!

[Lost in A**2]

In full sun, out of the wind, it can be amazingly warm even when chilly. I've seen pictures of people in Moscow opening their coats and shirts to bask in sunlight with snow on the ground.