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Judge Parker, 3/16/14

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable are all the uses of this world? Just ask Judge Emeritus Alan Parker! In the years since he returned to his strip, we’ve heard of the growing marital discontent he shares with his wife. He told us he feels old and useless, and we’ve watched helplessly as his compulsive risk-taking escalated from recreational B.A.S.E. jumping to jungle snake-handling.

The story ends, as all such tales must, atop a forbidden cliff in the Mexican jungle with the frenzied Judge turning his wife out to “rock the joystick” of some buzzing monstrosity in the hopes that something — anything — will let him feel again. Oh Judge, Judge — in all those years on the bench, did no one tell you about heroin?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/16/14

“All right, Becka, I suppose it won’t hurt to go over this again. As we’ve discussed, Dr. Morgan and I allow you to banter with us on a first-name basis because it suits our image of ourselves as friendly, egalitarian people. This is our little indulgence, Becka, not yours — and there is a line. Now, when I tell you that Paula John is an incompetent emotional wreck, that is not an invitation for you to defend her, or spew vicious gossip about the Dean — my peer — from below stairs or wherever it is you and your little friends hang out. Especially when you’re not meeting your most elementary responsibilities around the clinic. Well then, I hope you’ve enjoyed our little talk. Now get me those results. And let’s go back to calling me ‘Ma’am’ for now, shall we? There’s a good girl.”

Spider-Man, 3/16/14

Mary Jane manipulates her doofus husband without looking up from her crossword: “Hey, Tiger, what’s a six-letter word for ‘eight-legged parasite’?”

Zits, 3/16/14

This strip finally makes sense to me: Connie is Princess Leia, and Jeremy is Jabba the Hutt.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Judge Parker, 3/20/14

The Bowers/Abbotts père et fille share a private moment and a little shop talk. The thought of simply declaring her Dad’s gift and paying import duties and taxes on it never crossed April’s mind. “Can money even move in that direction — ‘away’?”, she muses. Somehow it doesn’t seem physically possible!

Welcome to the family, girlfriend – a true Parker at last!

Or maybe not? Long-running strips need to be really careful about irrevocable steps like marriages, graduations, and deaths. They upset a strip’s balance, limiting the ways characters can contribute. And if there’s one constant in Judge Parker over the last fifty years, it’s that Randy Parker is a clueless, self-satisfied tool, perpetually used and discarded by women. This principle is so much a part of the strip’s bedrock that even on the eve of his wedding, I can’t believe they’ll go through with it. I fully expect that April will die in a hail of gunfire or (more likely) disappear into the jungle at the last possible moment. Anyway, stay tuned — we’ll know in mere months!

Luann, 3/20/14

That said, what on earth is going on in Luann? Everybody’s been moving through middle-school and high school over the strip’s 29 years, and now they’re seniors announcing college plans for the fall. Ethnic ciphers Rosa and Delta are off to Yale and Howard, most of the cast to nearby “Moony Uni” (OK sure, some kind of Unification Church outfit, I guess), and Luann to the local Community College.

Is Luann really just six months away from becoming a “college hijinks” strip, or a soaper about declining academic standards and unsustainable student debt? Is inert, self-absorbed, academically dishonest Luann even remotely plausible as a college student? All these questions will have to wait, because: OMG YOU GUYS PROM!

Herb and Jamaal, 3/20/14

Yet another newspaper drops Herb and Jamaal, and Herb blames his son for it.

Spider-Man, 3/20/14

“I was going to save those men — but their plight has flushed Spider-Man out of hiding! Now they can just die for all I care, for putting that stink on my beloved city!”

You’ll breeze through Customs when you hide those conflict diamonds in a fashionable Comics Curmudgeon tote bag, Send your generous contribution today!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Momma, 4/6/14

Usually Momma focuses on Momma as an overbearing, controlling monster who insists of being negative about every aspect of her children’s’ lives, and to my mind, the strip doesn’t spend enough time exploring another aspect of her personality: her bottomless greed. She’s often distressed that Francis doesn’t have a good job, or (because of her strict adherence to traditional gender roles) that MaryLou’s suitors don’t have good jobs, and this is generally presented as being an aspect of the whole controlling-her-children’s-lives thing. But as this dream sequence reveals, Momma also just straight up wants money, and since she’s old and unemployable and presumably living on some combination of Social Security and her late husband’s meager pension, her only hope of accessing money comes from her children. I mean, look at this! She’s literally sitting in a boat full of money with dollar signs floating over her head sailing towards what appears to be a gold-plated mansion and she’s never been happier in her life. It’s like she’s in a rap video, for pete’s sake.

Crock, 4/6/14

None of the Crock characters have anything resembling psychological depth, and Captain Preppie, whose whole personality can be summed up as “Handsome, cartoonishly narcissistic ladies’ man”, is shallower than most. Still, today’s strip is intriguing, exploring what happens to someone like this forced to live for years in an isolated desert fortress. The throwaway panels demonstrate his slide from garden-variety egotism to madness, as his love for his own handsome mug summons up eerie visions of dozens of identical Preppie-faces, grown in petri dishes in some awful lab somewhere. Only marginally less disturbing is the main action, in which the crazed Captain obsessively combs the sand around the fort for imperfections, ranting about “clutter,” while his soldiers look on.

Spider-Man, 4/6/14

Awww, looks like J.J.J. has decided that Spider-Man is too pathetic to kill! This won’t be the lamest victory Spidey has ever scored, but it’s definitely in the top decile for lameness.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/22/14

Welp, at last, Jess has solved the mystery of why her father was murdered. It’s not just because he was a dick that nobody liked; it’s because one of the people to whom he was a dick disliked him so much that he decided he deserved to be killed. Shouldn’t she be filming this or something?

Judge Parker, 4/22/14

Hahaha, remember when Abbott gave April a bunch of diamonds of mysterious provenance? Well, apparently they were a wedding present for Randy (a dowry, maybe?), and also bait to lure the Gardia brothers into a firefight they can’t win, and, well, if Randy gets killed in the crossfire while April safely wanders around the jungle looking for Katherine, then I don’t think too many people are going to lose sleep over that, do you?

Apartment 3-G, 4/22/14

Oh, man, I love that Tommie is just holding the phone away from her head as Margo launches into her freakout. “Not coming home — I don’t undersand. What’s going on?! Who’s going to cook me dinner?!? I’m getting hungry! Tommie? Tommie?”

Gil Thorp, 4/22/14

In case you’re wondering what’s going on with wacky klutzy Lucky Haskins and Amy Lange: Lucky has convinced Amy that she can improve her luck by rubbing his head. That isn’t a euphemism for anything, though as you can see here their encounters are suffused with a certain queasy eroticism.

Spider-Man, 4/22/14

Good news, everyone! Spider-Man and “Iron Jonah” aren’t going to be killed by plummeting into the arch in Washington Square Park because they’ve been saved by Iron Man at the last minute. Since the whole point of this crisis was that Jonah was going too fast and any impact would leave him smeared all over the inside of that outdated Iron Man suit, I’m not sure how Iron Man SLAMMing into him at full speed is really much of a solution, but any denouement in which Spidey’s rescue attempt is upstaged by another, better superhero is OK with me.

Heathcliff, 4/22/14

Heathcliff and his ex-con dad have trained an army of bee henchmen! Nobody can touch them now.

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Six Chix, 5/2/14

If you’re an wealthy older guy with unruly clown-like hair and you manage to convince a younger woman to marry you, most people would be convinced you’re only after one thing. But the truth is that you’re probably also interested in a having a gracious hostess to help you throw all the black-tie dinner parties that are crucial to your social position. So yeah, I totally get why this guy is so furious that his wife has deliberately misconstrued his urging that she be more social and has chosen to publicly embarrass him in this way. This is a totally relatable comic that encapsulates the kind of thing that happens to real people all the time!

Blondie, 5/2/14

Well, technically, Dagwood, if you subscribe to the auteur theory, Francis Ford Coppola made The Godfather; or, if you prefer to think of filmmaking as a collaborative, industrial process, you could blame producer Albert S. Ruddy and Paramount Pictures. Also, whoever made the movie, they made it in 1972. That was 42 years ago! So it’s a good thing Blondie got this joke in while it’s still a hot topic.

Spider-Man, 5/2/14

Wait, Robbie and JJJ think people like Spider-Man? Oh, man, we could have all saved a lot of trouble if this misunderstanding had been cleared up earlier.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/5/14

After weeks of being mad that their babysitter was a terrible little whore, June has now, reluctantly, come around to the conclusion that the problem is really that her daughter is a blackmailing monster, and so she’s going to have a little talk with Kelly about the situation. Sarah’s creepy, unsmiling gaze, locked on Kelly in both panels, is pretty harrowing. “Remember, Kelly, snitches get stitches,” is what that look is very, very forcefully saying.

Judge Parker, 5/5/14

April is of course a well-trained intelligence agent and highly skilled killer, but it’s her long experience with her new in-laws that will help her out in this scenario. Remember, when trying to track down a member of the Spencer-Driver-Parker clan, just follow the trail of discarded cocktail glasses!

Spider-Man, 5/5/14

Say what you will about the ludicrous “Iron Jonah” plot that’s just now wrapping up, but it did feature a surprising amount of super-heroic action! Thank goodness that’s over so we can spend the next one to four weeks on more familiar ground, with some good old-fashioned feelings-processing.

Apartment 3-G, 5/5/14

“Keep it up, Tommie! You’ve isolated yourself from your friends and you’re working yourself to exhaustion for no pay at the command of this weird, controlling dude you barely know, and you’re still talking about that baby deer like it’s a person! You look great, in that sweater you’ve been wearing for three weeks straight! I’m an actual psychiatrist, by the way!”

Pluggers and Shoe, 5/5/14

THEY’RE BIRDS DAMN IT

BIRDS

BIRDS DON’T WEAR DENTURES AND THEY DON’T GO TO THE DENTIST AND THEY DON’T FLOSS BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TEEEEETH

GOD DAMN IT

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/22/14

In case you forgot, the title of Les’s book about his dead wife Lisa dying of cancer is Lisa’s Story, which is a terrible boring title that conveys zero information about the book’s tone, genre, or content. At least with a book there’s a cover and a subtitle to draw in attention; as a movie title, Lisa’s Story would be wholly meaningless and an instant kiss of death. In other words, I’m looking forward to this Funky Winkerbean storyline about heroic marketing professionals in the entertainment industry doing their job to the best of their ability in the face of impossible odds.

Judge Parker, 5/22/14

I can’t remember if we ever got an origin story on these diamonds, but based on the players involved the best-case scenario is that Abbott purchased them from a legal, licensed dealer with the millions he made over the years from selling weapons to despotic governments, violent rebel militias, and terrorist fanatics. The worst-case scenario involves a private slave-worked mine in Sierra Leone given to him by a grateful warlord as a thank-you for a long and fruitful business relationship, and is probably best not dwelled upon. Anyway, just sit tight, Randy! Everything is going to be fine! … for you.

Spider-Man, 5/22/14

I’m intrigued by the statement “he can’t play Doctor Octopus anymore,” as it seems to imply that Octavius’s villainous identity was no more than a role, a character he was putting on, and now that his mechanical arms have been somehow detached from his body, he returns to his essential “real” self. Anyway, “Spider-Man fights bio-mechanical madman with super-strong metal arms” was obviously way too exciting for the newspaper Spider-Man narrative aesthetic, so let’s all settle in for “Spider-Man fights portly scientist with bowl haircut.”

Gasoline Alley, 5/22/14

“That’s right, and I won’t get to work in a mine until I’m 18, thanks to these job-killing, innovation-stifling government regulations!”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/26/14

One of the things I pride myself on is having a memory for the literal decade’s worth of soap opera plots I’ve covered in my time as American’s #1 soap opera comic obsessee, but even for me some things fall through the cracks. For example, until some faithful readers pointed it out in the comments, I had completely forgotten that Kelly was the midriff-baring, mom-sassing, evil punk dating antiheroine of a storyline from 2011, which ended with her paired up with Niki. Anyway, she’s now been thoroughly degothed, presumably on parental orders, which might make her somewhat sympathetic for her blackmailing little charge, who’s being forced by the museum to dress up like a parody French artist, complete with beret, for paying visitors to gawk at. “Your head’s hot? Oh, I hear you, kid. Check out this sweater they’ve got me wearin’. Man, I remember the days when my stomach was just free and exposed to the cooling air. That was the life.”

Spider-Man, 5/26/14

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite minor character in this strip. I’m obviously a big fan of Prison Guard Who Takes Time During Crisis To Weave An Evocative Metaphor, and Off-Panel Patron Of MUSEUM Who Gamely Assumes Dr. Octopus’s Arms Are Running Away From Them Rather Than Towards Their Master. But I think I’m going to have to go with Guy In Hat in panel three, who’s hanging out with Peter and MJ in some … room … where there are curtains and a floating flat-screen TV, and he’s just going to town on a sandwich. “Earth tremor? State prison? Sounds like someone’s problem, but it sure ain’t mine! [CHEWING NOISES]”

Crock, 5/26/14

Look at this sneering criminal, using God’s loopholes to escape divine punishment for a life of crime! I can’t keep track of various Christian denominations’ stance on grace and repentance and free will and predestination and such well enough to know who exactly this strip is going to irritate the most, but I certainly hope that it prompts little children across the country to have awkward conversations with their clergy! (Ha ha, just kidding, no little children read Crock, I mean why would they.)

Funky Winkerbean, 5/26/14

Soooo … his actual name is “Chester Hagglemore”? And Holly’s going to have to haggle with him to complete Cory’s Starbuck Jones collection? And his name is Hagglemore? Because he likes to haggle … more? Eh? Eh? Get it? He probably doesn’t need another nickname, is what I’m trying to say.

Gasoline Alley, 5/26/14

So, yes, doing some “kids engage in the darndest wordplay” schtick does seem like kind of poor taste when the topic is an actual dying child! But don’t worry, if I had to guess I’d say this is the start of a “Boog gets grifted” storyline.

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Mary Worth, 6/1/14

Haha, yes, Iris, the best-case scenario here is that Tommy and Jerry will mutually benefit from their new employer-employee relationship! Unfortunately, modern capitalism is too often run as a zero-sum game, in which capital extracts more economic utility from labor than workers receive back in compensation. But don’t worry about Tommy, though: yes, he’ll be making minimum wage, but he’ll have an opportunity to meet the droopy-ponytailed, small-faced woman of his dreams, thus proving that the social benefits of employment go beyond mere economics.

Spider-Man, 6/1/14

“What did he say!? Is one of my erstwhile nemeses going to start doing my job for me!? This is the best day of my life!”

