Sucky Comics Sunday: June 03, 2012

Thankfully, Cathy Guisewite retired from making Cathy comics a couple years ago. Unfortunately, there was apparently such a demand by hungry Cathy fanatics screaming for more Cathy in their empty lives that the comic strip still runs its old backlog in the newspaper. Every. Single. Day. So that explains the drawing of a cellphone from 19-fuckin'-97.

And you might want to clip the strip out and bring it with you on the bus or something because Cathy Guisewite has a tendency to lovingly cram an entire novel into as few as three panels. I didn't even read this entire strip as I have things to do today, but I got the gist: Cathy is a lunatic.

The obvious worst part about Cathy is how it basically exists to perpetuate (proudly) really dumb female stereotypes. Apparently today's lesson to take from Cathy is that all women have annoyingly specific cellphone habits. I don't know about anyone else but I certainly have a chart on my fridge that keeps track of all my female friends' nitpicky phone quirks, am I right fellas?! CAROL WILL NOT TAKE A MALL-TO-CAR CALL. Go fuck yourself, Cathy.

I honestly couldn't tell you if Beetle Bailey still makes new strips or if Mort Walker died back in 1921 and they just keep rerunning the same 30 comics over and over again forever until the end of time.

So Beetle Bailey is a painful comic strip about jerks in the army. They are led by Sarge, a perpetually angry guy who looks like he stole his hat from the army kitchens one day and decided to start yelling at people. This comic does not cause Marmaduke levels of rage, but it comes pretty close. It's one of those strips where the writing is always terrible, and that's why you get to read groan-worthy punchlines that the guy who wrote it didn't even find funny. Touché, Sarge, they probably would complain if you ordered them to have fun! You sure have their number!

Honestly, in my mind Hagar the Horrible is just Beetle Bailey in a different setting. Same 600-year-old guy writing it, same outmoded humor, same terrible writing. In this example just replace "daddy" with "Sarge" and it's a Beetle Bailey strip. I'm pretty sure I've seen Sarge cut grass, the dude's a pushover.

But seriously, folks! HIRE A LAWN SERVICE!! This punchline needs two exclamation points! That's how much of a PUNCH it packs! Tears are rolling down my eyes. Lawn service!! In medieval Norway! How absurd!

If there was ever a comic strip character that deserved to be punched in the goddamn face it's Ziggy. You know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. Even the strip itself knows it. See how the title of strip is followed by some ominous ellipses? It's like it knows that it needs to prepare the reader for the ensuing groans that undoubtedly lie ahead. This comic should really be called "And Now...*sigh*...It's Ziggy..."

Ziggy is an unfortunate little pants-less human being with pets who are all smarter than him. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him all the time? Dude, I'm the mailman in this strip. Look at how pleased he is that he got to throw a pie into Ziggy's fat face. We are all the mailman. I think we're supposed to sympathize with the mailman, definitely. I think I just figured out Ziggy.

Anyway, "Practical Joke of the Month Club"? Really? Boooooooooooo. Even "Pie of the Month Club" is slightly better. I like to think that a boardroom full of completely out-of-touch old farts brainstormed for days over this punchline. Unused ideas include "THAT'S GOTTA HURT!", "JEEPERS CREEPERS, WHAT A MESS!", "MAILTIME AGAIN!", "HOT DIGGITY!", "OH ME OH MY!", and "SOCK IT TO ME!" Fuck you, Ziggy.


Anyway, that's it for this week and look forward to mo- HAHAHAHAHAHA. LAWN SERVICE!! Sorry, still funny.