Red and Rover: I'll never forget the day I brought you home.

I like seeing stuff like this, older incarnations of a comic strip set against newer incarnations. The drawing generally remains distinctly that of the cartoonist, but as time goes by it tends to become more refined. And we can see that in this Red and Rover. Of course, sometimes it goes the other way, as with Schultz as he got older.

Red and Rover: The real reason dogs sleep a lot during the day is they watch over us whie we sleep at night.

This cartoon is hilarious because it's actually much more creepy than it is comforting.

Red and Rover: Trick or treat! Here--your mother-in-law is coming for a visit.

Serious question: was there ever a point in time when mother-in-law jokes were considered hip or funny?

Red and Rover: Rover, look. I'm inivisible!

The way cartoonists use words and pictures plays a large role in the quality of any given comic. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud labels comics in which the words and drawing do exactly the same job as "duo-dependent." They're generally the worst kind of comics because they indicate on the part of the cartoonist a lack of confidence in both his own ability to make himself understood and the ability of his readers to understand.

This Red and Rover doesn't quite meet that criterion, but it's far too close for comfort. Red's dialog isn't so much complementary as it is redundant. It exists mostly because Brian Bassett didn't trust his audience to see Red in the tree. But the whole point of the comic is that Red is hard to see! Putting the word bubble there makes Red easy to see, and makes Rover the butt of the joke instead of all of us.

Red and Rover: I think I axed it.

This comic would work a lot better if it came complete with audio. Of course, comics never come with audio. So maybe it's best to avoid jokes like this in the comics section.

Red and Rover: No, it's ARF-ARF-WOOF-ARF-WOOF-WOOF-ARF-ARF.

Far be it for me to question the fevered delusions of a young boy's mind, but if Rover can form words, shouldn't he also be able to form the letters from which those words are formed?

Family Circus and Red and Rover: How's your book?

As a general rule, Sunday editions of The Family Circus tend to be more tolerable than the daily cartoons. This probably has a lot to do with one of the things I wrote about here: the extra space allows (or forces) Keane Inc. to occasionally craft an actual story instead of just relying on their usual crutch of the adorable malapropism.

And further proof that Red and Rover relies on the same type of humor as The Family Circus:

Both of these comics are hilarious, by the way, because children like to watch television.

Red and Rover: Be a firefly for a night.

Like Brian Basset's other comic, Adam @ Home, Red and Rover is a very workmanlike comic strip. It basically does what it sets out to do and nothing more. It's not at all ambitious or original, and it's hardly ever especially funny, but it more often than not makes me wish I were a kid again. It's kind of like what The Family Circus would be if The Family Circus didn't suck so much.

Red and Rover: No, I like boys. I like boys a lot.

I continue to be disturbed by the intimations of underage bestiality in the comics section.