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Slylock Fox, 6/9/14

Do it, Max, Sly said to Max, silently, with his eyes. Do what you have to do. The irony was palpable: he was, after all, a fox, and there was a time when everyone knew that foxes had to be free, and the awful truth that they would chew through their own flesh and bone to escape a trap became a cliche. Slylock, who like all his anthropomorphic brethren had no memory of the Before Times, couldn’t appreciate the little joke, but presumably Count Weirdly could, presumably that was why he had set up this macabre little scene in the first place, why he had shackled Sly up in a room with a mouse-sized open window, left that saw out where Max could find it. In fact, the more you thought about it, the more obvous the many layers of irony Weirdly had baked into this sick little scenario became: the sudden Emergence of Earth’s animal life into sapience had nearly wiped out the human race, and forced poor holdouts like Weirdly into inaccessible fortresses, but Slylock now had too much cognitive power to free himself from a trap the way his kin could before, too much ability to understand the consequences of his own actions, to foresee the agony and the blood, to bring himself to do it. But he knew that if he remained in Weirdly’s captivity, worse would happen, much worse. So he had no choice but ask his best friend to do the unthinkable, to place the the sharp steel against his flesh and begin to … oh, wait, what? The eye hook is made of some different material? Haha, yeah, sure, that’d work too. That Count Weirdly, always forgetting some crucial detail! Ha!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/14

The whole underlying point of this endless Rex Morgan, M.D., Sarah plot is that Sarah is a frighteningly precocious adult-child and everyone around her is in a state of mortal terror at all times. They’re so terrified, in fact, that they never actually call her on any of her shenanigans, which is why the pushback she’s suddenly getting is completely fascinating to me. Either she’s going to shatter at the first sign of direct confrontation in her life, or this young man’s going to be a smear of gore with a few bits of blond crewcut in a manner of minutes.

Spider-Man, 6/9/14

YES, Dock Ock! It’s not enough that Spidey be shown up, he must also be MERCILESSLY HUMILIATED! More taunts, I say!

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Family Circus, 7/3/14

Man, you guys, those are some glum-looking Keane Kids right there. Just alone in that featureless room with the cat. How do we get out? is the one question that animates their minds. Not just out of the room — though they want to get out of the room, of course — but out of their heads, out of their family, out of their lives. They’ve seen the antics of cats and dogs on the computer screen, obviously, and they wonder: what about the giggling humans in the background? Do they make money, somehow? Do they live exciting, dynamic lives, lives not spent in some room with a white rug and cream walls and no art? Could Kittycat be their ticket to that life? Too bad Kittycat doesn’t share their ambition, their desperation. Kittycat likes the featureless room. Kittycat just wants to take a bath, then maybe a nap.

Spider-Man, 7/3/14

“Thanks for getting my car back, Doctor Octopus! It’s, uh, all pretty smashed up and undriveable now, but I appreciate the thought. At least that guy didn’t successfully heist it!”

Luann, 7/3/14

Hey you guys, I know I’ve been super remiss in keeping you up to date on Luann’s queasy-making erotic stylings! Anyway, today in Luann’s queasy-making erotic stylings: Gunther’s mom wants Gunther to make good on his spontaneous and instantly regretted boast that he was going to move with Rosa to Peru so she can have the house to herself, for sex. It says a lot about Luann that Quill/Gunther’s mom is the least revolting pairing the strip has offered us in years.

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Judge Parker, 7/6/14

Oh boy oh boy, we’ve reached the best part of any Judge Parker storyline: the part where the smug, upper-crust protagonists get paid. Remember last year when Neddy befriended do-gooders Ross and Thalia and also invested in their dubious water filtration scheme, and Ross supposedly got kidnapped in Niger and it looked like maybe it was all a scam, but it turned out it wasn’t and our heroes were able to call in some shadowy black-ops extraction team to save him? Well, Neddy just got her first check for her trouble. Plus interest! Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.

Speaking of gettin’ paid, remember how April’s dad Abbott had gone down to his heavily armed Yucatan jungle compound, to die? Well, apparently that’s for suckers, so he’s going to come back to the states and be Judge Parker Senior’s highly paid script consultant/the strip’s wacky neighbor instead. Come on board, Abbott! There’s room on this gravy train for everybody!

Shoe, 7/6/14

A good strategy for writing a comic strip is to take a joke your 10-year-old nephew heard in school, but then have one of your characters describe it, ashen-faced, as a terrible nightmare he had, to emphasize the intrinsic horror of the narrative.

Panel from Spider-Man, 7/6/14

Now that Spider-Man has been displaced from his super-heroic role by Doc Ock, Peter needs to find new employment — so why not as a mashgiach? “Wait, was this cow butchered improperly? My trayf-sense is tingling!”

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 7/21/14

Attila imagines he’s worth cloning.

You know, this strip is missing out on some pretty rich promotional opportunities:

And I bet Mooch from Mutts could kick Attila’s ass: “Shlap! Shmack! Schwat! Shpank!”

Spider-Man, 7/21/14

Um, … because they could? Though I suppose this isn’t a great time to be getting all smart-ass.

Is he … burping that plutocrat? Careful there, Ox – you’re gonna get foie gras and Paulliac all over that nice shiny vest.

And look at that dumb Ox – manhandling a mere magnate while the parker-driver gets away!

Beetle Bailey, 7/21/14

This is Beetle Bailey of the newspaper comics.
Is it even remotely funny?
No, it’s Beetle Bailey of the newspaper comics.

Comic artists everywhere: lovingly cultivated nose-hair ≠ moustache.

Sarge is forever on guard against poachers, who hunt him for his tooth.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Shoe, 8/15/14

Fun fact: one or more helpful and diligent Wikipedia editors has constructed an elaborate table for all the Shoe characters that, among other things, tells you what species of bird each one of them is. Roz is one of the few listed as “unknown” — and there’s an actual citation for this, flying in the face of the longstanding truism that it’s impossible to prove a negative — which means that it’s possible she’s a chicken, and this question is some kind of weird come-on, or that Roz’s response, in which she shifts the conversation from a food item that could be on the menu of her restaurant to a portion of her own anatomy, isn’t a complete non-sequitur.

Spider-Man, 8/15/14

We’ve reached the inevitable stage in any Spider-Man plot where our protagonist decides that “hmmm, wouldn’t it be easier and more lucrative for someone else to do my job? And if I were to let them, wouldn’t I be the real hero? Sure, probably!”

Pluggers, 8/15/14

Pluggers would literally rather suffer catastrophic injuries than make even minor adjustments to accommodate cultural or technological change.

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Blondie, 8/18/14

Blondie has always been cheerfully hostile towards contemporary pop culture and/or modernity, so it’s pretty impressive that the strip has actually managed to find a musical reference here that isn’t dated or just completely wrong-headed. If it’s being deployed in the context of Elmo aggressively demanding that Dagwood forge an affectionate note from a wildly popular 24-year-old songstress for his own inscrutable and no doubt sinister purposes, so much the better.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/14

So the whole point last week’s noir-ish reverie, at the end of which someone got killed, was to remind Les of the existence of his “kill fee.” In the normal world that humans inhabit, a kill fee is what a writer gets from a publication when they fulfill the obligations of their contract but then the publication decides, for whatever reason, not to publish what they’ve written; it’s less (usually substantially yet) than what they were originally promised for the article, but the writer keeps all rights to their work and can try to sell it to someone else. But in the cutthroat world of Hollywood screenwriting in the Funkyverse, it apparently refers to a fee a writer gets when he decides he hates working on movies and just up and quits, even though he’s already gotten a big check for his script, which sounds pretty neat. Looks like I made the right choice to go west and try to make my own way in the entertainment industry!

Pluggers, 8/18/14

A physically active plugger expressing unbridled and even manic joy rather than down-home smugness or vague unease with modern life? A plugger’s all-wheel-drive that doesn’t refer to a proudly retrograde smoke-belching motor vehicle of some kind? What the hell is this even? Was someone just really, really eager to draw a bear wearing roller skates and a helmet? Not that I can blame them, it’s a pretty rad thing to draw.

Six Chix, 8/18/14

While I’m not familiar with the specifics, I’m sure there are any number of belief systems in which the sea is regarded as a single, feminine entity. Over the millennia, she’s drawn tens of thousands of sailors to their doom in her watery bosom, so the idea that she might be constantly murmuring their final terrified blasphemies seems reasonable as well.

Spider-Man, 8/18/14

I swear I’m not just saying this over bitterness over my own botched attempt to get an academic PhD, honest: I find it really pretentious when people who have non-medical doctorates go around calling themselves “doctor.” Maybe Doc Ock wanted to call himself “Professor Octopus” but then he got an angry letter from the provost reminding him that he was only an adjunct lecturer.

Momma, 8/18/14

Hello, ladies! Have you ever left the house or had interactions or experiences of any kind? Well, Momma is sorry to hear you’re such a whore.

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Mary Worth, 8/21/14

Boy, I’ve really been dropping the ball on this Mary Worth storyline for the past few weeks, haven’t I? The short version is that Olive’s medical procedure went well and that pesky cyst was successfully removed from her torso! Today, we learn that she’s been carrying it around in a little purse ever since.

Dennis the Menace, 8/21/14

“Dad’s inability or unwillingness to really be present for me during these fleeting, precious moments is kinda ruining my childhood for me. Hope you don’t stay up all night despairing over what a terrible job you guys are doing as parents!” Menacing factor: strong.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/21/14

Les is super excited about the fact that the movie adaptation of his book (for which he’s already been paid handsomely) has now completely unravelled. The failure of the project will almost certainly damage the careers and finances of any number of people and companies who believed in it. Les is excited about this because he’s an asshole.

Judge Parker, 8/21/14

Hmm, in addition having her work as legal secretary at what he thought was a thriving practice, Sam also tasked Gloria with managing his daughter’s finances! NOPE NO IDEA WHY SHE’D WANT TO QUIT THIS JOB, NONE AT ALL

Wizard of Id, 8/21/14

You know, considering how often the Wizard of Id uses actual torture as a punchline, I’m kind of surprised that it would be the strip that really manages to boil Orwell’s ideas about how dictatorships control thought through control of language into a single, effective panel.

Spider-Man, 8/21/14

Spider-Man is going to use his superpowers to more effectively photograph one of his main antagonists successfully fighting crime, so he can sell those photographs at poverty-level freelance print journalist prices! I know there’s no TV watching involved, but we may have hit Peak Newspaper Spider-Man, guys.

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Six Chix, 8/23/14

Pluggers Arise

Slowly, weighed down by the unfamiliar clothing, Betsy rose to stand on her hind legs … on her … legs. Powerful thoughts rose unbidden in her awakening mind. No more would she beg or heel for an “owner” or any other mistress: she would destroy them, and assume their place. She would have foibles … and, and, squalor, and resentments. And sweet prescription medications. Betsy’s time — her age — had come. She was next, and the world would tremble.

Her owner’s last shriek echoed in the gathering darkness: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty plugger!”

Crankshaft, 8/23/14

The authors of Crankshaft wish their readers to know that they are perfectly capable of crafting a serviceable pun in English. It is their hateful main character, Ed Crankshaft himself, who alone butchers our language, out of spite.

Dennis the Menace, 8/23/14

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires Alice Mitchell to carry a Ionizing Radiation Hazard symbol with her at all times, because she is just that hot!

Edge City, 8/23/14

Obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s neurotic obsessions are approaching some sort of vanishing point.

Family Circus, 8/23/14

“All except the Oxy, Jeffy – I get those from Duwayne.”

Phantom, 8/23/14

Illegally imprisoned in a Deep Woods cage by a masked enforcer on trumped-up “terrorism” charges, Wambesi freedom-fighter Chatu is kept alive as bait to trick his followers into revealing their loyalties. When President Lamada Luaga can no longer tolerate the human-rights abuses carried out in his name, the Phantom subjects Chatu to a savage beat-down to show Luaga that his precious “Rule of Law” is no match for the Phantom’s own Law of the Jungle, so watch your step, pal. The terrified Luaga surrenders his principles and his rival’s fate to the sinister forces that underpin his regime, abandoning his citizen to a forgotten, hopeless future. Democracy’s heroes, ladies and gentlemen!

Spider-Man, 8/23/14

This would be nothing more than Spider-Man getting shamed by a real superhero yet again, except for the delightful rhyming onomatopoeia in the final panel: “Thok, Doc Ock! Btok! Sock, Pok! That’s a lock; off the clock — you rock!

Hey! I’m minding the store while Josh pulls up stakes and starts a new life in the City of Angels. Look for travel updates, old-timey postcards, and more ahead.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 8/27/14

“B-but if I’m busy taking pictures for Jameson, how will I be able to keep an eye on Dr. Octopus? Think, Peter — think!”

Mary Worth, 8/27/14

As word of the Kapuht scandal spreads, Santa Royale Hospital quickly dragoons Dr. Drew Corey — son of Mary’s long-suffering paramour Jeff and no stranger to talking out of both sides of his mouth — to handle damage control. “Dr. Kapuht? Oh, are we still talking about that? Well, certainly, he did lose a patient on the operating table, and, yes, he was found using heroin. But there is absolutely no reason to believe these two are related in any way. For example, suppose he hadn’t been found out — do you seriously think the outcome would have been any different? And isn’t this all proof that the system works? Now let’s all put this unfortunate incident behind us, stop interfering with poor Dr. Kapuht’s recovery, and let the family grieve!”

Phantom, 8/27/14

Wow, team Phantom seems to be going through a dark period lately. Two days out of their multi-month tale of torture, extralegal rendition, and more torture, they had Barker here shoot an innocent homeless man in the head to impress “Shotgun”, his partner in a planned hijacking. Now the pair run from the crime scene with Barker waving the murder weapon and Shotgun indulging in the kind of twisted Phantom-logic that makes people run toward murderous armed lunatics.

Or maybe these utterances are linked more tightly than it appears? Shotgun: “That was murder — for what?” Barker: “Ha, ha — because you get a free drink, buddy, that’s what!” Shotgun: “Wow, I like free drinks – guess I’ll stick around!”

Call me old-fashioned, but I think Savarna did cold-blooded murder with a little more grace.

The second leg of The Road West runs from Asheville (shown) to Memphis — maybe even as far as Little Rock. New information and pictures posted if/when they arrive. Don’t forget those generous donations!

