Take me to your reader--your comics reader, that is!

hi friends,
potsmokinalien here with a fresh perspective on the comics of the SF bay area, that perspective being the ramblings of someone who does not live anywhere near SF. i will be stopping by occasionally to provide thoughts on the ha-ha's and hmms that comprise our reaction to the daily comics.
speaking of which-- lately i find, probably as a result of my pseudo-obsessive love for FBFW, that moreso than laughing, the "hmm" reaction really has been what i've been getting down with in the 'mix--not the brow wrinkling "Hrmm...." of discomfort and annoyance that, say, LIO might instill in the reader, but the "Hmh." you might say to yourself when you are walking down the street hung over on a weekend morning and (not that this happened to me recently or anything) you see a high school kid in a football uniform crossing himself before he walks onto the field down the block. A feeling that you have been let into a private moment in somebody else's life. does anyone actually prefer it when FBFW's punchline is an actual joke? usually it is kind of corny: some kind of play on words, or as in today's strip, the usage of less-than-20-year-old slang. to me, the best kind of FBFW punchline is either a heartwarming life lesson or a poignantly expressed emotion--Liz's reactions to Anthony's "taken" status for the wedding; Jim's recent, controversially interesting musings on his struggle with old age; everyone's conflicted emotions and excitement on the real estate upheaval of last month.
while johnston is unquestionably Queen of the Hmm, it's nice to see the other masters of the form getting the hang of it. conley's an old hand by now, and i feel like the guy who does pearls before swine is learning, which just goes to show you it can hide in the last place you'll expect, and be absent from where you'd assume. i think that might be what bugs me about sally forth, as a matter of fact. it has this reputation for being this polite, pleasant comic but really, how can it truly be when there is never any hmm whatsoever, no emotional heft or consequence to anything that happens in that strip at all? maybe the reason sally is always smirking is because her life is better than the reader's. when she dies, all she will do is make some wry comment about how she hopes they wash the linens in heaven twice a day or something, and then when she gets to heaven god will be ted and she'll be like "ted! i didn't know you were god!" and he'll go "Come on... a footrub every night before bed? It should have been obvious!"
anyway, believe it or not the original thing i was trying to do here is, i'm starting a grandpa jim patterson death watch. i'm giving him 2 months. today's strip is making me wonder if iris has got it in her to stick it out with him even that long. stay strong, lady! this man ran for miles, with a gunny sack and a rifle on his back, for your freedom.