Baldo nearing draft age? Cast of Zits still clueless? And what's up over at Camp Swampy?

Today's question: How are our comic stars serving the war effort?

Here's my list. Add your own:

• Because it's good to know we live in a country where men are bold and true, where a man--a simple man, steward of a little company that makes voting machines--can stand up and proclaim, "I will do whatever it takes to deliver Ohio to the President!" And because we know this manly man will deliver.


• Because at least we don't live in Soviet Russia, where the ruling party demanded loyalty oaths and declared that those who opposed it were traitors. Whew. That's a relief!


• Because Bush is a Uniter, not a Divider. And lord knows we need uniting. Clearly, four years wasn't enough time to get all that uniting done.


• Because I'm planning to become a multi-millionaire at some point... and I'd really hate to have to pay all those taxes.

Today, the ever-timely and controversial Hagar the Horrible took a shot at the Preemptive War doctrine. This marks a deviation from the past month of mother-in-law jokes and other Domestic Viking Humor (DVH).

The Longboat Doctrine

Beetle Bailey takes a typically incisive look at the more troubling aspects of being a footsoldier through its titular everyman. It manages to hint at being topical war humor while still maintaining absolute, boring irrelevance.

beetle, you nutball

(Aside:

Rumor has it that Mort plans to stir things up with a wacky new character, Gitmo. I hope this is true, since it would open up grand new possibilities. For instance, imagine this Hagar comic as part of a Beatle Bailey plotline involving Gitmo's decision to arrest Beatle as an enemy combatant:

Abu Bheatle

Yes, indeedy. Hilarious stuff.)

All is quiet on the Johnny Hart front. He's pushing his notion of Central American wage hikes, I guess. I find Johnny's silence ominous. Is he storing up some good anti-Kerry religious cartoons for release during the convention? We'll find out soon.

That's the solution!

Marvin, who once did a stint imitating/idolizing Rush Limbaugh, is also ominously non-topical. Well, he does devastate environmentalists for keeping us from our necessary business, but it comes off as the sort of low-end comic strip joke any wage-slave panel sketcher might draw. As does his strip referencing diversity two days prior. Ah, Marvin, would that you would play the evil fat man again.

kept from business

Parasites!

That's it for Comics Roundup today. Further updates as events warrant.

Recent intelligence shows that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are directing the latest threat against the U.S., senior intelligence officials told CNN. "What we know about this most recent information is it's being directed from the senior-most levels of the al Qaeda organization," said one official.

link

But the snippet above is the blurb from the featured story on the [cnn http://www.cnn.com] home page. I guess it doesn't do much good to catch him near the election without restoring his supervillain status.