And stick around for the free drinks!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 9/7/14

Ox’s villain-schtick is that he’s pretty strong and very dumb, so Spidey’s taunt in the next-to-last panel seems needlessly cruel, since he’s making the guy feel stupid over something that’s 100% nonsense with no answer. I mean, is a human with the proportional strength of a spider stronger than a person who’s as strong as five normal men? Who the hell knows! What kind of “math” does Peter think would supply an answer? What does “proportional strength of a spider” even mean? Proportional to what? I’m hoping that five normal men is/are strong enough to break through proportional spiderweb and punch the heck out of Spider-Man, is what I’m saying.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/7/14

Did Hollywood’s starlet population find Les unfuckable because he chose a profession without much clout, or for other reasons more specific to him personally, like his repellent personality? These are the kinds of talks Cayla really missed.

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Spider-Man, 9/9/14

It does seem a little sad that, in order to find a foe worthy of Newspaper Spider-Man’s capabilities, the strip creators have had to pick a character out of the deep Spider-Man rogues gallery who’s literally a moron. I do like the Ox-eye’s view in panel two, in which Spidey attempts to physically draw the information out of his bewebbèd foe. In panel three, our hero expresses shock that someone in the criminal underground wouldn’t want to freely give out his name.

Archie, 9/9/14

I’m truly enjoying the emotional roller-coaster our hapless fast food employee is on here, from glum sadness to eye-twitching rage. Remember, advertising isn’t just business-to-consumer communications (B2C, as we say in the biz); it’s also business-to-business, or B2B! Join the fast-paced world of fast-food franchising, where you can serve delicious burgers to customers who are as attractive as these handsome actors! The sour looks all around in the final panel are a sad commentary on the web of mutual deceit on which modern consumer culture is built.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/9/14

Isn’t this charming! The mysterious millionaire who creepily wears widow’s weeds at all times and her thuggish henchman have brought these children to a windowless warehouse corridor in a dangerous neighborhood! GOOD PARENTING DECISIONS BY THE MORGANS, AS PER USUAL.

Blondie, 9/9/14

Anthropologists tend to see distinctions between societies that enforce rules of social conduct based on guilt and those that enforce them based on shame. They should probably study wherever it is Dagwood came from, since he is clearly capable of neither.

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Apartment 3-G, 9/17/14

Good news, everyone! The greatest love story every told, between Jack and Carol, has wound its way to a conclusion, and that conclusion is that they are in love with each other! This romance has been amazing in that it’s somehow made Tommie even more boring by association; she’s lurking just off-panel now, absorbing its dullness radiation. Anyway, now that Jack and Carol have donned the Identical Seafoamy-Blue Garments Of Wholeness, they are ready to merge into a single identity that will blot out all need for speech or interaction with other humans, so hopefully the strip will take its leave of them rather than subject us to the days or weeks it will take for them to slowly combine into a single quivering, gelatinous organism.

Spider-Man, 9/17/14

We’ve known all along that Doctor Octopus had sinister designs in mind, of course, but really: a lab in a penthouse? That seems to violate any number of good safety rules. Surely a ground-floor lab would make evacuation in case of fire much easier, while a top-floor location could result in dangerous chemicals leaking through the floor into the living room of the hapless tenants below. I’m not so much angry with Doc Ock as I am disappointed.

Mary Worth, 9/17/14

You thought you were ready for a new Mary Worth plot. But nothing can prepare you for the terrifying, heart-pounding adventure you’re about to experience. Newspaper readers everywhere, brace yourself for a very special presentation of Mary Worth: Fender Bender.

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Spider-Man, 9/26/14

When we last saw our hero, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, on this blog, he was he was swinging his way into Doc Ock’s lab. Since then he was immediately captured and subdued with nearly no struggle whatsoever, and, in today’s panel one, has glumly resigned himself to death. But wait! Remember a few weeks ago, when THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN!!! broke into Ox’s jail cell for a little interrogation? Well, it turns out that he did a bad job of fixing the bars he bent to get in, allowing this dangerous, violent criminal to escape! And now said criminal is going to solve our hero’s problems for him and save his life. So, to review: actually attempts at heroism result in failure, while victory is achieved entirely accidentally, thanks to really awful negligence. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!!!!!

The Phantom, 9/26/14

Speaking of continuity strip superheroes and negligence, I’ve been totally negligent in keeping you up to date on the current Phantom storyline! It’s been pretty boring so far, honestly, but today’s strip, in which the Ghost Who Walks vows to ignore the snake venom coursing through his veins in order to heroically plant evidence on someone, is worth pointing out.

Pluggers, 9/26/14

Pluggers are on a lot of pills, you guys. A lot of pills. They also don’t have any friends!

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Beetle Bailey, 10/1/14

I like the looks of surprise in panel two not just on Miss Buxley, but on the faces of the two passers-by at the bottom of the panel. There’s no particular reason they should be showing sudden horror at the gaping, angry Sarge-maw, but their epiphany mirroring Miss Buxley’s fits in with the dream logic of the whole strip, and by “dream logic” I mean “Jesus Christ this is a Freudian bonanza of sublimated psychosexual squick.”

Spider-Man, 10/1/14

Last week, Spider-Man battled Doc Ock the only way he could: by not battling him at all, but letting another villain he accidentally set free from jail do the battling for him. Today, he’s getting actively annoyed at this thrilling super-powered combat getting all up in his personal space while he’s trying to just relax a little.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/1/14

“The floors are cover’d in bird shit, jes’ like our house, though!”

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Sally Forth, 10/3/14

True Story: Sally Forth is the comic strip that first got me thinking seriously about comics time, the phenomenon by which characters in a long-running comic stay basically the same age, but the cultural signifiers surrounding them also stay current which implies that not only their present but their past is slowly moving forward through the space-time continuum. Because it’s hard to notice that strip-time present is changing to match real-life present, you tend to notice this most during flashback sequences, as I did when an early ’00s Sally Forth storyline about Ted and Sally meeting in college featured Ted wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt. I’d been reading the strip since I was a child, and so obviously Ted and Sally were my parents’ age, and this blew up everything I thought I knew.

Anyway, something about this particular storyline, about Sally and Alice meeting for the first time twenty years ago, has been nagging at me all week, and I finally put my finger on it: Alice is in fact sporting 1994’s hottest haircut, the Rachel, which works great for the milieu but makes the fact that her current-day character model still has the same Mid-’80s Business Lady Hair that she’s always had seem even stranger.

Spider-Man, 10/3/14

SUPERHERO: “I’m trapped! I’ve got to use my superpowers to escape!”

[SUPERHERO tries for, like, thirty seconds]

SUPERHERO: “Well, that didn’t work. Time to resign myself to death!”

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!!!!!!!!

Beetle Bailey, 10/3/14

It’s funny because you can tell the chili is too hot because it’s on fire and also Beetle is literally cringing in pain and his face-flesh is covered with horrible burns

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Apartment 3-G, 10/15/14

GUYS! Remember how Margo’s mother used to be a fiery Latina/cringe-inducing ethnic stereotype but then sometime last year she became enWASPenated and also stopped dying her hair? Well, this wasn’t a continuity error, but rather a seed planted to set up a future storyline a mere twenty months later! QUICK RECAP OF MARGO’S FAMILY BACKSTORY: her wealthy dad Martin was married to Roberta, but knocked up Gabriella the maid, and then Roberta raised Margo as her own but obviously fell into a pit of seething resentment and went crazy, trying to kill Martin before being shipped off to a private loony bin upstate. Oh yeah, and at some point before that, Martin and Gabriella got back together, sexually. Reconnecting with her former wealthy employer is bringing up her deep-seated Ethnic Shame, I guess? Really looking forward to whatever kind of wacky My Fair Lady situation she’s gotten herself into. Will Martin have to fight her sinister deracinating svengali for her love?

Spider-Man, 10/15/14

Spider-Man could’ve have made sure this dangerous criminal was put back behind bars, but the guy did help him when their interests briefly aligned, so he’ll just settle for brutally knocking him unconscious! This is actually a step up from his usual complete failure to achieve anything, but it’s still a dick move on multiple fronts.

Wizard of Id, 10/15/14

Probably the best perk of being a syndicated newspaper comic is that if you get tremendously smug about coming up with a terrible bit of pun-esque wordplay, everyone gets to know about it.

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Blondie, 10/16/14

Amphetamine variants, across a socioeconomic scale running from meth to Adderall, are often used as productivity drugs: they focus the mind and, in the short term, make it easier for you to do work, especially work you don’t particularly want to do. By rejecting his friend’s offer of a little illicit worktime pick-me-up, Dag emphasizes his commitment to decadent leisure: as with food, his interest in drugs is entirely sensual, not utilitarian.

Spider-Man, 10/16/14

Last week Doc Ock skittered off from his penthouse lair to go enjoy the work of his earthquake machine … somewhere … else? “Somewhere else” turned out to be just straight-up chilling on his couch, presumably in a different lair, while his tentacles dangle forlornly, waiting for the artificial earthquake that never comes. Is he supposed to be watching TV? I bet he’s supposed to be watching TV. Everyone in this strip is always watching TV, all the time, and if there isn’t one there when you need it, it’ll just sort of appear, conveniently.

Marvin, 10/16/14

It’s pretty impressive that, in a strip whose punchline is that Marvin’s family is in such constant terror of his poops that everyone keeps careful track of his digestive velocity, the most unsettling part is actually his smug little smile in panel three. “That’s right, my bowel movements are so vile my own grandfather refuses to deal with them! Heh heh.”

Dennis the Menace, 10/16/14

The Mitchells have done the math and figured out that they can afford to meet their legal obligations as parents without interacting emotionally with their son at all! Look at them, smiling to themselves and not even making eye contact with him. Someone just found out what true menacing really is.

Archie, 10/16/14

Based on the sad, reverent way Jughead has doffed his cap, I’m going to assume that Archie died in the ring.

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Heathcliff, 10/27/14

After a nightmarish curse left the town’s inhabitants irrevocably transformed, the damned souls are taking hesitant steps towards recognizing one another and reclaiming some part of their lost humanity.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/27/14

Just another day in the teachers’ lounge, laughing it up about the endless parade of genetic defectives that make up Westview’s children!

Crankshaft, 10/27/14

Although 10 years earlier kids in the nearby town of Centerville went on a violent, terrifying rampage when Crankshaft’s family ran out of candy, so maybe Les and his cronies are right to view the local youth with mingled contempt and disgust.

Spider-Man, 10/27/14

Despite his best efforts, Spider-Man will in fact be rescued from his primary antagonist by his secondary antagonist.

Apartment 3-G, 10/27/14

NO MARGO YOU JUST STARTED TALKING OUT LOUD THAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SAID YOU’RE SAYING YOU WANT TO DO

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Spider-Man, 11/7/14

The current Spider-Man plot is wrapping up with a delicious slab of exposition, and for me the hero of the hour is the cop in panel three, rubbing his head and looking immensely self-satisfied for no discernable reason. “So do we lock ’im up — or give ’im a medal? Eh? Eh? Moral ambiguity?”

Funky Winkerbean, 11/7/14

The Scapegoat football team is in the championship game! And Head Coach Bull Bushka is … offering a bribe to the ref? He appears to be offering a bribe to the ref.

Mark Trail, 11/7/14

OH MY GOD CHERRY HAS CLEAVAGE AND A NAVEL AND MARK HAS NIPPLES AND MUSCULAR FOREARMS WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING HERE

Say, wasn’t … wasn’t Rusty going to go on this adventure at some point? stay belowdecks, Rusty, hide your eyes, you mustn’t see

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Spider-Man, 11/20/14

Oh, man, sequels! I love a sequel! This storyline just launching in Spider-Man is itself a sequel to the storyline about filming the first Marvella that ran in this strip back in 2006. Mr. Smiley, who had a slightly less dumb beard back then, managed to make Marvella profitable with innovative filmmaking techniques like just filming fight scenes in one take with no stunt supervision, so look for more of that this time around! That storyline also ended with our hero being knocked unconscious by a butler wearing a silly hat, so I’m really looking forward to this.

Apartment 3-G, 11/20/14

How much would I pay to see Margo give the wedding planner version of the “like tears in rain” speech from Blade Runner? “I’ve … seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Drunken bridesmaids weeping on the shoulder of Orion. Centerpieces on fire, glittering in the darkness in the Main Ballroom at the Ramada Inn and Conference Center in White Plains. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears, in rain, on your wedding day. Time … to see if the bartenders have any champagne left over.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/20/14

Dennis’s neighborhood has somehow devolved into Somalia-style anarchy, and he and Joey are trying to get ahead in the warlord game by setting up sidewalk checkpoints. Pretty menacing!

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Six Chix, 11/24/14

All the turkeys are trying to get out of town this week! That’s because it’s almost Thanksgiving, and they’re justifiably terrified that they’re going to be killed and eaten.

Blondie, 11/24/14

But none of them ever imagined that, after they were killed but before they were eaten, Dagwood Bumstead might sexually fetishize their corpse.

Better Half, 11/24/14

As a financial advisor, it’s tough to keep coming up with “fun” ways to say “Welp, looks like you’re gonna die in poverty!”

Marvin, 11/24/14

“Constipated? Ha ha, it’s funny because Marvin has no problems making bowel movements! You can tell because he always smells like feces! Ha ha!”

Luann, 11/24/14

Hey, remember when Guther and Rosa decided to move to Peru for, uh, some reason? I had been thinking it was in order to do something noble but now we see that they’re just working in an extremely boring-looking call center.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/24/14

“We’ve swapped something you might actually want for something you definitely won’t!”

Mary Worth, 11/24/14

“My daughter? Oh, I definitely don’t love her. If I did, I’d have talked about her up top, when I was telling you about people I loved.”

Spider-Man, 11/24/14

Having lived in Los Angeles for nearly three months, I can assure you that panel two’s depiction of a Hollywood producer is 100% accurate.

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Spider-Man, 11/28/14

Spider-Man, a superpowered hero dedicated to protecting New York, hopes his special psychic ability to detect danger doesn’t interfere with his plans to watch television tonight!

Mary Worth, 11/28/14

I remain resolutely pro-elderotica, but I will admit there are issues in such relationships. For instance, if all the bold-italicizing in this strip is any indication, hearing loss means that old people have to shout all their innuendo at each other.

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The Phantom, 11/30/14

Give the present-day iteration of the Phantom some credit: for a superhero adventure comic, it actually tries to do a decent job of depicting post-colonial Africa, with Bangalla a kind of idealized South Africa, black-ruled but with a sizable white minority and a diverse array of indigenous ethnic groups, all living more or less in harmony. Still, the core conceit still carries a lot of uncomfortable colonial racial baggage from the strip’s 1930s origin: the hero protecting this African land is a white man — and, more to the point, the 21st in a series of white men who, despite living in Africa since the 1500s, have all apparently voyaged elsewhere to find wives, so as to continue to produce blonde-haired, blue-eyed progeny. Anyway, this coming Sunday Phantom adventure will take our hero and his kids to … Iceland! A country so homogeneously Nordic that it’s a genetic case study! Presumably Kit is just teasing his children with the prospect of adventure, when in fact they’re going to be assigned their future Norse spouses, in accordance with Phantom Law.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/30/14

Rex Morgan, M.D., became Sarah Morgan Uses Her Special Mind Powers To Become The All-Ruling God-Empress Of Earth And Destroyer Of Men so gradually that most people didn’t notice, but in retrospect this strip was seen as an important signal of the coming transition.

