That's The Way (uh-huh, uh-huh)...

...I LIKE it! The Sunday funnies are actually pretty good today, and not just in funny ways. I know it's too much to ask for the comics to be, you know, actually giggle-inducing, but with too many of them, you're lucky to deliver more than a semi-interested "huh."

"For Better Or For Worse" has made a habit of making its Sunday editions self-contained and mostly "silent", which usually results in a flow of laughter, which is a good thing, because the weekly serialized version is creeping ever closer to disturbing (not even gonna talk about it...)

The anniversary theme in "Blondie" has been going on for what seems like weeks now, leading me to believe that its creators (and the syndicate, sounds like the mafia, doesn't it? La Cosa Toonstra...) are planning a huge party, which means lots of merchandising tie-ins and maybe a prime-time special. In any case - today's strip is a multi-generational commentary on music that tickled my fancy and my eyeballs with its colorful looks at a jazz trio with senioritis, a stage-diving neo-punk band and a quartet of German folksters clad in lederhosen. Too bad Blondie and Dagwood weren't able to secure the talents of the lovely Pam (not far removed from Jessica Rabbit, slurp!) and her band, The Escorts (my! how racy the funnies can be!) - there's one anniversary party that I would've been eager to crash.

Somewhere in the archives, I've likened the style of Patrick McDonnell's "Mutts" to the lines of legendary "Popeye" creator Segar. Since the beginning, McDonnell's characters have possessed a sketchiness and certain squint-eyed affinity for the look made famous by the sailor, so it was both a surprise and no surprise whatsoever to find a loving homage to "Popeye" and the gang in today's strip. That the characters are drawn with such skill is no surprise either; I'm thinking that Segar, and later, animator Max Fleischer who brought "Popeye" to life as a cartoon, were probably huge influences. Crabby's final panel joke is a real gem.

What some comics do with the eyes of their characters is interesting to note. Some go with highly expressive and realistic peepers and others don't color the whites of the eyes in. Ease of drawing and economy of replication must come into play in some strips, where only dots are used for the eyes, such as in "Sally Forth", which has made a career out of using those dots, along with sarcastic lines, to get many of the wisecracks over. So it's a tad unsettling to see that Kitty, who seems to be recovering nicely from surgery, has more detailed eyes than her human counterparts. You could read a lot into that, but I'm just not gonna.

Lately, Garry Trudeau has come under fire for his potrayal of the Bush administration in "Doonesbury", so much so that at least twelve papers across the country either pulled or edited his Karl Rove strip that found Dubya calling Rove by the name "Turd Blossom." First off, many of the uneducated readers out there who singled Trudeau out for "name calling" are seemingly unaware that the moniker is actually Bush's pet name for the man who orchestrated his election and re-election campaigns. But what's incredible to me is the fact that the word "Turd Blossom" could be found so offensive. Let them get a goggle at "Dilbert" today and the phrase "I'm going to hell" and see if that causes any heartache.

Apparently, Berke Breathed's terms for bringing "Opus" back to the Sunday edition included giving him a full third of a page, no more, no less. Certainly, the tepid reaction of some folks has dulled the edge of said demands, as it looks like "Opus" is shrinking. Or is that just my eyesight taking a leave of absence?

"Non-Sequitur" is back doing what it does best! I was initially blown away and charmed by the tale of "Ordinary Basil", but it soon began to resemble a "Dick Tracy" strip, full of expository to catch up readers and slow plot developments. In the end, the story fell just short of the whimsy it was originally shooting for, but did manage to seed the proceedings with some jabs at modern government, something that Wiley is very good at. His inimitable drawing style and skewed humor are back on track today though; where else will you find baleful mommy-cats, bears, dinosaurs and polytheism wrapped in a technicolor five panel package?

Biggest Laugh Of The Morning: Bucky's attempt to sport a do-rag ("on you, I think it's called a 'don't' rag!") in "Get Fuzzy."

So, "Shortcuts" has names for the five "multicultural" characters (they are K, Roland, Junior, James and Juanita, the latter of which is the only one that seems to stand out as culturally different) but there's no name for the little hermit crab who's borrowed both his look and attitude from Disney's Sebastian. In any case, each strip is "sponsored" by a celebrity that takes on the look of whatever subject the half-page panel is presenting. These sponsorships, and the crab's usually disdainful commentary, are funny as well as they are sometimes groan-inducing. Today's subject, hair, gets a "I'm giving this cartoon the brush-off" (groan) while the sponsor is "Shaft" (the Samuel L. Jackson model) featuring Sam's tough goateed, sunglassed mug on a 'shaft' of hair exclaiming "right on." If that wasn't giggly enough, "This edition of Shortcuts is sponsored by Shaft. (They say that Shaft is a bad hair day.)" had me simultaneously laughing and saying "oh my GOD!" - do the kids get that sort of thing?