Gimme a Head With Hair

The Iris/Tommy storyline in Mary Worth just keeps gettin' better and better. Last Sunday, we got a glimpse of Tommy in his natural habitat...

And no, that's not a Virginia Slims he's smokin'.

Meanwhile, next door....Mary sits in abject misery, spending the last precious years of her life in what appears to be a dismal, dank hell-hole of an apartment....waiting...waiting....waiting either for the grim reaper to show up, or at least for that sexy rascal next door to invite her over for a few tokes of the kind herb, and perhaps some Bob Marley music...

Meanwhile, back on the other side of that paper-thin wall...there's something different about Tommy. See if you see what I see when comparing this picture of everybody's favorite meth-chef to the one above...

Is it just me, or did Tommy's hair shrink back into his head within just a couple of seconds' time? It's shoulder-length -- it's a pixie cut -- it's Tommy, the Charterstone Meth-Chef and his magical hair! Perhaps he singed some of it off (in an unseen panel) while cookin' up some of his specialty.

But enough about Mare. (Or, if you haven't had enough, I highly encourage you to read this entertaining post about the current Mary Worth storyline on Josh Reads The Comics So You Don't Have To.)

Elsewhere on the funny pages, I've been thinking about "Peanuts" a lot lately -- partly because of my post a few weeks back about my friend Jeff, who had a decades-long correspondence with Charles Schultz, but also because of the current storyline in the "Peanuts" reprints that run in the Post-Gazette.

Here's today's strip -- a perfect example of the melancholy that pervaded Peanuts when it was at its peak. (Actually, today's strip is from the mid-70's, when Peanuts was at its commercial peak, but had slipped a teeny bit creatively. The 60's-era Peanuts were the high-point, really.)

I got to playing around on Snoopy.com the other day, and came across some treats. For starters, this little bit of animation.

Watch that clip closely, and see if you agree with me that Snoopy's little dance may very well be the single most effective artistic expression of sheer joy ever. Just a simple little line drawing, too.

And finally, here's what I'm currently using for my desktop background. Again, it's just a simple, wordless little drawing, and truthfully I'm not even sure that Schultz drew it, but it would've made a perfect "final strip" for Peanuts.

Comments

[Kenn]

mmmm ... peanuts.

[Smithers' Mum]

You know, sometimes when we are away from the house, I get the strange sensation that Smithers is doing that very same dance. We should set up a "Smithers' Cam" to keep an eye on that dancing fool.

[Tube City]

It's like you read my mind. "Peanuts" this week (well, actually, this week in 1970-something) has been sublime. And the copper bracelet fad has come around again as part of complementary medicine. It's timeless.