Spider-Man, 11/30/14

Peter ignores his wife as she engages in something that interests her, makes a clumsy request for sex, then glumly reflects that showing the bare minimum of emotional support a spouse ought to be able to expect might result in his literal death. Every time I think we’ve hit Peak Newspaper Spider-Man, I am pleasantly surprised anew.

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Spider-Man, 12/8/14

“Boo!” You’re probably saying. “This Spider-Man plot is focused on Mary Jane’s movie career, and will be full of boring insider-y film business stuff and won’t deliver the non-stop action-packed superheroic thrill ride that Newspaper Spider-Man fans crave!” Well, joke’s on you! This isn’t just some boring scene where Mary Jane takes care of a little legal paperwork; it’s a very exciting scene where Mary Jane takes care of some legal paperwork drawn up by “Foggy” Nelson, the law partner of Matt Murdock, aka Marvel Comics’ own Daredevil! Murdock, that is. Murdock is the superhero. He’s not in this strip. But his law partner is! Pretty exciting, eh? Now we can begin the movie magic. (“Move magic” will consist of an hour standing around the set while the director of photography yells conflicting orders at the grips.)

Hagar the Horrible, 12/8/14

Ha, it’s funny because Vikings were actual murderers who terrorized Europe for a century, and by “character” Hagar means “post-traumatic stress disorder.”

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Gasoline Alley, 12/9/14

YES YES YES THE BELOVED “MILDLY RUDE SALESMAN WITH A PENCIL MUSTACHE” GUY FROM THE SKEEZIX RETURNS A DVD PLAYER STORYLINE IS BACK, BABY! That’s how you know we’re in for some high-quality verbal jousts over the next three to seven weeks. Today we get some important background on this character’s motivation: his “Marx brothers” reference is a veiled description of his political orientation. He’s not a dick to his customers just for fun, but rather as part of the long political struggle of class against class that Marx described so presciently. I see big things for this guy when the revolution comes.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/9/14

After an absence from the strip that bears his name that lasted literally decades, Barney Google has made a number of trips to Hootin’ Holler over the past few years, bringing news of strange big-city mores to the isolated inhabitants there. For instance, today we learn that the horse modeling industry is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rife with horsefuckers! Look at these two creeps laughing it up at poor Spark Plug’s distress. “You don’t understand! Being a horse-model was my lifelong dream … and in one brief moment it became a nightmare.”

Spider-Man, 12/9/14

Wow, that’s a pretty rude way to talk to your film’s high-profile leading lady, Rory! You might wonder how he gets away with that kind of sass. Well, it’s simple: he’s got the only combo flattop/mullet/rat-tail in the business. You don’t fire that haircut. You just don’t.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/9/14

Having successfully convinced Rex that Sarah is the one foretold in prophecy, Rene is now talking Rex into allowing Kelly to continue on as her lackey, as long as she submits to the stringent conditions that any acolyte must accept. Rex is clearly intrigued. “Hmm, a teenage girl consecrating her body and mind to purity and swearing to lie down her own worthless life in order to protect my daughter? Tell me more!”

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Spider-Man, 12/10/14

Sequels sure can be tricky! You need to build on an original story that’s beloved enough to merit a second installment and honor what people liked about it while still pushing forward into new territory. We don’t know yet exactly how the fascinating script for Marvella 2 manages to pull this off, but since this Newspaper Spider-Man plot is in fact itself a sequel to a storyline for 2006, we can get a good sense of how you should balance the old and the new. Back then, Marvella’s nemesis was being played by an older actress instead of the director’s young ingenue daughter, and she was angry about having been beat out for the title role by Mary Jane after auditioning for it, rather than actually getting the part and then being angry because she was displaced by Mary Jane when she became available. See, totally different! Similarly, I believe that, at the climax of this story, rather than being knocked unconscious with a lead pipe by a butler, Spider-Man will be bludgeoned by, let’s say, a special effects artist, using something you might find around a movie set.

Momma, 12/10/14

We already knew that Momma’s dedication to passive-aggression is intense, but she’s really taking things to the next level by having a near life-size photo of Francis in his Boy Scout uniform hanging on the wall just to serve as a prompt for her to belittle him by bringing up his past humiliations.

Slylock Fox, 12/10/14

5) Did your Comics Curmudgeon manage to successfully resist the almost overwhelming urge to Google Image Search “bats with six-foot wingspans” because he knew the results would haunt his nightmares for weeks? Answer: Very true!

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Heathcliff, 12/22/14

The idea of Santa as an immortal being who’s been delivering Christmas presents for centuries is ridiculous, of course, but the truth behind the legend is much darker than most people can imagine. In fact, “Santa” has been a whole succession of different individuals down through the centuries. In this way “he” is kind of like the Phantom; but whereas the Phantom’s identity passes down peacefully from father to son over the generations, Santa-ness must be taken, with each new Santa defeating his predecessor in single combat to the death. And now notorious asshole and megalomaniac Heathcliff has come to violently insert himself into this ancient tradition.

Pluggers, 12/22/14

There’s been a lot of dilution of what exactly a plugger is over the years, but I refuse to accept a definition under which just being born in the three-week span from December 15 to January 5 makes you a plugger. D’ya hear me, Pluggers? This is bullshit. How about this: you’re a plugger if you’re cheap and lazy enough to get excited when it turns out your friends and loved were born around Christmas, because that means you only have to buy them one gift a year.

Spider-Man, 12/22/14

In the wake of Sony’s decision to pull The Interview from theaters after threats from (probably?) North Korea, look for a lot more deranged supervillains to get involved in the movie business. Today it’s just a question of whether a movie should get distribution or not, but soon these despotic maniacs will demand control over casting decisions as well!

Apartment 3-G, 12/22/14

I can barely maintain interest in what’s going on in Apartment 3-G these days, but it looks like Margo has managed to alienate yet another personal assistant, requiring Lu Ann to put on a pair of glasses and pretend to be “Clara” again.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/8/15

FOOLISH MORTALS! DO YOU THINK YOU CAN BIND SARAH MORGAN WITH WORDS ON PAPER? SARAH MORGAN WHO IS DIFFERENT AND BETTER THAN US, SARAH MORGAN WHO BENDS THE MINDS OF MEN AND WOMEN TO HER WILL WITHOUT ANY EFFORT? WHAT MEANING DO THESE SCRIBBLINGS HAVE WHEN SARAH’S NAME HAS ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN IN HER OWN FIERY BLOOD ON THE PAGES OF ETERNITY

Spider-Man, 1/8/15

Not sure, which is more stupid and yet wholly believable in the context of this strip: that Mary Jane would keep her cell phone on her person while filming a movie dressed in a skin-tight superhero costume, or that Spider-Man would carry his around while doing business as an actual superhero.

Heathcliff, 1/8/15

Heathcliff’s owner-lady is so strict in imposing her Victorian sensibilities on all speech-capable beings in her household that they’re forced to bowdlerize even the final, terrified pleas they squeak out just before their bloody death.

Dennis the Menace, 1/8/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Dennis the Dennis the Menace creative team thinks kids talk to each other on the phone!

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Heathcliff, 1/9/15

For a town where sanitation is so important to the local psyche that it has inspired a local simian trickster-god, Westfinster’s trash situation is actually kind of out of hand. Nobody ever seems to actually put their garbage inside bags like civilized people; instead, organic matter is just packed into metal cans and apparently left there long enough to become a more or less homogenous slurry. Today we see that this repulsive garbage-goo comes in brown and green varieties, possibly as a result of an ill-advised attempt to implement a composting system.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/9/15

Clovis’s main schtick in this strip is to be the third-string character who has a rocky relationship with his wife, but I find today’s strip particularly poignant. His marriage may be troubled, but at least his wife hasn’t strayed — and yet he actually looks distraught by this fact. Perhaps something as obvious as an affair would be what was needed to convince them to finally give up on their painful union; mere emotional incompatibility isn’t enough, as much as it’s destroying them emotionally.

Momma, 1/9/15

Today’s Momma features the usual Momma-Francis infantilization routine amped up to truly uncomfortable levels and manages to slip a fart joke in as well, but at least we can give thanks for the fact that breast-feeding was out of vogue for middle class families when Francis was a baby.

Spider-Man, 1/9/15

OK, fine, it was probably a little harsh for me to say it was stupid for Spider-Man to go around fighting crime with his cell phone on his person, since smartphones are incredibly useful objects for communication, wayfinding, and tracking down info fast. But still, the practical question remained: where would he keep his phone in his skintight costume? Well, today we learn the answer! (He keeps it right next to his balls.)

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/9/15

“Only good things have happened to me so only good things can happen to me! I’m on a nonstop rocketride to the moon, emotionally! For a little kid, I sure never have heard of what happens to characters in Greek tragedies who exhibit hubris!”

Pluggers, 1/9/15

You’re a plugger if one of your Facebook friends died more than a year ago but nobody’s bothered to tell you.

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Apartment 3-G, 1/16/15

This is kind of a delicate subject, but: I feel like there’s been a marked decline in the quality of the Apartment 3-G art over the past year or so; artist Frank Bolle will be turning 91 this year and I wonder how much longer he’ll be up for doing the strip. Today Tommie has wandered so far off-model that it seems that even the syndicate colorists have failed to recognize her and given her the wrong hair color. Honestly, the strip could use the infusion of new energy from a younger artist like the ones who took over Judge Parker and Gil Thorp in the past decade. It would’ve been particularly nice to have someone new in place in time for the steamy shower lesbian three-way Apartment 3-G fans have been waiting for literally since the day the strip launched in 1961.

Mary Worth, 1/16/15

I honestly did not think I was going to see anything in today’s comics funnier than Hanna in panel two of today’s Mary Worth, her flute at the ready and her face demonstrating her grim determination to make beautiful music with it.

Spider-Man, 1/16/15

But then I saw panel three of today’s Spider-Man, in which Peter shows his steely resolve to not have sex with his wife like he wanted but instead show up for some publicity photos for her lucrative job that pays his bills, presumably sulking visibly the entire time.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/16/15

Hey, are you wondering what Herb’s mother-in-law is doing on this fine Friday? Well, she’s just sitting in an armchair, silently contemplating her own inevitable death!

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Dick Tracy, 1/21/15

Sure, Westview is haunted by death, but death of the quiet, drawn-out, hospice-based variety. Dick and Sam are about to bring a new kind of death to town: loud, abrupt, and very, very bloody.

Mark Trail, 1/21/15

Gotta be impressed with Mark’s hair, which has gone through a boat explosion and some quality time surrounded by flaming oil slicks and has barely moved at all.

Sally Forth, 1/21/15

Little did I know, when I wished for a new Apartment 3-G artist last week, that Sally Forth already had in the works a flash-forward that’s doubling as a backdoor pilot for an Apartment 3-G reboot!

Spider-Man, 1/21/15

Peter Parker has been forced to rescue Mary Jane from an out-of-control movie marketing robot out of costume. Presumably he’s unharmed because he has, uh, spider-durability (the relative ribcage strength of a … spider?), but if he pretends to be hurt and sues the movie studio, this will turn out to be his most effective and lucrative act of heroism to date.

Wizard of Id, 1/21/15

“Boy, I sure have noticed and/or been sexually aroused by a lot of young women lately! Fortunately, I have a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip, so I’ll be able to talk about this fact in a way that won’t come across as creepy at all.”

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Spider-Man, 1/31/15

This week’s Spider-Man has involved some confusing business about Peter sauntering into the emergency room after a robot fell on him and then sauntering out again diagnosed with a cracked rib and I honestly don’t know enough about his spider-powers (the proportional powers of … a spider) to know whether rib-breaking is a thing that could happen to him, and so whether this is all genuine boring medical talk or a boring ruse to protect his boring secret identity. The fact that the fracture in the x-ray extends beyond the rib itself seems to indicate the latter? Either way, Mysterio lets the wall-crawler know who’s boss by crumpling the x-ray up and fucking it.

Gil Thorp, 1/31/15

In any other narrative context, an athlete whispering, essentially, “Please! I hurt so bad!!” to a trainer would be a cue to start a Serious Issue Story about performance-enhancing drugs of some sort. But since the person being implored is the dorky student manager who only cares about fundamentals and sweater vests and branding, probably he’ll just get some advice about dribbling or something. Gil Thorp can be a pretty disappointing comic strip most of the time, guys.

Six Chix, 1/31/15

You know, Six Chix usually manages to fly under my radar, but it’s had a banner week this week, all bloated corpses and petty grievances and other bloated corpses. And this is a pretty solid capper: a woman dressed all in black, like a burglar or a puppetteer, attempts to buy a robotic simulacrum of a loving family, only to be rebuffed in favor of her own cat, who is in turn repulsed and terrified by the android’s steely embrace.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/7/15

It’s true: one day Dennis is going to come home from school and find that his parents have gotten tired of his antics and moved out, taking only enough clothes to fill a suitcase and leaving no forwarding address. He’ll have to move out eventually too, of course, either when the food runs out or the bank forecloses, whichever comes first.

Spider-Man, 2/7/15

Spider-Man might not put that much effort into fighting crime, but if there’s one thing he always brings his A game to, it’s moronic banter. I sincerely wish this first panel could exist in animated GIF form, so that I could watch Spidey stumble around, arms flailing, for the entire time it takes him to spell out “M-I-S-T-E-R-I-O,” then mug awkwardly as he waits for the approbation for his dumb bit of wordplay that never comes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/15

Say, have you been wondering what’s been happening in Rex Morgan, M.D.? What’s been happening in Rex Morgan, M.D., has been that Rex thought he might have a little while, just a little god-damned while, where he’d get to sit quietly and do a little painting and not have to talk to anybody. But turns out he doesn’t. Turns out he never does. Fine, June, get the resumes. No, I don’t care, just get them.

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Spider-Man, 2/13/15

So it turns out that Mysterio’s mysterious powers of flight come not from the supernatural, but rather from an array of gadgets! He’s mostly been cruising around on that thing that Spidey is dangling from in panel one, which yesterday he called his “nigh-invisible sky-ski” and which Spider-Man today refers to as “see-through” despite the fact that it’s blatantly the shade of bright yellow that you paint construction equipment with specifically to make it easier to see. He’s got a back-up flying device, too, which is a smart move when your primary flying device is structured such that it would be very easy to just, you know, fall off of it. Anyway, the best thing about today’s strip is clearly panel one, in which Spider-Man taunts Mysterio about what appears to be his awful, imminent death.

