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Ziggy, 1/13/11

Ziggy is always hilariously cruel, but I find the cruelty in today’s panel not just hilarious but particularly poignant. Ziggy of all people is being told that his standards are too high? Ziggy, who is poor and hungry, who soils himself on park benches, who gets insulted by random passers by, who’s worth more dead than alive — Ziggy needs to calibrate his expectations for life downward? Is Universal Press Syndicate ready for the waves of suicide that will be set off by a new, even more depressing Ziggy?

Apartment 3-G, 1/13/11

What’s really awkward, of course, is listening to a woman talk all night about her dead fiance, like Trey’s done, and then trying to kiss her. This is true among ordinary humans, anyway, which is why Margo really needs to take the initiative, and capture and enslave her own mates.

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Shoe, 1/12/10

Now here’s a lovely example of how a single word balloon can transform a comic from boring and pedestrian and vaguely insulting to completely bonkers. I’m referring, of course, to the balloon emerging from Roz’s sundae. What could have been a sub-Cathyism — hee hee, the ladies, they like eating fatty food and are awash in body image self-hate! — instead becomes a rapid descent into madness. This descent takes one of two paths. Roz may have gone insane, and is now hearing voices emitting from ordinary inanimate objects; it’s also possible that this is in fact a sentient, talking dessert. The latter possibility is pretty strange, but is it really any stranger than talking birds who use their wing-hands to eat ice cream? In this scenario, Roz’s admonishment to keep her gluttony a secret from her thighs isn’t a mere whimsical joke, since there’s no reason to think that those thighs can’t think and speak as well.

Either way, I like the fact that the ice cream sundae is neither cheerfully declaring its desire to be consumed (as one might expect in the “Roz is nuts” scenario) nor screaming in terror as the instrument of its murder approaches (as you’d guess a self-aware ice cream sundae would react in this situation); instead, it just gives Roz a standoffish “Uh … okay,” as if waiting to see where this is all going.

Mary Worth, 1/12/10

Today’s Mary Worth demonstrates the limits of Mary’s memory self-modification techniques. Jill urges everyone to purge from their minds the image of her making a drunken scene and being forcibly removed from the rehearsal dinner; and yet panel one demonstrates with its complete awesome hilariousness that we can never, ever let such good times vanish from our recollections. Is Jill sticking her tongue out? Is Dr. Jeff raising his upper lip in a tough-guy sneer? Never forget, I say. Never forget.

Gil Thorp, 1/12/10

Oh, hey, remember Gil Thorp’s new extremely thinly veiled gay character? Turns out he’s Gil Thorp’s new extremely thinly veiled gay basketball prodigy! Also, he really, really likes vests, for some reason.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/12/10

Ha ha, looks like somebody stopped just talking about it and actually had Snuffy brutally assaulted!

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Mary Worth, 1/11/11

Oh, Scott and Adrian, you may have claimed to have no doubts whatsoever about your marriage, but it’s clear that Jill’s drunken claims that marriage (as an institution in general, and yours in particular) is a sham have gotten under your skin. Why else do you look so darn relieved that Jill has finally given you her blessings, if only in note form? Mary, meanwhile, looks kind of pissed. “Damn it, when my meddlees show contrition, they do it in person! I’m going to drag her hungover ass down here so she can beg for forgiveness in the most publicly humiliating way possible. Nothing else is acceptable!”

Ziggy, 1/11/11

Remember last week, when Ziggy was too poor to afford food? He’s discovered a solution: buying food that’s old and rancid.