Mary Worth, 4/17/14
WHAT A TWIST! It turns out that it’s not just Tommy who’s too darn lazy to get off his duff and get a job; his mom is a shiftless bum too! “I don’t want a lot of talk about putting in the effort of learning how to bake, Mary,” she thinks to herself. “Just hand over the goddamn muffins! mmm, just gonna visualize Tommy lounging around back at the apartment while I go to town on this. He sure isn’t learning how to bake! Stay strong, Iris!”
Better Half, 4/17/14
It’s true, Stanley, a cool way to lose weight would be if you were just a smooth spheroid with no openings or internal structure, just a blob of living matter with no mouth or way to digest nourishment, yep yep yep not horrifying at all no sir
Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/14
Wait, but … but … Les already solved this, in his book about John Darling? OH MY GOD NOT EVEN JESSICA READ LES’S BOOK
Mary Worth, 4/15/14
Last week Wilbur urged Iris to apply tough love to her layabout drug dealing son who may or may not be working hard to find a job (a task which, for the record, is often quite difficult for ex-cons), and she blew up at him about it, putting Wilbur’s sad love life in jeopardy. But ever since then, Iris has been musing about whether maybe she should be harder on Tommy. And who’s there to swoop in and catch her at the moment she’s ready to speak these uncomfortable truths aloud? Wilbur? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s Mary. Mary’s been watching her from afar all this time, patiently waiting for the moment when Iris is ready to split at the seams, when she can turn Iris to her way of thinking with just an innocent, nonspecific question. This right here is a meddling master class. Run along and write your little advice column, Wilbur; the pros are working here.
Dick Tracy, 4/15/14
So God bless the new Dick Tracy creative team for the great art and reverence for comics history and all, but sometimes the plot gets so reverent of comics history that it’s literally impossible for anyone but comics obsessives to follow. At the moment, for instance, the strip is switching back and forth between what appears to be a search for Little Orphan Annie, a followup to an earlier plotline that references characters and scenarios from the strip’s loopy sci-fi era of the 1960s and 1970s, and a fictionalized take on intra-comics industry feuding that started in 1942. Anyway, I’m just glad today’s strip sticks to the core Dick Tracy brand of Dick being a remorseless killer. “Soooo … these guys went out into deep space and … probably suffocated in terror?” “It looks that way, Diet,” Dick nods, satisfied.
Six Chix, 4/15/14
Six Chix appears to be using the week leading up to Easter to feature a a series cartoons about the birth and death of bunnies, with each strip guaranteed to disturb and unsettle! Anyway, all I’m going to do with this one is give you the phrase “rabbit cloaca” and rest easy in the knowledge that you won’t be able to extract it from your mind for days.
Beetle Bailey, 4/15/14
I spent a long time staring at this Beetle Bailey cartoon and trying to figure out what it meant. Then I realized I should follow Plato’s lead, which is to say: recognize it as inane nonsense, and wander off to find something better to do.
Mary Worth, 4/8/14
It tells you a lot about Mary Worth as a strip that this storyline about a drug dealing ex-con trying to find his way in mainstream society has mainly been about the quasi-romantic relationship between the ex-con’s mother and a bald advice columnist, and it tells you a lot about me as a person that I’ve been loving every minute of it. Anyway, Wilbur’s attempt to win Iris’s love by driving a wedge between her and Tommy seems to be going exactly as planned! “Yesssss,” he thinks, “women always get super mad at you before they do sex things with you, right? We’re going to do so many sexy things, after I tell her to kick Tommy out. But not yet, Wilbur, not yet! You need to play that trump card at just … the right … moment.”
Mark Trail, 4/8/14
After being savagely beaten by a civilian vigilante, Marlin is finally being taken into custody by legitimate law enforcement officers, and while they’ll probably protect him from further arbitrary physical violence, they are subjecting him to the ultimate insult: symbolically stripping him of his whimsical nickname. No longer will he be permitted to refer to himself as “Marlin”! Noms de taxidermy are reserved for legitimate, non-poaching taxidermists! In the joint he will be known as “Ethan Fauscett,” and he will definitely suffer for it.
Apartment 3-G, 4/8/14
At last, someone is saying what we’ve all been thinking, and it’s Doctor Whatshisname, the large animal vet! I mean, he’s being kinda of harsh about it, but frankly the A3G girls could stand to have the phrase “helpless freak” shouted at them more often.