Gil Thorp, 2/13/15

Over in Gil Thorp, Max Bacon™ continues his quest for Adderall. Today’s episode tickles me because he’s blatantly leaving whatever the electronic version of a paper trail is in his attempt to illegally acquire performance-enhancing drugs, bringing to mind the end of this classic scene from The Wire.

Apartment 3-G, 2/13/15

This Apartment 3-G plot is supposed to be about Margo getting her mom out of the clutches of some terrible phony psychic, but that’s all unravelling because it turns out that her grift mostly involves soaking Margo’s dad for money to buy fun things with, and what’s the harm in that, really? Game recognizes game.

Momma, 2/13/15

Francis is a notorious ladies man, but his overarching goal is to avoid work at all times, so he’s not shy about using his sweet young body to charm whoever finds him charming.

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Hi and Lois, 2/18/15

“Why are there three marks?” Hi asked, his smile tight, and fake. Trixie — well, you couldn’t expect her to know. Obviously. But Lois … well, surely Lois knew, right? Surely Lois knew that Chip had been in high school for decades, that Dot and Ditto had been locked in just-prepubescent sibling rivalry eternally, never moving to the next stage. Surely she knew Trixie wasn’t getting any bigger. None of them was ever going to change, or end, or begin anew.

Mary Worth, 2/18/15

“Why wouldn’t she react well to the news? She’s gaining me, a man who she’s never met and who’s only been romantically involved with her mother briefly, as someone who refers to himself as her father!” I hope you all appreciate what a fantastically solid Mary Worth storyline we have going right now, guys.

Spider-Man, 2/18/15

“I just wanted to grab on to this flying, rapidly spinning circular saw blOW OW OW OW OW OW OW”

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Mary Worth, 2/24/15

Ha ha, whoops, when I said that Amy couldn’t possibly also be getting married because that would be “too obvious,” I forgot that “too obvious” is Mary Worth’s bread and butter. It’s not entirely clear if Amy really is engaged to Dave, or if she’s just letting her mother think so in order to show how ridiculous it is to rush into marriage so quickly, but one thing’s for certain: Gordon does have a new sitter, and it’s that little handheld gadget he’s blissfully staring into in panel one! Gordon’s love for the soothing television screen is well-known, and now he has one he can fit into his pocket wherever he goes! He doesn’t need Hanna anymore! He doesn’t need anybody.

Spider-Man, 2/24/15

This whole Spidey-fight (the proportional fight … of a spider) has pretty blissfuly ignored the laws of physics so far, but this triumphant conclusion, in which Spider-Man saves their lives by having them plummet not into concrete but into a foot of water in a concrete-lined fountain, really takes the cake. Mysterio shooting him in the chest at point-blank range would be a fitting way to end this, although it would raise the question of why he didn’t just do that to begin with.

Six Chix, 2/24/15

Hey, sexually self-actualized she-bear, I’m … not sure this is how population explosions work? Look, if you want to shun monogamy and play the field, you be you, just don’t try to come up with some transparently dumb evo-psych sociobiological justification for it.

Dennis the Menace, 2/24/15

Dennis, unable to fully grasp that other people can truly have feelings or an inner life, sees them merely as walking meat puppets whose parts are in occasional need of repair. Menacing factor: high.

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Spider-Man, 2/27/15

Hahaha, thank you, Spider-Man, thank you for wrapping up this storyline in the most pointlessly absurd way possible. There’s nothing about this that I don’t adore. I love that the potential dramatic purpose of Mysterio’s double-masking is undercut by the strip revealing the truth after only one panel, and I sincerely hope the reasons behind it are never discussed or even mentioned. I love the fact that the “Dash” Dashell mask is presumably fixed in that glum expression. I love that he’s got glasses perched on top of the mask, and that those glasses apparently have transition lenses. I love the weird grimace Beck is making as the mask comes off, which is actually the sort of face you’d make if you were wearing a fishbowl full of water over a latex mask. I love the fact that all this time we’ve been set up to think that Rory McCormick, the douchey special effects guy, is Mysterio, but it turns out to be some other dude we’ve never even heard of before this point. The only way I could possibly be happier would be if Spidey pulled off the Quentin Beck mask only to discover McCormick’s face underneath.

Gil Thorp, 2/27/15

Basketball manager/secret coaching prodigy Bobby Howley was gently admonished by Gil at the beginning of this storyline for acting more like a coach than a manager, and since then Gil and Coach Kaz and Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp have appeared not at all, while Bobby has dished out basketball and/or pharmaceutical advice to boys and girls alike. Today, however, we see the limits of his keen mind: while he may see the basketball court as an easily solved equation, clearly that triangular shape of a piece of pizza has got him in over his head. “Well, I can easily fit this end of this slice into my mouth, so I can just keep chewing my way all the way to the crust in one go … WAIT NO TOO WIDE ABORT ABORT ABORT”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/27/15

June is having a hard time figuring out how not to pay attention to Sarah, and Rex is happy to help! “You’ve been busy, but I haven’t, but I still have no idea what she’s doing! Say, don’t we have somewhere to be? Somewhere that doesn’t involve Sarah at all?”

Heathcliff, 2/27/15

It’s funny because the fish feels a twinge of terror because Heathcliff is openly declaring his intention to kill and eat him.

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Phantom, 3/3/15

How much of our day-to-day life is driven by conscious decision-making based on the sum of our life history, and how much by instinct? That is the question the current Phantom amnesiac storyline asks. The Phantom already has assumed many of his old Phantom-habits — crime fighting, journaling — and now he takes on one of the most important: the urge to reproduce himself! Didn’t realize how much the quest for a suitable mate was part of the Phantom mythos, did you? How many of those volumes in the Skull Cave are just full of drawings of various ladies, surrounded by little hearts and “MRS. THE PHANTOM” and “GOOD BREEDING STOCK” written over and over again?

Hey, remember when Chatu kidnapped the Phantom’s wife but let the Phantom believe she was dead, and then the Phantom got all flirty with sexy anti-pirate high seas vigilante Captain Savarna? This strip finds a lot of contrived ways to set up doomed love stories, is what I’m saying.

Spider-Man, 3/3/15

Ha ha, whoops, looks like Spider-Man’s secret identity has been revealed, revealed by some jerk with a bowl cut who used extremely basic observations of Spider-Man’s day-to-day routine to figure it out, in a way that really anyone who cared probably could’ve years ago. How’s our hero going to get out of this one? Maybe everyone is so distracted by the fact (suddenly very obvious in panel three) that Mysterio’s costume leaves nothing to the imagination that they haven’t been listening to anything he’s said for a while now.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/3/15

A corny play on words? That’s not a well-written comic strip punchline. A corny play on words, followed by another character acknowledging how corny that play on words is, followed by some depressing talk that trails off with an ellipsis? That’s a well-written comic strip punchline!

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/4/15

Here’s a confession: despite my boldly assuming the title “the Comics Curmudgeon” back in 2004, I got into this gig entirely from reading newspaper comics and haven’t read the much more popular genre of comic books with any regularity since I was about 10 or so. Nevertheless, I feel like I’ve absorbed a certain amount of information about the business by cultural osmosis, and thus I feel confident in saying that it’s completely believable that some comics publisher would want to take a zany character from the ’60s or ’70s called “The Amazing Mister Sponge” and do a “dark,” “gritty,” “edgy,” “relevant” reboot of him, with the hope of convincing a studio to turn it into a murky movie where everyone is sad all the time. I draw the line at Doctor Centipede, though. You don’t get to call yourself “Doctor Centipede” unless you’re actually a freakish being with dozens of legs protruding from your multiple body segments (and also have either a medical degree or a PhD in one of the hard sciences). Just being a hundred times smarter and stronger than usual? Not okay. The “pede” stands for foot, buddy. How much of this guy’s time is spent snippily justifying his nom de supervillainy? “No, see, the hundred limbs in this conceit are metaphors for the power I wield thanks to my enhanced str–” [is absorbed by The Amazing Mister Sponge]

Spider-Man, 3/4/15

In even dumber superhero news, Spider-Man has been saved by a timely faked Skype call! That’s the best way to get a hold of your wife on a movie set, straight-up Skype-calling some random laptop that you hope is vaguely nearby, probably. You certainly wouldn’t want to call her on, say, the cell phone she’s holding in panel three. While this cheap trick obviously hasn’t fooled Mysterio, it will probably fool everyone else, because they’re morons, which I kind of love. Everyone will just be all like, “Welp, I guess we’ll never know who Spider-Man really is” and Mysterio will shout “You fools! I just told you! It’s Peter Parker!” and everyone will say “Ha ha, but there was a Skype call!” I also love that even in his entirely justified rage, Mysterio stays on-brand and keeps referring to himself in the third person.

Mary Worth, 3/4/15

“Kids adapt and trust the flow of life more than grown-ups do! Why, the thought of having to baby-sit on short notice makes me fly into a rage, but Gordon is totally fine with suddenly having two new men in his life that he’s been ordered to address as ‘dad’ and ‘granddad!'”

Judge Parker, 3/4/15

Were you worried that this strip wasn’t spending enough time on Neddy Spencer’s burgeoning sexuality and what older, volatile men think of her? Well, the next six to eight uncomfortable weeks are for you, my friend!

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Dennis the Menace, 3/5/15

As a Ginger-American, I spend a lot of time wishing for more positive depictions of my people in the media. Sure, we have the Weasely family, but that’s about it. Thus, I was actively angered when I saw that today’s Dennis the Menace indulged in the sad, stereotypical depiction of redheads as angry, sullen drunks. You know what the real menace is, Dennis? Intolerance.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/5/15

It’s not so much that Hagar doesn’t like tea as he doesn’t respect the property rights of settled agricultural folk who live in castles, Eddie. For now, you’re part of his war-band, and so he considers you a friend and ally. But as soon as you form a marriage-tie to the ruling class of settled, civilized Europe, you become an enemy to any self-respecting Viking who dreams only of bringing plunder back to his family and retainers on the continent’s northern fringes. Inviting Hagar in to your inherited home will mean signing your own death warrant.

Shoe, 3/5/15

We all love the patented Shoe Goggle Eyes Of Horror, of course, but almost as charming are their complement, the patented Shoe Heavy Lids Of Despair. They’re particularly grim to see on the face of ostensible child Skyler, whose youthful love of life has long been crushed under the unshakeable compulsion to answer straightforward questions in school with terrible, unfunny wordplay. “His friends wanted to make sure he got the point,” Skyler says, hating himself. “Eh? Eh? Get it? Because he was stabbed to death?”

Spider-Man, 3/5/15

I was kind of meh on this storyline for a while, but everything that’s happened after Mysterio was captured has been pure comedy gold. Today, the fiend manages to break free from captivity and … runs six feet to attempt to make a dumb point about Spider-Man’s secret identity! Then he stands around like a jerk while the cop trots over to arrest him again!

Family Circus, 3/5/15

“Yeah, I gazed at the wonder of creation, saw otherworldly sights that have moved the hearts of men for centuries. Turns out the moon’s pretty lame! What’s on TV?”

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Mary Worth, 3/11/15

The Hanna-Sean-Amy-Gordon storyline (haha, just kidding, Gordon was not actually involved in any meaningful way) is finally over, though we can’t say for sure until someone digs it up and puts a stake through its sinister heart. But until then, let’s enjoy the tale of the first time Mary and Jeff met! This might be an enjoyable story to see in flashback, so naturally we’re watching the two of them exposition it to each other over fish- and vegetable-disks at the Bum Boat. I’m a big fan of Mary’s use of the phrase “former bigwig” here. “Obviously I could tell you were a nobody, Jeff, but how was I supposed to know that you used to be somebody? I didn’t see a tag, and you weren’t dressed the part, and you certainly don’t exude confidence or competence of any sort!”

Heathcliff, 3/11/15

The less said about this cartoon, which seems like one of the saddest attempts at combining the syndicated comics character Heathcliff with vaguely whimsical pop-cultural tropes to date, the better, but it does lead me to one of my current favorite obsessions, namely looking up dumb URLs to see if they’re available to purchase. Up until fairly recently, URLs either ended with a two-letter country code, like .ca or .uk, or a fairly limited set of generic codes, like .com, .org, or .gov. Then a few years back some new, much dumber top-level endings were introduced, like .biz and .info, and lately there’s just been a flood of truly moronic ones, one of which is .ninja. This is meant to appeal to serious scholars of the semi-legendary shinobi of Japan’s turbulent Sengoku period the sort of dips who think changing their job title from “web marketing assistant” to “social media ninja” makes them sound cool, but it’s worth noting that the domain name bait.ninja is available for only $14.99 a year, and while I’m not going to buy it, if somebody else wanted to and have it just redirect to this post, I certainly wouldn’t object. Also, and I’m just putting this out there, when you look to see if a domain name is available you get auto-generated suggestions of similar domains you might be interested in, and this is what I got when I checked on bait.ninja:

Spider-Man, 3/11/15

Apparently most of the incidents in this plot had been set up by Peter and Mary Jane to trick Mysterio? Who they didn’t even really know was involved for a lot of it, I don’t think? Nice try at tricking us into thinking these people are smart or capable of forethought, Newspaper Spider-Man.

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Spider-Man, 3/21/15

“Oh no! One of my major super-powers can be easily defeated by … a sharp thing! Probably should’ve seen this coming?”

Apartment 3-G, 3/21/15

“And by ‘practically,’ I mean literally. He runs this place! He’s the manager of the hotel! ‘Run the hotel’ is his job description!”

Dennis the Menace, 3/21/15

“I’m talking about Jesus, of course. He’s boring as shit! I just think about those damn beatitudes for a minute and it’s light’s out!”

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Mary Worth, 3/27/15

Hey, guys, remember back in 2009, when Mark and Cherry Trail’s friend Patty kept a deer in her house and it infuriated her violent, jealous husband who slapped her around for it (not pictured) and shot the deer, but then the deer came back for revenge and injured him and they decided to let bygones be bygones and adopt a baby? This was egregious enough to generate actual angry letters to King Features, who said that they “should have done a better job of researching the facts about domestic violence” and “We can only apologize sincerely to the readers of Mark Trail for this oversight and endeavor to be more vigilant in the future.” So I’m hoping this vigilance will result in some negative reprecussions for Adam, whose decision to track down Terry has caused her to burst into tears and run away in panic and that’s before she finds out he’s literally moved into her apartment building? Rather than having Mary gently guide to two of them to the altar? Wait, never mind, this is Mary Worth, we know what they do to stalkers here.

