Family Circus, 3/5/14
Haha, look at Dolly panic! She’s only beginning to grapple with the plight of the fictional character, who, despite the promise of “Happily Ever After” at the end of their tale, has no existence outside the narrative written for them, and is forced to relive it, ignorant of what awaits them, every time someone picks up the book. “Time is a flat circle,” as Rust Cohle said on True Detective. Dolly’s real fear is not for Snow White, who is barely real for her, but for herself, and that fear is fully justified.
Apartment 3-G, 3/5/14
Whoops, looks like we’ve gone from “Tommie has a fiancé” to “Tommie’s fiancé died in a plane crash” in a mere nine weeks! And since Tommie delayed Jim with “love-drowsiness” and caused him to miss his plane in the first place, there’ll be some nice guilt to motivate her character into epic fits of maudlin ennui for months and months! First up: Tommie’s story shifts from “My fiancé is a real human who exists” to “My fiancé died in a plane crash that was definitely not made up boo hoo hoo I’m so sad I can’t possibly do my share of apartment chores for the next several weeks.”
Beetle Bailey, 3/5/14
Right you are to “?”, Beetle! This is the focus for the strip today? Isn’t there something even vaguely zany happening anywhere else?
Hagar the Horrible, 3/5/14
Do you think Hagar had to kill everybody in the waiting room in order to get in to see the doctor? Or did he only murder a few, at which point his intentions were clear and everyone else just fled in terror?
Crankshaft, 3/5/14
Funky Winkerbean is spending the week focusing on the collapse of a longtime character’s dreams and sense of self. Crankshaft, Funky’s zanier sister strip, is more into physical comedy, like this gag, where the strip’s main character’s bad back is causing him so much physical agony that he’s reduced to crawling on the floor.
Mary Worth, 2/17/14
YESSS YOU GUYS TOMMY’S BACK TOMMY’S BACK TOMMY’S BACK THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING
Tommy’s being all contrite now, but time will tell whether or not this is all just an charade to distract from his future meth-dealing activities. Frankly his hand gestures, culminating in the shirt-grip in panel two, seem a little showy to me. I do like the way even his hair (his sweet, sweet hair, always the source of his power) gets in on the act, his perky flip drooping submissively to show how very sorry he is for everything.
Anyway, Tommy’s back and this is going to be great so be sure to refresh joshreads dot com constantly for Tommy updates.
Apartment 3-G, 2/17/14
The other soap strips, realizing the world’s attention is focused firmly on Mary Worth, are just sort of going through the motions, though I have to admit that I’m actively charmed by what a nothingburger today’s Apartment 3-G is, plot-wise. “We went shopping and got some, uh, stuff! Look, these random multi-colored boxes! ‘They’ were giving things away! Isn’t that nice! Let’s have a good laugh! Ha ha ha!” Meanwhile, everyone ignores the piteous mewling of the baby deer, who hates the indoors but is woefully unprepared for life in the woods where Tommie’s going to dump her next week when she finally gets tired of cleaning up the deer poop.
Slylock Fox, 2/17/14
You know, the thing I always like about Reeky is that he could not possibly care less about you or what you think about him, when it comes to how he dresses or who he steals electricity from or whatever incredibly half-assed excuse he’s come up with about stealing his neighbors’ furniture and burning it for heat. That’s why this elaborately staged alibi is so disappointingly earnest, from my point of view, and it sickens me to think of Reeky stealing a bunch of newspapers from the coin-operated box, laying them out just so in front of his trailer, and setting the empty suitcase by the door with a grin, ready to pick it up and wave it about meaningfully at a moment’s notice. It all implies that he respects other people’s opinions, and also frankly reveals the limits of his abilities to plan anything more elaborate than busting open a mailbox with a baseball bat. We don’t even need to see the headlines to know this is a put-on, because we know that the only people Reeky finds more contemptible than the ones who travel to wussy non-America countries to go to museums or whatever are the ones who think they’re so smart about current events that they need to get newspapers delivered just to show everyone what big brains they have.
Funky Winkerbean, 2/17/14
Haha, wow, well, this is one way to deflect an unwanted cheeseball sexual advance! “My, you certainly are attractive!” “Yes, but my soul is fundamentally broken and repellant.” Naturally, since this is the Funkyverse, our lothario’s lust has only been inflamed by this response.
Family Circus, 2/17/14
“Oh, right, it was about the ‘home!’ Grandma already has a home, mommy, why are are we makin’ her move into another one?”
Spider-Man, 1/23/14
Say what you will about this battle between the Amazing Spider-Man and a nefarious supervillain one of Iron Man’s obsolete and jury rigged armor suits controlled by a nefarious supervillain a local publishing magnate with the stakes being Spider-Man’s very life Spider-Man’s secret identity, but at least it represents recognizably superheroic activity, it’s lasted three weeks at this point, and Peter Parker hasn’t paused once to watch TV at any time during the process. But now it looks like 2014′s quota for action and excitement has all been used up, so Man-Bot is going to crash into that van in the most hilariously half-assedly drawn panel this strip has seen to date. Is Man-Bot suddenly as long as a van, even though previously it’s been shown as not much taller than an ordinary person? Is the metal of the van’s wall peeling outward, even though Man-Bot is punching through from the outside? Yes and yes, because why not and who cares!
Family Circus, 1/23/14
Oh, dear, it appears that Jeffy is really just asking for a good smiting from the creator God, is he not? Perhaps his family will be killed and he’ll be afflicted with boils and then God will serve up a long Book of Job style poem about how Jeffy doesn’t really know crap about creating a universe, hopefully with an sidebar about what lousy parents ostriches are. Maybe He’ll go with the ironic Twilight Zone method of enlightenment, eliminating all clouds (and therefore rain) from the Earth’s sky until everyone dies of thirst. Or maybe He’ll be more New Testament gentle, and just send an angel to patiently explain to Jeffy that without those clouds he would’ve blinded himself by pointing his telescope directly at the sun, what with it being in the middle of the day and all.
Phantom, 1/23/14
Hey, remember that time in 2005 when a blonde lady discovered the Skull Cave and then the Phantom erased her mind with mind-erasing drugs? Long story short, the Phantom is going to erase this lady’s mind with mind-erasing drugs.
