(158) Murphy's Manor, Effective Cruising - Advice for the Lovelorn and Authors

Sid's promotion of his book on Effective Cruising turns into classes and selling cassette tapes. Happily, the examples of rejection are not ones I received personally. Sid's advice, curiously, is the same given to would-be authors. If an editor says no, try another editor. Prior to this I had never thought of the publication business as a sexual experience.

Welcome to 1985!

(157) Murphy's Manor - Where's the Rimshot When You Need It?

True story!

Punch lines rarely work as well in real life as they do in comic strips. That's why they're considered Art.

(156) Murphy's Manor - History is Written by the Headline Writers

Whether it's homophobia or raunchy sex is all in the phraseology.

(155) Murphy's Manor - Be Lucky at Love by not Needing it

I knew perfectly well why I never managed to meet anybody at bars,  but I gained little satisfaction from the self knowledge.

(154) Murphy's Manor - Guaranteed results -- even if you have to do it yourself

The Saga of Sid's book on cruising continues. Every character in The strip seems to have something to say about it.

Do we still need specialised advice books like this? WikiHow doesn't seem to cover this topic very effectively. And where wikicruise.com?

(153) Murphy's Manor - Ms. Harvey

Another episode in Mayoral Lesbian Love. Meg doesn't do things by the book. Anybody's book.

(152) Murphy's Manor - Redemption

Superman has Lex Luthor. The Fantastic Four have Dr. Doom. Spider-Man has Dr. Octopus. Murphy Robinson has the Reverend Ezekiel Hasenpflug.

From Falwell to Swaggart to Bryant a certain stripe of Organized Religion has equated Christianity with homophobia. Murf needed a foil to represent this view.

We see a lot of Hasenpflug over the next thousand strips. He comes to embody every scheme the Religious Right has to throw at us. And when Swaggart gets caught in a scandal, Hasenpflug gets caught in a worse one. 

Don't mistake this for anti-Christian. Hasenpflug the Cartoon Character  never mentions Jesus; he has lost track of agape,  caritas, Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi and all the rest.