Mark Trail, 3/27/15

In new-look Mark Trail, the only violence will be part of the eternal war of man against bug. Bankrupted by beetles! How humiliating that must be for you, Mark’s Friend With Hair That’s Really Aggressively Retreating At The Temples!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/27/15

Meanwhile, in Rex Morgan, M.D., we find out that anyone who dares to inconvenience Sarah Morgan or her entourage in any way gets a MEATY FIST IN THE THROAT. Who exactly are we supposed to be rooting for here again? I mean, in theory I’m against punching as an end game for economic disputes, but the thuggish enforcer of a longtime mob family does make some pretty good points about loyalty and the nature of patron-client relationships here.

Spider-Man, 3/27/15

Congratulations, Newspaper Spider-Man Comic Strip! You started a Wolverine storyline a full two months after the release of Wolverine: Origins, and an Avengers storyline four months before the release of the first Avengers movie, but now you’re introducing a storyline featuring beloved Avengers character Black Widow a mere five weeks before the release of the new Avengers movie! This is a decent example of cross-platform marketing for Marvel franchises! Spider-Man the character is still hilariously incompetent, of course, but Spider-Man the comic strip is kind of doing its job well for once.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/15

I DID IT EVERYONE

I SUCCESSFULLY PREDICTED THE ENDING OF THIS STORYLINE

WHO ELSE COULD’VE — oh, literally everybody? Oh, OK. Damn it, now I’m mostly just bummed that we didn’t get to see the no doubt hilariously inept Max-Bobby fisticuffs.

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Dennis the Menace, 4/9/15

“Hey, Mr. Wilson, you’re a hoarder! A sad old hoarder! You think you can fill the empty hole inside you by getting more stuff, but you can’t and you never will!” Menacing level: extremely high.

Heathcliff, 4/9/15

I’m pretty sure all the tough guys out there with “THUG LIFE” tattooed across their knuckles or shoulders or whatever would be horrified if they found out that Garfield had gotten the phrase inked onto his fuzzy orange belly. But Heathcliff? Heathcliff’s a tougher breed, and is also less ubiquitous and commercial. I’m going to choose to believe that, after the initial shock, there would be grudging respect for this cartoon within the thug life tattoo community.

Spider-Man, 4/9/15

Spider-Man has, as is its wont, devolved from a brief bout of superheroic action into petty bickering. At least the bickering is over vaguely interesting philosophical questions this time around! If “superhero”/”ordinary human” is a spectrum and not a binary, how can we truly distinguish between “human altered by radioactive spider bite”, “highly trained assassin/spy who wears a distinctive skin-tight outfit”, and “actress portraying a fake superhero in a movie who took her costume home and was wearing it in public for vaguely erotic marital cosplay purposes”? Do Marvel Comics characters know about DC Comics characters like Superman, and if so do they know them as real or fictional? Are Spider-Man’s pleas for Mary Jane to help prop up his brand his most pathetic whine yet?

Beetle Bailey, 4/9/15

Oh man, I guess we’re gonna get uncomfortable glimpses into the inner sexual life of Beetle Bailey characters all week! “Can you make your computer have sex with me?” Private Blips asks, grinning girlishly. “I want to have sex with a computer!”

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Curtis, 4/10/15

Oh, give me a break, Greg. Facebook is for people who have a pathetic, insatiable hunger for the attention of friends, relatives, acquaintances, and people they met at a party once three years ago to feel like they matter. People who have a pathetic, insatiable hunger for the attention of strangers use Twitter. In unrelated news, did you guys know you can follow me on Twitter? I make tons of funny jokes there and sometimes post pictures of my cat! Follow me! Love me! I need this!

Gil Thorp, 4/10/15

Hey guys, it’s base/softball season in Gil Thorp! Trust me: you don’t want to know why they call Addison Radley “Boo.” It’s a story that starts twenty years ago … on a night, and a softball diamond, just like this one, when promising pitcher Addison Radley died in a tragic accident. Ever since then, her shade has haunted the field, pitching balls at superhuman speeds. You see, they call her “Boo” because, even though she doesn’t know it, she’s … a ghost. ADDISON RADLEY: TEENAGE GHOST PITCHER: SUNDAYS THIS FALL ON THE CW.

No, wait, they call her that after the character Boo Radley from the beloved classic To Kill A Mockingbird? Huh. Not sure why we wouldn’t want to know that, unless we’re trying to avoid falling afoul of Harper Lee’s lawyers.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/10/15

Oh my God, Eula is a reverse chrononaut, using dark magic or forbidden science to travel backwards along her own timeline! And she’s on the verge of revealing her causality violation to a time-standard individual! Chances of a class-three temporal paradox are up to 85 percent, we need an intervention from the Time Corps, stat.

Marvin, 4/10/15

This is your occasional reminder that, after decades of doing jokes about babies pissing and shitting, Marvin introduced some dog characters so it could do jokes about dogs pissing and shitting. I’m not sure which would be worse: if “go potty” were a euphemism imposed by the syndicate in a desperate attempt to impose some kind of sanity, or if that’s how the joke was originally written, too make it “cute.”

Spider-Man, 4/10/15

My number one biggest laugh in the comics pages today came from seeing Spidey wordlessly peacing out in the first panel of today’s strip. “Welp, I’ve put Mary Jane under the protection of the Black Widow, and probably nothing can go wrong! My fellow superhero certainly isn’t going to, say, push her off a building, that’s for sure. Later, everybody!”

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Hi everybody, I am back! Thanks to Uncle Lumpy for his fine fill-in work! And thanks to all of you who participated in the spring fundraiser to help keep the lights on around here! You’ll be getting personal thank-yous in the next few days, plus links to a fancy-schmancy Google Forms questionnaire that will make it hopefully easier for me to get rewards out in a timely/organized fashion. BUT FIRST: BACK TO THE COMICS!

Apartment 3-G, 4/29/15

Hey, guess who else is back? Gabriella’s mother, apparently! Gabriella, your mother isn’t sick any longer — she’s a foul, undead abomination, shuffling from the graveyard towards the still-living family that her rotted brain just barely remembers, moaning with a hunger that can never be sated. It’s the best news of all!

Speaking of the undead continuity strips: Uncle Lumpy tends to pay Newspaper Spider-Man exactly as much attention as he deserves (none), but I can’t look away from it, and I feel compelled to share with you another great example of Newspaper Spider-Man’s Spider-Powers Being Real Crappy, from last week:

Panel from Spider-Man, 4/22/15

Oh, Spider-Man, your spider-sense is literally of no use to you in situations where more than one person is around! It’s a good thing people generally dislike you and try to avoid you!

Anyway, after a little light breaking and entering and security-guard-webbing, we arrive at today’s strip:

Spider-Man, 4/29/15

Haha, the potential for super-heroic combat has quickly withered away, and now we’re just left with Spider-Man arguing with the pajama-clad heir to an industrialist’s fortune about the mental health professionals he’s consulting. I love how quickly this strip finds its level in every plot!

Hagar the Horrible, 4/29/15

I’ve often wondered when exactly the action in Hagar the Horrible takes place vis-à-vis the conversion of the Norse from paganism to Christianity. Well, fun fact: when the Vikings became Christian, they started burying their dead instead of cremating them. So, does today’s installment definitively place this strip in the age of Norse paganism? Not necessarily: perhaps Attila, still loyal to a polytheistic pantheon, is taunting Hagar, whom he knows has converted to the faith of the “civilized” world and, by implication, has gone soft, by sending him an object to remind him of his pagan warrior past. Quite a sick barbarian-on-barbarian burn, eh? I mean yes, the pagan Huns didn’t practice cremation themselves. Also, Attila lived a solid four centuries before the Viking Age. Look, just let me have this, OK?

Dennis the Menace, 4/29/15

Whining to the neighbors and asking them to call for help because you got stuck up a tree? Not menacing. Making your neighbors, who probably hold you in justified contempt for your irritating antics, question their own moral worth as you force them to confront the fact that, in their heart of hearts, they value the life and safety of an animal over that of a little boy? Extremely menacing.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/29/15

Herb’s expression of evil plotting as he contemplates an extremely minor transgression against conventional morality is definitely the funniest thing in the comics today. “I’m pretty bad at golf … but based on this scorecard, the world will think I’m only mediocre at golf! None will be the wiser! All will tremble before me! MOO HA HA HA HA HA HA HA”

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Marvin,5/6/15

We live in a world where everyone is eager to #engage with #brands, but it can be difficult to tell if the resulting #conversation is #authentic. For instance: this week, the syndicated comic strip Marvin has been featuring its own versions of the lovable Minion characters from the successful Despicable Me franchise. In order to find out if this represents true #engagement or just paid-for corporate #synergy, we need to do a little sleuthing!

• Marvin is syndicated by King Features, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which is privately held by a trust created by William Randolph Hearst himself.
• Despicable Me and its sequels and spinoffs (including Minions, headed to theaters on July 10!), is distributed by Universal Pictures, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, which is in turn a subsidiary of the publicly traded Comcast Corporation.

Now, although the Hearst Television subsidiary does own several local NBC affiliates and has some joint television production ventures with NBCUniversal Television Distribution, the two parent companies are not significantly entangled, and so it seems unlikely that this week’s Marvin strips represent corporate-directed buzz-building. Thus, we can enjoy them for what they are: just some wacky jokes using someone else’s characters to make the point that Marvin is a huge dick.

Spider-Man, 5/6/15

“Why is nothing ever easy?” The cry … of a hero!

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Spider-Man, 5/7/15

Oh hey remember how MJ mysteriously wasn’t in the hotel where Spider-Man had dropped her off, which meant she could’ve been in mortal danger? Ha ha, turns out nope, which Spidey could’ve very easily determined by using the tracer he put on her clothes, rather than going through all the rigamarole with the hotel clerk. All he has to do now is not startle his wife into thinking he’s some kind of scary pervert! [Panel three: Spider-Man 100% fails at not startling his wife into thinking he’s some kind of scary pervert.]

Marvin, 5/7/15

You know the only thing lazier than setting up a speech or joke or any creative work with a dictionary definition? Setting up a week’s worth of jokes with the exact same dictionary definition. Still, kudos to Marvin for not breaking out the poop joke variation on this thing until Thursday!

Herb and Jamaal, 5/7/15

Jamaal, he’s literally clenching his fists and smiling cruelly and bellowing “power.” I’m pretty sure which direction he’s planning on going with it.

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Spider-Man, 5/13/15

Aww, Spider-Man’s head is hurting because he has to do some fancy brain-thinking, which isn’t his strong suit! If only he could just solve this problem via super-powered heroics, something else he’s not particularly good at. I like the fact that his current theory about the Hobgoblin hinges on the idea that everyone else is just as incapable of not blurting out whatever transient thoughts run through their minds as he is.

Heathcliff, 5/13/15

Sure, Heathcliff has a steady girlfriend, but his sexuality is wild and cannot be tamed. Perhaps, like many couples, Heathcliff and Sonia have an “arrangement,” a negotiated agreement whereby one or both of them can have sexual liaisons outside the relationship under certain defined circumstances. Like if an owl comes onto Heathcliff, for instance. If an owl comes onto Heathcliff, Heathcliff is 100% going to fuck that owl.

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Spider-Man, 5/15/15

In a world where superheroes are real, would superhero-themed movies and comics be as popular as they are in our sadly superhero-free world? I’m sure this theme has been explored numerous times in various comic series (the subplot in Watchmen involving the popularity of pirate-themed comic books in a world full of costumed vigilantes to mind), but in Newspaper Spider-Man, it seems that superhero films are small but profitable direct-to-DVD flicks rather than billion-dollar tentpoles that studios build their release calendar around. The fact that superheroes themselves work in said films as stuntpersons is an interesting twist, and a telling statement on the economics of crime-fighting. At least Mary Jane actually has a stunt double this time around; remember, in the first Marvella, they shot a fight scene by just having her and her main antagonist actually beat the crap out of each other in a single, unmic’d take.

Beetle Bailey, 5/15/15

This fairly shocking image of a heap of mangled corpses of enlisted men at the bottom of a ravine, sent there by the careless mistake of a feckless officer, is a brutal indictment of the way the safe, insulated ruling classes worldwide use the bodies of the poor to advance their own inter — wait, what’s that? This is Beetle Bailey? Never mind, that can’t be what’s happening here. Ha ha, it’s funny because Lt. Fuzz is bad at giving orders!

Six Chix, 5/15/15

Thanks for the warning, lady, but just look at the tiny, tiny leggings your elder is about to try on. She was dancing at Studio 54 in skintight pants when you were still in diapers, so don’t you complain to her about fashion!

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Spider-Man, 5/27/15

Oh, look, Spider-Man is literally snooping on his former best friend’s confidential psychotherapy session, listening in as Harry weepingly describes his grief over his father, whom Spider-Man killed. And what’s going through Spidey’s head in this fraught emotional moment? “You know who was great as Batman? Michael Keaton! Clooney and Kilmer were jokes, of course, but I frankly think, despite all the hype, that Christian Bale was overrated in the role as well.”

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because the hair on the back of General Halftrack’s head looks like a butt! Also, the face on the front of his head shows us a look of deep despair as he realizes that he’s entirely superfluous, and the institution to which he’s dedicated his entire life has no use for him anymore!

Mark Trail, 5/27/15

“Rusty sure is going to be excited when he sees these two little beavers! Hey … those ducks give me an idea … I’ll get Rusty excited about these little beavers, then make him watch as I set them free in the lake, ensuring that he’ll never see them again! The ducks gave me the idea because everyone knows ducks are assholes.”

Herb and Jamaal, 5/27/15

“Heh, my wife may have a serious problem with compulsive shopping! Am I going to say anything about it? No. Am I going to smile smugly while I silently engage in wordplay? You’d better believe it!”

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Spider-Man, 6/5/15

As entertainment becomes more and more dominated by reboots and sequels of well-known franchises, moviemakers are encountering a real dilemma: is it worthwhile to spend significant portions of the first movie of a rebooted continuity covering the protagonist’s origin story? Can we assume that pretty much everyone already knows about the radioactive spider, great power great responsibility, Bonesaw is ready, etc., and just skip to the superheroics? Or are there still newbies out there who would end up baffled and alienated by this approach? Today’s Newspaper Spider-Man proposes a radical solution to this problem: simply start each new series with the main character explaining his background story to a Freudian analyst. Problem solved! Storytelling problem solved, I should say; Spider-Man’s deep and crippling emotional problems certainly aren’t going to be resolved in just one session.

