Arlo and Janis: I knocked over the tomato sauce!!

The coloring is annoying and distracting, but this is very funny, if for no other reason than Janis' eyeballs.

Speaking of Arlo and Janis, I was a bit too hard on it before. It's a very solid comic strip.

Arlo and Janis: Dad, I think we should buy Gus' sailboat!

Since I've criticized Jimmy Johnson's drawing before, I feel I ought to point it out when I think he does a good job. This Arlo and Janis is funny, and it's almost entirely because of the way Johnson draws Arlo's reactions.

Arlo and Janis: Oh!!!

Gene has apparently been taking lessons from Mark Trail on the terrifying ickiness of women.

Arlo and Janis: I don't know. I thought my life would change somehow.

This comic is hilarious because technology makes for a lousy religion.

Adam @ Home and Arlo and Janis: I need to get you some new trunks.

Here we see the immortal trope of the hot wife with the schlumpy husband in about as clear a contrast as the comics section will ever provide.

While I'm not a huge fan of Arlo and Janis, I've got to at least give it credit for not falling into this particular trap. Speaking of Arlo and Janis, in today's installment we again see a silent (though not penultimate) panel used effectively. So suck on that, silent panel haters.

Arlo and Janis: I'll do all I can to positively influence events.

While the poor artwork in Marmaduke and The Family Circus provides ample ammunition for mockery, it doesn't really prevent their authors from telling the kind of stories they want to tell, mostly because the stories they want to tell are so simple. The less than laudable artwork in Pearls Before Swine and xkcd, meanwhile, is actually something of a feature; it's interesting, and often humorous, to see what Pastis and Munroe can do within their artistic limitations. The drawing in Arlo and Janis, though, is a real hindrance.

Jimmy Johnson's strip is mostly daily gag stuff, but it occasionally involves a reasonably complex continuing storyline, along the lines of a less involved For Better or For Worse or 9 Chickweed Lane. It's not a particularly great comic, but the serialized storytelling is pretty decent. The drawing really drags it down, though. As the above installment indicates, the style of the strip is pretty simple and minimalistic. Beyond that, the characters just aren't very expressive, and that's the real problem.

The conversation taking place between Janis and Gus is pretty serious, and the writing does a decent job of conveying the gravity of the situation. But Johnson isn't able to convey that same seriousness in his artwork. On the contrary, Janis and Gus are so stiff and expressionless that they may as well be in a Pearls Before Swine. And in a story like this, in which the characters should be wearing their emotions on their sleeves, that just doesn't work.

A big part of readers' connection to the characters in For Better or For Worse was image-based. Even without words, the characters' emotions were clear. The drawing in 9 Chickweed Lane is quite a bit more inventive than Lynn Johnston's ever was, but, still, what really gives readers a connection to it is that expressiveness in characters' faces. Johnson's characters don't have that, and it's the biggest reason why Arlo and Janis isn't a very good comic strip.

Arlo and Janis: Ah! The tectonic-plate special.

This comic is hilarious because Arlo is a douche.