Today’s strip
Why is Julia telling him to go after her? I thought they were dating? Guess not. 
Bah, I swear, one of these days I’m going to stop reading this strip! One of these days! Grrrrrr…
Because Julia is “fat” and “ugly” and “uncouth” and knows that no man is ever going to be interested in her, so her purpose in life is to get other people together.
Either that, or she’s fed up with Anthony constantly sighing over Liz, and just wants to get him out of her hair so she can try to have some fun at this thing.
I don’t have time to find the strip, but if I remember correctly, when Liz met up with Anthony to ask him to go to the wedding, he said he’d already asked this really nice girl who had just started working at the same office as him, but he sort of implied that they were just friends and coworkers, and the only reason he’d already asked her was because he thought Liz was seeing someone else and would be taking him. At least he was enough of a man to honor his obligation to his first choice of a date, and not dis-invite her when Liz came sniffing back around.
Re: today’s strip - now Anthony has Lips of Loveliness.
It’s the magical fat chick, cousin to the magical negro. Her role is to be wise and supportive for the beautiful people in their moment of confusion and continually comment on the attractiveness and desirability of others, but never, under any circumstances, have a romantic fulfillment of her own.
Just a comment- I never thought Anthony’s mustache was porn-esque. I thought it was Ned-Flanders-esque.
And you never associated Ned Flanders with porn???
That’s why you should always keep ugly people around.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So from my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
– Jimmy Soul
Hey, Blandthony! She has about three more years before Elly-Ass sets in! Better make sure she can cook.
Thank you. So do I. I only vaguely recognize this odd creation now. I no longer read a daily paper, so have lost touch with most comic strips (somehow I never look at the ones online). I think I’m not sad about this.
Is this similar to the gay best friend that so many attractive single women have in movies?
Only if they never actually have sex with anyone.
In the final panel of the 6/16 strip (linked to up thread) Julia has morphed into an aged soap opera wedding harpy, shrewd and conniving, shoving her weakling nephew forward to help enact her master plan to take over the fashion empire of her cross-town rival. It’s really quite astonishing the way characters in this strip slip in and out of ages, looks and personalities, sometimes within the space of just several panels.
Heh…good assessment.
The inconsistency of the characters’ appearance is partly the nature of the strip now being drawn by committee. But there is, as you point out, a lot of morphing to fit the appropriate mood. Liz’s Lips of Loveliness, for instance, inflate and deflate according to her proximity to men.
But I think you nailed it when you said “soap opera.” I think that’s the tone of the strip nowadays: build up to a moment of reckoning, hold for a moment with organ music thrumming, then cut away to another storyline. As they’ve done today.
(Check out the “Yes we can!” frieze on the wall in the last panel. I can just see someone grafittiing “No you can’t!” on the opposite wall.)
The soap opera element has its appeal, but I still prefer the old strip, which I remember as having much less story line, and more humorous observation (as RickJay mentioned above). I remember the strip in the 80s as finally taking the place of the very tired Family Circus in terms of observational family humor, and occasionally even getting somewhat close to the old J. R. Williams classic Out Our Way. Now it seems devoted to the soap opera style.
Of course, my memory might just be shot.
The Overvational Femily Humor has made the complete move to Sundays only.
Not for me. Mostly because Lynn can’t do it right. Liz and Anthony have been making puppy-dog eyes at each other for years now, and nothing has come of it. We didn’t see her answer when he begged her to “Wait for me!” two years ago; she just went back up north and started dating the cop. Being together at the trial did not break any new ground, and now the wedding is over and still no resolution. It’s like reading a news account about a plane that took off from LAX, flew to Dulles and landed without incident.
I haven’t read that strip in years. (I kinda used to identify with Mike, or wahtever the son’s name is, when I was a little younger. We were both kind of geeky.)
Looking at the online panels, I think the Inflated Lips Around Men has to do with Lizardbreath using lipstick, rather than a sign of arousal.
Re today’s (6/19/07) strip: Ewwww! Now the background characters are moving! Make them stop!