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| No, that's not Paulie Walnuts! It's Mary Worth! |
Christmas is mere days away, and I have nothing to give you except some comics parodies. Try not to look disappointed. It's been a lean year.
This first one is more of a rewrite than a parody. This Between Friends didn't work for me, so I slightly remixed it: removing the ponytail guy, changing the punchline, and changing the coffee cup to a wine bottle. I also threw in a closeup of the exhausted blonde lady and made the serenity prayer into a poster she keeps on her office wall. Did it help? You tell me.
I felt a little bad about getting rid of the ponytail guy, putting him out of a job at Christmas and all, so I gave him a new assignment as shift supervisor of the Apple Bonkers in Yellow Submarine.
Okay, that's enough Between Friends for a while. What's happening in Blondie? Well, for one thing, Dagwood made a poster with lips on it, even though he himself has no lips. So I fixed that.
There you have it: Dagwood with lips. Elsewhere, I explored the very odd relationship Dag has with neighborhood boy Elmo. I personally refuse to believe Elmo is real, so here's how one of their "adventures" would really look to Blondie and the other characters.
Totes disturbing, right? Let's check in on Dick Tracy. Lately, Dick has been enjoying (?) a crossover with fellow manly comic stars Steve Roper and Mike Nomad, whose own strip was canceled. I noticed that Steve and Mike had a particular physical trait in common.
Enjoy your brief day trip away from the retirement home, boys. Let's move on to more exciting topics like The Family Circus. Yes, I'm still painstakingly removing all the human characters from the feature to create my own parallel series called simply The Circus. Here, it would seem that an entire classroom of children and their teacher have been either vaporized or raptured up to Heaven.
But it's also fun to keep the melon-headed Keane family around sometimes, so you can do stuff like this to them.
We'll only make a brief stop at Gil Thorp, I promise. Recently, a character named Alexa Watson was introduced by having her lift weights with her back to the audience. It reminded me of Robert De Niro in Cape Fear. That's really all there is to this.
It's almost not worth including this one of Judge Parker. But I'm including it anyway.
Things stayed predictably gross in The Lockhorns.
Mark Trail, however, has been on fire recently. See, Mark has been on an expedition to find the Yeti with this guy named Dr. Camel. I know this all sounds like the ravings of a dope fiend, but trust me, that's what's been happening. Anyway, Dr. Camel has a mighty beard. Perhaps too mighty.
While this is going on, Mark Trail artist James Allen has been sharing some of his artwork for future strips online. I decided to take James' awesome gorilla drawing and have some fun with it.
Remember that expedition I was talking about earlier? Well, it consists of Mark Trail, Dr. Camel, a woman named Genie, and a couple of guides, one of whom is named Mingma. The unusual character design for Mingma gave me a couple of ideas, like giving him ears for eyes and replacing him with Master Shake. Specifically, this is the version of Master Shake who is suffering from shellfish allergies.
But let's not forget about Genie. In fact, let's give her a crossover with Funky Winkerbean, where senile Harry Dinkle will call her "Becky." And she's not having it, clearly.
And, yeah, there's a second guide on the expedition. I don't know his name. And Mark doesn't seem to recognize him either.
As part of a larger discussion of colorization, I attempted to colorize the first-ever Peanuts. Here's how that turned out. By the way, those other characters are Shermy and Patty. That's the original Patty, not Peppermint Patty. Shermy and Patty are both in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but their careers didn't go so well after that. I think they were both in The Peanuts Movie, though.
Here's a second attempt at colorizing the first Peanuts. Oh, and I slightly rewrote the punchline, too.
Couple of Pluggers parodies here. These do anything for you?
Rex Morgan M.D. has mostly been mired in a very dull story about peripheral characters Buck and Mindy. But Rex did take some time to set up a Rex Morgan/Judge Parker crossover, bless his heart.
I guess Buck did provide me with at least one laugh.
Okay, it's remix time! There was a Six Chix that I just couldn't leave as it was. I had to at least attempt to fix it up a little. Here's a before and after. I think I kept the basic joke the same, but I changed the artwork a little and moved one of the characters to the background. To me, it's kind of Pythonesque to have a fluffy white cloud fall from the sky and crush a chicken. And it adds to the comedy that Chicken Little is being validated after it's too late to help. One more detail: I've decided that the chicken on the right -- the one apologizing to Chicken Little -- talks with the exact same voice as Zeke from Bob's Burgers.
For Snuffy Smith, I merely took an existing strip and extended it a couple of panels. Imagine that the director kept the camera rolling a few more seconds.
And now, well, you know what time it is. That's right. It's Mary Worth time! The strip has been on a real hot streak lately, what with Wilbur descending into alcoholic debauchery.
One of Wilbur's colorful turns of phrase put me in mind of the Star Wars saga.
I'm sure you've been reading Mary Worth, but in case you haven't, here's a quick recap of recent events. Wilbur cajoled his current girlfriend Estelle into going on a date with Wilbur's ex-girlfriend Iris and her new boyfriend Zak. But Wilbur got totally hammered before the date, and a mortified Estelle had to drag him along like this:
Or this:
Wilbur's drunken buffoonery put me in mind of Fantasia. Even Bacchus' knees look like little W's.
You can bet Wilbur had quite the hangover.
Estelle was plenty shaken up, too, and decided to confide in her cat, Libby.
Later, Estelle had a Twilight Zone-esque nightmare about being married to Wilbur.
She even dreamed of (ecch!) bearing his children! That can't be good.
After that ordeal, Estelle wisely broke up with him. Wilbur and his bathrobe, meanwhile, inspired me to create this Star Trek crossover.
Wilbur, the fool, immediately tried to win Estelle back in his own inimitable way.
If at first you don't succeed... try to imitate John Cusack, I guess.
The attempted Cusack-ing did not go well, as even nature despises Wilbur Weston.
Wilbur chose to stalk his previous ex-girlfriend Iris at this point.
But Iris was having troubles of her own. Some weight gain and hair loss caused her to consult a doctor. How did it go? Not great.
The doctor told Iris she was going through menopause, which caused her to break up (?) with Zak. First, though, they posed for Grant Wood.
Iris tried opening up to Zak.
When that failed, she sought comfort elsewhere. I guess Wilbur can read her thoughts now. Hmm.
On a lighter note, amid all this tragedy, I had some fun with vintage artwork by Joe Giella. If this slogan does not ring a bell, it's from the song "Gucci Gucci" by Kreayshawn. I think it applies itself very well to Mary Worth.
And there's more reason to be hopeful, since current Mary Worth artist June Brigman has announced that a beloved character is coming back soon. I just had to make a promo poster for it.
Recently, while Iris has been mired in despair, Wilbur's stock has been rising. He's even mended fences with Zak. See?
And that's really all I have for you right now. Have a holly jolly whatever the hell you celebrate!