"Cathy" is getting better these days too

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the other day, Sally Forth made me laugh.

I harbor a longstanding hatred toward this comic strip, which I read every day. For one thing, it's poorly drawn. The illustrations rarely include action or add to the humor. It runs three panels of talking heads each day. Heads that are always in profile for some reason.

The jokes are even worse than the art. The primary source of humor in Sally Forth is that the eponymous character is better than the people around her--her childlike husband, her strangly adult child, and her coworkers. A typical strip will have a secondary character saying something stupid followed by the punch line: Sally pointing out that what he/she said was stupid.

Well in the last week or so, the SF writers (yes, there are two of them, in addition to the illustrator) have hit on an unlikely inspiration for some pretty good dark humor, Sally's mother. The mom is visiting for Thanksgiving, and she isn't stupid like most of the other characters. Instead, she is mean and evil. Sally's response to her mom is realistic and actually results in occasional funniness.

We can only expect continued improvement from Sally Forth, because I found this online, which I am assuming is some sort of prototype for future strips.