Top Sunday Comic Strips from the Roanoke Times: The Satan Gag Works!

Greetings to our blog readers in Wales, Estonia and Thailand.

Today, we once again look at our favorite Sunday comic strips, and this week, we focus on the comic strips found in Sunday, Sept. 21st edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. The Sunday strips include strips aimed mostly at children ("Garfield," "Family Circus"), adults ("Dilbert" and "For Better or For Worse") and people who are 112 years old and living in a nursing home in Christiansburg, Va. ("Hi and Lois" and "Pickles").

We imagine "Pearls of Swine" may have received the wrath from Rev. Johnny Robertson from Martinsville, Va., which is just barely in the Roanoke newspaper's circulation area in which a woman who is dressed like the devil convinces the devil character rat to engage in mischief. "Pearls" is our strip of the week. (Yes, it is the reason for our poster from "The Devil," an amusing Turkish remake of "The Exorcist," no Linda Blair in the remake though).

Other strips in our top five include "Speed Bump" which has a take on what it would be like to be Icarus (center image) and visit a tanning salon, "Doonesbury" which has an American 'helping out' against radicals in the island national nation of The Maldives, and "Funky Winkerbean" which takes on a high school stage production of "Macbeth," aka 'The Scottish play.' Since, Criterion Classics announced it was releasing the vintage Roman Polanski film version of the Shaekespeare play, we though we'd include a poster from the film here.

Here is the top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Speed Bump

3) Doonesbury

4) Funky Winkerbean

5) Non-Sequitur

6) Zits

7) Agnes

8) Get Fuzzy

9) Dilbert

10) Mutts

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.criterion.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

http://www.doonesbury.com

For our look at Sunday comics from "The Washington Post," be sure to visit our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" at: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Jack-O-Lantern

Of course, October is a great time of the year to visit a nice country town like Abingdon, Va., where the Barter Theatre is currently performing the stage version of "The Full Monty" (admitedly not my cup of tea, but my 70-year-old mom would probably enjoy it).

However, if one is staying home because they are overwhelmed with cleaning house, grading papers or awaiting a call from an All-State agent, they can watch lots of horror films.

Even many fellow film fanatics are a bit surprised when I tell them there is a Turkish version of "The Exorcist!"

The film called "Seytan/Satan/The Devil" was made in 1974 a year after Linda Blair shocked cinema audiences around the world. The director Metin Erksan was actually one of Turkey's most accomplished filmmakers at the time!

The plotline from the film which is available from Netflix (which is how I saw it on dvd) revolves around a troubled girl named Gul, played by Canan Perver, who becomes possessed by the devil.

Perhaps, the most singular cultural difference between the two versions is that Gul is saved by a shrink rather than a priest which seems appropriate given that Turkey is a Muslim country!

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Celeb Couples

Hooray for celebrity couples; what would we do without them??! Today, for our Silly Photo to Fill Space feature we focus on the celebrity couple of Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal who are known more for independent films, like "Shattered Glass" and "Secretary," which are shown in Auditorium 14 at the local multiplex in Bethesda, Md.

Amazingly enough, I saw that "Secretary" was playing at an outdoor cinema in Buukada, an island off the coast of Istanbul, Turkey, a few years ago. I wonder if Maggie or her agent is aware of that? Yeah. I agree. Probably not.

SIDEBAR: This week's semi-official High School of the Week is Galena High School in Reno, Nev., where the school nickname is The Grizzlies.

Nevada is a state where a very competitive U.S. Senate race is taking place between a Tea party Mama Grizzly Sharron Angle, who like Linda Blair is assuredly possesed by Satan (hey, we may not be as liberal or as funny as Michael Moore, but we still hate right-wing quacks) and Sen. Harry Reid, who is the sentate majority leader.

Among the famous alum of Galena HS is actress Shannyn Sossaman who starred in the thriller "One Missed Call," which probably played in Auditorium 7 at the local multiplex in Bethesda, Md.