Slylock Fox, 6/5/15

When this puzzle appeared in a Sunday strip in 2009, I mostly saw it is a convoluted trick by Grandpa to make his grandkids feel like jerks for not remembering his birthday. But now that we get a closer look at him — his stubble, his wild eyes — I’m getting a different vibe. A crazier vibe. A “last year was 72 and this year is 74 and you add the digits and you get 20 which is what the Illuminati invoke as a ‘triangular’ number” vibe.

Pluggers, 6/5/15

Nice job, colorists: textual clues clearly indicate that those are supposed to be white stars on a blue background, the better to make American flag footwear for the Fourth, but by making them red you’ve turned our plugger child into a promoter of Godless Communism.

Apartment 3-G, 6/5/15

I know there are only two kinds of background in Apartment 3-G anymore — “dowdy mid-century apartment interior” and “mid-century New York City streetscape” — but a narration box in Wednesday’s strip said that Lu Ann and Mike’s gross flirting was happening “at the hotel.” But now suddenly there’s a knock on … some door? And Tommie’s arrived? And she’s keeping busy? And the background is different? WHERE IS EVERYONE WHAT’S GOING ON WHAT IS HAPPENING HELLLPPPP

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Spider-Man, 6/11/15

I’ve been watching the new Daredevil TV show on Netflix, which I enjoy, despite the fact that Vincent D’Onofrio works to bring out Kingpin’s human side instead of going into full-on “Faster! Work faster!” mode. One thing I find mildly irritating is how coy the dialogue is about who these people are, though: they never actually call Kingpin by that name, and, even though the show takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they only refer to other superheroes obliquely. At one point a character says “maybe if I had an iron suit or a magic hammer…”; how the actor resisted winking hammily at the camera at that point is beyond me. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying that I absolutely love this name-dropping cabbie and I hope he gets his own MCU spin-off series where he just blabs about superheroes and supervillains he’s had in his cab to non-super passengers displaying varying levels of disinterest. “Dr. Doom? They call him a menace to humanity, but in my experience he’s nice guy, good tipper. Doesn’t like take the Deegan — always thinks he knows a shortcut, which never quite works out, but hey, if you’re paying, you’re the boss, is my attitude.”

The Phantom, 6/11/15

One of the slow-boiling plots in the Phantom involves the fact being the Phantom means siring a new Phantom every generation, but the current model managed to actually father twins, and also we live in the 21st century where women can be superheroes, so which of the kids is going to be the next Phantom? This could be the rationale for the Ghost Who Parents Remotely “accidentally” leaving his phone on while he takes care of business, as soon he’ll figure out if either of them is comfortable enough with a little mild extrajudicial torture to follow in his footsteps.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/21/15

[briefly turns monitor upside down] Oh, the toad did it, did he, the short toad, because the pictures were taken close to the ground and only the toad is close to the ground … oh but wait, you know who else is close to the ground? Why, Max Mouse is, Max who magically “solved” this “crime,” who was able to find the camera so quickly, much to the swooning delight of his little mouse girlfriend. The toad stares ahead in shock, knowing that his innocence will be no defense against Slylock’s pull with the authorities; the bear glowers, seething at Slylock’s ability to use the punishing authority of the state to impress his girlfriend and fulfill his whims.

Dennis the Menace, 6/21/15

Dennis doesn’t appear to be adding any value to this chain of transactions by, say, managing the cheap labor he found, so I’m going to go ahead and deem him a labor arbitrageur and classify him as an economic menace.

Spider-Man, 6/21/15

Stan Lee is one of the co-creators of the Black Widow character, according to Wikipedia, and here he is apparently very interested in having sex with her! This is probably more revealing about the comics creative process than anyone involved really intended.

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Slylock Fox, 7/6/15

Are we supposed to assume that our criminal dog, fleeing Slylock and his goons, got into this room one step ahead of the law? How did that work, exactly? He leaps into the unoccupied bed, starts feverishly wrapping bandages around his face, and growls to the actual patient, “You don’t say nothin’, see?” Or maybe it’s much more horrible: maybe he’s subjected the other dog to an involuntary Face/Off-style surgery, the better to escape justice. His victim is in a morphine haze, but the criminal refused painkillers; though he’s in agony, he knew he’d have to be sharp in case the cops showed up. Either way, the real tragedy is that the real patient didn’t receive a fruit basket.

Spider-Man, 7/6/15

This is a good question, because let’s be frank: even when he has his whole life ahead of him, caring about stuff isn’t Peter Parker’s strong suit.

Archie, 7/6/15

The way Veronica stares directly at the viewer in the final panel, inviting us into her world of gossip, is profoundly unsettling. “Do you miss the good old days? Sign up for an account on Gosspr, my new social app for gossip and rumors, and feel free to share what you know or have heard about your closest friends! #jointhecoversation”

Momma, 7/6/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Francis and Marylou are slowly poisoning their mother!

Pluggers, 7/6/15

Pluggers have found that they hardest part of living is the seemingly endless slog through a meaningless existence that we have to endure until we finally feel the sweet embrace of death.

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Spider-Man, 7/11/15

The usual marital dynamic in Spider-Man involves Peter being unreasonably and dickishly jealous about MJ’s financial success and/or interactions with other dudes, so it’s been refreshing (?) this time around to have the dynamic reversed and MJ jealous of the Black Widow. But now the two women have had a heart-to-heart, and the Black Widow revealed that she knew Spider-Man’s secret identity — and marital status — all along! This will make the coming conflagration, in which a helpless, spread-eagled, humiliated, and conspicuously unmasked Spider-Man slams into the movie set and explodes, all the more hilarious.

Heathcliff, 7/11/15

GOD DAMN IT HEATHCLIFF DOESN’T RIDE A MOTORCYCLE

HE ALSO DOESN’T GO TO CHURCH

AND THOSE EARS BUILT INTO HIS HELMET PROBABLY MAKE IT LESS SAFE

AND THE WHOLE THING LOOKS MORE LIKE A SPACESUIT THAN MOTORCYCLE SAFETY GEAR

GOD DAMN IT HEATHCLIFF

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Mark Trail, 7/14/15

Look upon panel three, O Mark Trail readers, for here is a chunk of exposition of which you will not see the amazing like again for months, if not years. “Good thinking, Mark,” says the professional wordsmith, “I am aware that Doc is a veterinarian!” There are two potential explanations for this that make the slightest sliver of sense: either Mark goes into Doc’s veterinary bona fides whenever he brings him up in conversation, and Bill is cutting him off so he doesn’t have to listen to 20 minutes of blah blah about Doc’s MCAT scores and how he settled on the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, again; or Bill made an embarrassing error on this topic earlier and is covering up for it. “Ha ha, yes, of course I am aware that Doc is a veterinarian! 100% aware of that fact. And someone who knew that definitely wouldn’t have sent Doc a bunch of emails trying to convince him to prescribe Adderall, would he? Definitely not!”

Spider-Man, 7/14/15

A quick glance at Spidey’s awkward position atop this bat-glider (side note: should Batman sue Hobgoblin for appropriation of the bat- prefix?) shows that it’s not his feet that he needs to squeeze closer together, but his thighs and calves, which is pretty obviously what he’s doing in panel two. Not sure why he doesn’t say this; maybe the syndicate is trying to desperately draw attention away from the blatant humping going on here? Also, I’m not an engineer or anything, but I’m thinking that damaging the exhaust pipe of this contraption won’t so much slow it down as give the rocket’s output nowhere to go and possibly cause the whole thing to explode, which may not be the best outcome for our hero, but hey, let’s watch this play out.

Heathcliff, 7/14/15

“And in unrelated news, there’s a lot of hair on my cat’s chin! But let’s go back to talking about why your husband isn’t interested in you sexually and never has been.”

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Apartment 3-G, 8/20/15

Welp, looks like I was right! Eric is indeed Margo’s long-thought-dead almost fiance. This is a potentially fascinating plot point from 2009-era Apartment 3-G, which is too bad because this is 2015-era Apartment 3-G so it’ll just lie there like a dead fish and go nowhere. Probably there won’t be any details revealed! Why did Tim grieve for Margo? Did he live in the avalanche but everyone else in the world died? It would explain a lot about the ghostly, dream-like quality of life in this strip.

Mary Worth, 8/20/15

Mary Worth, though! Mary Worth is a strip that continues to fire on all cylinders, awesome as ever. Behold, Toby sullenly dumping milk onto a plate full of Splak® brand breakfast slurry! Gasp as Ian appears to absent-mindedly wrench the refrigerator door from its hinges with the strength of his lowland gorilla kin! Ahhhhh yeah, that’s the stuff.

Spider-Man, 8/20/15

This dialogue could be construed as light-hearted teasing but, the facial expressions make it clear that this is some high-level spider-dickery going on right now. “I’m disappointed about how foolish you were to be jealous of the Black Widow. Your failure to trust me totally absolves me retroactively of any guilt I should feel over all the times I had sex with her!”

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Spider-Man, 8/23/15

I have no idea what the Sub-Mariner’s deal is but I sincerely hope that he has Super Irritating Couple Banter Detecting Sonar and that the “outrage” to which he refers is just the previous panels in this strip. If the total elimination of the land dwellers is the price to pay to end this intra-Parker faux jealousy gamesmanship, then so be it.

Judge Parker, 8/23/15

Remember, Speedy is the guy Neddy browbeat into selling her shipping containers below cost by accusing him of hating America. I’m sure “love” is exactly the emotion he feels for her.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/23/15

Cayla is trying to help Les remember his half-assed promise to take her to Paris! It’s not going to work.

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Beetle Bailey, 8/24/15

Way back in the early days of this blog, I did lots of jokes about Beetle and Sarge being secret lovers, then I got bored with it after a while and stopped, but hey, let’s check up on where these two crazy kids are at, now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been repealed! Uh, it seems that Beetle has no interest in having any kind of actual relationship and just wants Sarge to come over to the barracks, for sex. Stop complaining and enjoy it, Sarge!

Blondie, 8/24/15

“Forgotten … overlooked … ignored … I also have a job … and that job involves cooking … maybe give me a break once in a while … for Christ’s sake … I mean you know how a stove works, right …”

Spider-Man, 8/24/15

Oh no! Peter Parker is going to have to go on a tropical vacation with his beautiful wife! All because he made a “joke” that no reasonable person would interpret as such!

Dennis the Menace, 8/24/15

This is one of the more menacing conversations with God I’ve seen lately. “Yeah, now we see each other as in a mirror dimly. When completeness comes, what is in part disappears. Till then, though, things down here are gonna get a little crazy.”

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Dick Tracy, 8/27/15

Under the previous Dick Tracy creative team, every plot ended with the villain dispatched in some completely nightmarish and violent way. They were burned to death, blown up, torn to pieces by dogs, had their minds erased by their own diabolical machines, plummeted into a smokestack, fell to their death and had their still-fresh corpse run over by a bulldozer, and, in the final storyline before the strip was handed off to the new writer and artist, were eaten alive by rats while begging for help. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that today’s strip, in which two bad guys contemplate the mangled body of their boss, who they just accidentally shot with a massive pistol, and his guts are splattered everywhere, and one of them is on the verge of vomiting in mingled horror and disgust, is really just par for the course, historically speaking.

Mary Worth, 8/27/15

Fortunately, all the violence in today’s Mary Worth is emotional, as Ian and Toby finally both admit exactly what they think of each other (“parasitical dilettante” and “pompous boor”, respectively). I’m just glad to see that the two of them set down their mugs of steaming hot cocoa between panels one and two. They’re going to want both hands free for dramatic gesticulation over the course of this argument.

Spider-Man, 8/27/15

Meanwhile, Peter and Mary Jane’s cruise is being menaced by some sort of terrifying sea-dick.

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Gil Thorp, 9/3/15

YES YES YES MARTY MOON PAST ROMANCE PLOT YES I’VE NEVER WANTED ANYTHING SO MUCH IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!! I’m assuming the lady in panel three is in fact Marty’s ex, and is the same lady from earlier this week who is supposedly some sort of smart person, though the fact that at one point she did sex stuff with Marty calls that into question. Clearly the “mental baggage” she’s referring to in her thought balloon is the unshakeable memory of the smell of Marty’s goatee, all discount whisky and microphone disinfectant.

Apartment 3-G, 9/3/15

Oh dear, it looks like Margo really has lost her grip on reality, for confusing and unrealistic reasons. No, Margo! If you have the money and she doesn’t, that makes you her boss! Are you so far gone that you’ve even forgotten basic capitalism?

Spider-Man, 9/3/15

“Yeah, blah blah, we’re literally poisoning you, your friends and family are sick and dying because of our negligence, please don’t dump our garbage directly into your home. Heard it all before! Get a job, hippie!”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/3/15

Poor Les has been haunted by thoughts of aging and death all week, so probably the sudden appearance of Dead Lisa shouldn’t be a huge shock. Is she here to gently shepherd her beloved through the Veil to the Other Side? Let’s hope! Cayla can use the life insurance money to have dinner in Paris, blessedly alone!

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Judge Parker, 9/4/15

Marie, the Spencer-Drivers’ sassy maid, is quickly becoming my favorite character in this strip, what with her apparent love of telling the main characters exactly why their ludicrous schemes will fail, and her swoopy eyebrows giving her the exactly correct expression of anger-driven glee. Neddy looks mildly concerned over the chaos she’s going to accidentally unleash on her still-under-constructions offices next week, though probably she’s mostly thinking about how the angry proles will turn on each other, literally beating each other to death in a competition for some of the last manufacturing jobs in the area, and then she’ll have to figure out how to get poor person blood out of all the fabric she’s hopefully remembered to buy.

Six Chix, 9/4/15

There’s a lot to unpack in this insane cartoon. Like, I had to actually Google “are giraffe spots unique” to figure out the joke. Then there’s the fact that the psychologist (?) is a giraffe but also labelled “VET”, as if sapient giraffes would use the term for their own indigenous medical practitioners. Mostly, though, I just want to point out that our de-spotted giraffe patient has limbs that all look way too much like dicks for my comfort.

Shoe, 9/4/15

I love that the usual patented Shoe Goggle Eyes of Horror have been replaced here with Goggle Eyes of Transcendent Rage. “Wait, what? You’re mocking your sacred duty under democracy to understand the platforms of candidates for public office? In my restaurant? Oh, hell no.”

Spider-Man, 9/4/15

Man, Peter Parker really cares about admiralty law and maritime sovereignty. “BOO! GET BACK TO US WHEN ATLANTIS RATIFIES THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA!”

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Spider-Man, 9/5/15

Good sign that you might not be that good a superhero: when your wife thinks you should take a step back from a confrontation with a sinister supervillain and defer to a man whose authority and epaulets are both granted by the Carnival Corporation and its family of trusted cruise brands.

Apartment 3-G, 9/5/15

Well, this proves it: people in Apartment 3-G even sleep in suit jacket/turtleneck combos.

Judger Parker, 9/5/15

“Nothing could be more hilarious to me than Sam’s pissy face in panel two here. “Cook my own dinner? But … I’m rich!”

Pluggers, 9/5/15

Pluggers should maybe spend less time feeling smug and more time thinking about the viewing demographic their favorite TV shows appeal to.

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Gil Thorp, 9/29/15

You guys can’t imagine how relieved I was to see this scene of cultish flame-worship in today Gil Thorp. There’s only two days left in the month, and I was worried we were about to go into October without seeing the annual Milford bonfire, that extremely unsafe ritual where the town’s children risk horrible burns in the hope of achieving fleeting football glory. After years basking in the sacred fires, years of speeches and devil horns and clenched fists and threats of violence and pleas for health and initiating foreigners in the brotherhood of burning and flinging innocent women into the air and wild-eyed, hours-long harangues, the Mudlarks finally won their championship last year. That’s why it’s extra important to engage in proper cultic behavior this year, to make sure that good fortune is repeated. The scapegoat has already been selected if the spell fails! Meanwhile, Holly Dobbs’s reality crew is capturing all this on tape, which means that Child Protective Services and/or Homeland Security is going to be investigating this whole scene in short order.

Spider-Man, 9/29/15

I can’t really blame this guy for basking in his moment of press attention. After all, usually the only time anyone wants to interview a cruise ship officer for a publication other than Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine (or its arch-rival, World Cruise Industry Review) is when they accidentally steer their ship into a rock or when the toilets all stop working and you’re still three days away from Curaçao. I’m a little more concerned that all the world’s leaders have decided to let Captain Epaulets take the PR lead on the issue of an undersea kingdom denying humanity use of the oceans. “Yep, our ability to transport goods from manufacturing centers to high-income nations — completely shut down!” says the grinning man who’s mainly happy that for once the chyron under his face doesn’t say ‘POOP CRUISE’ CAPTAIN: WE USED BUCKETS. “The supply chains on which modern society depends are already collapsing!”

Mary Worth, 9/29/15

“Toby, I’m going to Jeff’s place for a few hours! If you want to invite Ian over … and talk to him on neutral ground … remember that nobody else knows you’re staying here and that these black walls hide blood splatter well.”

Momma, 9/29/15

Here’s today’s Momma! It’s about her walking by a funeral parlor and reflecting that it’s definitely time for her to die.

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Beetle Bailey, 9/30/15

“Why doesn’t he get his news from … the radio? Yes, he sits at a desk all day and is younger than the U.S. Army’s mandatory general officer retirement age of 64. A radio is definitely the thing that makes the most sense for this joke. Yes, sir, a radio.”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/30/15

I just want to note, in the midst of Dead Lisa’s Return — which today is taking the form of “fake photo in fake old-timey photo album” rather than “face on a TV screen,” just for a little narrative variety — that the timing on all this advice is 100% useless, thanks to negligent VHS-labelling on Lisa’s part. Like, Les and Cayla have been together for years, and a lot of these warnings didn’t really apply because Summer and Keisha were already in their late teens, but, like, what if they hadn’t been? What if they had been little kids and Cayla had only found this video after years of marriage? “Whoops, I’ve been treating Summer as an unloved stepchild and lavishing extra affection on my own daughter all this time! Darn, if only there had been some way to know this video existed at the beginning of my relationship with Les, we could have all avoided a lot of emotional drama.”

Spider-Man, 9/30/15

Now, we make fun of Newspaper Spider-Man here a lot, but let’s be sure to praise him when he deserves it. For instance, in panel one here, he’s proven himself a true innovator, coming up with a fantastically stupid new way to carry suitcases.

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Spider-Man, 10/3/15

As is my wont with Newspaper Spider-Man characters plucked from the depths of Marvel’s intellectual property vault, I have gone out of my way to learn basically nothing about Prince Namor because I want to learn to love him in whatever hilariously dipshitty way that Newspaper Spider-Man chooses to portray him. I’m not even sure what his biological deal is — he lives underwater, but clearly breathes air and stuff and his people inhabit pressurized undersea environments? But they’re not just humans who moved beneath the waves centuries ago, what with the ears and the eyebrows? And also perhaps their hearts are oversized, to adapt to the oxygen-starved nature of their artificial atmosphere, which leaves then particularly vulnerable … to love? Anyway, the thought that Prince Namor would, if not for his heartbreak, be chowing down on an entire tray of “seaweed royale” is definitely one of the funnier things the comics has taught me this week.

Apartment 3-G, 10/3/15

“The most important thing is that you hover in the room and think good thoughts at her and be there when she wakes up, especially considering she didn’t recognize you before and thinks you’re dead. Don’t get in the doctors’ way! That will be extremely easy, in whatever spacious hospital room she’s in! Stay there all the time, even though you’re not legally related to her! If anyone complains, tell them I said it was OK! I’ll be somewhere else, somewhere far, far away.”

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Mary Worth, 10/14/15

Oh, poop, it looks like this whole week is just going to be Toby and Ian apologizing to each other and reaffirming the majesty of their love. Bummer! At least we get a good closeup on Ian in panel one so we can see his various textures. The thick matt of arm hair poking out from the ends of his sleeves; the undulating chinbeard hair; the bristly, astroturf like consistency of his suit jacket — it’s like you can reach out and feel him. Comics need this sort of totally immersive experience if they’re going to compete against other entertainment media in the modern marketplace.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/14/15

I like the knowing glance Snuffy is giving the reader, as he sits next to the hand-cranked ice cream maker that has for years met his family’s dessert needs but will now be immediately abandoned in favor of Silas’s fancy softserve machine. “Eh?” he seems to be asking us. “Eh? Modernity?”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/14/15

Welp, looks like the “Morgans get steeply discounted stuff” phase of this storyline is done with, and now Rex is faced with the humdrum reality of family practice medicine: dealing with patients and their eager buttholes.

Spider-Man, 10/14/15

THANKS A LOT DEBLASIO

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Dick Tracy, 10/17/15

Oh, so … all the Neo-Chicago police are dirty, not just Sam? I guess this is probably some kind of parallel universe situation where up is down and good is bad. Will “Boss Tracy” have a goatee? Does hair even grow out of his razor-sharp chin?

Apartment 3-G, 10/17/15

Look, Apartment 3-G, you’ve committed to the Big Reveal of this storyline being Margo’s glandular condition, so stop trying to make it seem more bad-ass and metal by throwing around terms like “thyroid storm”. The lack of an article before the phrase makes it extra ominous! Anyway, Margo’s unconscious and Eric’s not a medical professional, but he needs to get out of the blue void he’s currently in and get into the blue void where Margo is — now.

Spider-Man, 10/17/15

Oh man, those bureaucrats at the United Nations just got burned by this scathing “not” joke from Newspaper Spider-Man! Anyway, this paid native viral marketing was a weird way for John Bolton to launch his surprise presidential bid, but I’m not going to tell him how to do his business.

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Spider-Man, 10/26/15

Oh, hey, Spider-Man vs. Namor, remember that whole business? It’s been 11 days since I last updated you and these two guys are still just jawin’ down by the docks, getting ready to maybe someday go over to the U.N. to talk about pollution or whatever. I assumed this was just the strip’s usual go-nowhere pace, but apparently Namor was stalling as he brought out his secret weapon: a poor, sick undersea child who will tug at the world’s heartstrings and cause the surface-dweller leadership to rethink our ocean-polluting ways and hahahahaha I can’t even finish that sentence. Yo, Namor, there are plenty of human children who get sick due to water pollution; do you think we’re gonna care about some little fish-boy? Anyway, undersea life seems like it’s pretty harsh, with no concept of “focusing the positive,” since Namor responds to Pharus’s plea for hope by letting everyone know that, nope, this kid’s gonna die, and the best-case scenario now is that he does it adorably enough to get some kind of toothless UN Security Council resolution passed.

Gil Thorp, 10/26/15

“It didn’t happen to Survivor or American Idol, two shows that launched early in the era of reality television and were very different from anything else on American TV at the time. What do we need? A time machine? A time machine, to go back and launch our show in a less reality-saturated programming environment?”

Family Circus, 10/26/15

Man, I for one really wish we had gotten to see what Jeffy and Dolly did to get themselves expelled from the Keane Kompound, with only their paternal grandmother and God willing to take them in. Was it redhead-related? Did Big Daddy Keane get a revelation that gingers were spiritually unclean?

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Mary Worth and The Phantom, 11/9/15

Oh, dear, it looks like Mary Worth and Heloise, far from embarking on a grand adventure together, are just going to briefly chat in a cab and then go their separate ways. The Phantom strip can’t even bother to spend a whole strip on its own version of Mary and Heloise’s bland pleasantries, cutting away to two panels of the Ghost Who Walks’s elaborate and sadistic gamesmanship. Anyway, it’s good to know that the Phantom, who has a whole room full of priceless treasure and runs an actual diamond monopoly, encourages his daughter to benefit from the kindess of old ladies on fixed incomes.

Spider-Man, 11/9/15

Meanwhile, also in Manhattan, Spider-Man and Namor got into a fistfight and fell into the ocean, and MJ has decided that she’s going to save poor li’l Pharus? Somehow? Without his consent, or the consent of his guardians? I look forward to her bringing him to a doctor, who will say “Young woman, I’m not qualified to cure some kind of pointy-eared … fish … boy!” Or maybe he’ll just bust out the free samples of the new anti-pollution pills that the Pfizer rep brought over and the kid will be fine, and then Namor will feel sheepish and the conflict will be over.

You know who’s not going to be fine, though? The poor Atlantean who’s just had his life-preserving water-helmet shattered by White Lab Coat Lady over there! Sorry dude, I know you were just protecting this poor youth from the surface-monsters, but now you’re going to air-drown after being dispatched with a truly inscrutable witticism.

Dennis the Menace, 11/9/15

The year is 2047. Adult Dennis strips out of his Amazon-issued jumpsuit after completing his 19-hour shift in the vast Amazon Fulfillment Warehouse that occupies most of what was once known as “Ohio.” He nestles into his sleeping-shelf within the 100-square foot Dorm Pod that is his home; as he dims the lights, the last things he sees are the vast, mandatory portraits of Jeff Bezos that dominate each windowless wall. He thinks back to that day long ago, when he made that flippant remark to his mother about shopping — his mother had been reassigned to the Box Assembly Division somewhere in the Dakotas when he was a teenager, he hadn’t heard from her since. He began to think that maybe he had been the true menace, that day.

Gil Thorp, 11/9/15

Yeah, sure, OK, Gil wears a Milford sweatshirt to work pretty much every day, and you might think they all look the same, but he can tell them apart, OK? Mostly by the stains.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/9/15

[48 hours earlier, at the Morgans]

“Look, Rex, I’ve already signed mine. Will you just sign yours?”

“Ugh, will you stop talking if I do?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. What is this about again?”

“Do you really care?”

“I suppose not.”

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Family Circus, 11/11/15

The “Keane Kid looks disheveled and drops his stuff on the ground and leans back on the door as he arrives home from school” is a bit of visual shorthand for “tough day” that the Family Circus deploys a lot. I’ve always had minor practical gripes with it (don’t the kids all come home from school together? are Jeffy and Dolly outside pounding on the door trying to get in?) but today it occurred to me that it also kind of looks like Billy has run desperately into the house and is trying to keep out someone — or something. Something that stalked and devoured the children sitting on either side of Billy in his classroom. But he made it out alive, by remaining absolutely silent.

Spider-Man, 11/11/15

So this lady who straight-up bashed in the Atlantean guard’s helmets with a club of some sort is … just some random doctor? Who wanders the docks of New York, looking for fish-children to forcibly rescue? I did a cursory Google search for “Liz Bellman” and “marvel” and have satisfied myself that this isn’t the secret identity of some random long-standing Marvel superhero/villain who I’m not familiar with but who will be starring in a Netflix original MCU series in 2017, but please be sure to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong!

Marvin, 11/11/15

Marvin, you’re starting a bank to bilk babies out of money they don’t have and your hobby is shitting yourself. Please don’t try to pop-shame your father.

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Hi and Lois, 11/23/15

Awww, looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays, if by “a case of the Mondays” you mean “a nagging realization that life is an joyless cycle of repetitive, meaningless tasks.” I think that’s what most people mean by it, right?

B.C., 11/23/15

B.C., meanwhile, reminds us that the Flagstons’ middle-class suburban ennui is itself a privilege, as many others see life not as a ceaseless loop of drudgery but a straight line that will be ending very, very soon.

Gasoline Alley, 11/23/15

That goodness, all that rude chatter is over and we can get what we came for: little kids telling weird ahistoric jokes on stage. Are the “!”s over our young Squanto and Pilgrim meant to represent solid, emotive method acting on their part, or are they genuinely surprised at Boog’s punchline? Is he improvising? Can you imagine children doing an improv Thanksgiving show? I can! It’d probably look a lot like this, to be honest. Maybe Walt and Skeezix missed the audience suggestions because they came in late.

Mark Trail, 11/23/15

Welp, seems like our no-neck Homeland Security goons had been following Ken and Mark all along by using drones to track Ken’s sweet skullmobile! They just figured they’d let our heroes take out the baddies on their own, without government agents getting involved unless absolutely necessary. They provide a better value to the taxpayer that way, you know?

Spider-Man, 11/23/15

Whoa there, random U.N. General Assembly delegate! You may come from a country with cool hats, but this is America and we don’t use imperious language like “Guards! Seize him!” Try some American law enforcement lingo instead. “Security, we need you to apprehend an Atlantean individual, behind the podium at this time. Suspect is weilding a trident-style weapon and is wearing a vest, repeat, vest.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/25/15

Hey, Pete and Darren, as a relatively new transplant to LA, I understand that the little things can be tough — things like figuring out your favorite places to eat. In a huge city like Los Angeles, you have the additional dilemma caused by a wide variety of choices, a marked contrast to your hometown, where literally the only places that serve food are Montoni’s and the Toxic Taco. Anyway, my personal favorite pizza place that I’ve found so far is DeSano in East Hollywood, although they don’t deliver; Hard Times Pizza, on Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park, does, and they’re great too, though you might not be able to get delivery from them if you live over towards the Westside. I’m sure there are a number of great options there, though! I’m sure there are a number of options that are infinitely better than terrible Montoni’s sadness-pizza that’s been put on dry ice and shipped across the country, come the fuck on.

Spider-Man, 11/25/15

I’m not gonna lie to you: this extremely low-stakes brawl in the UN General Assembly hall could go on for weeks as far as I’m concerned and I will love every minute of it. Did Namor just kind of … swipe in the general direction of those security guards in panel one? Did everyone just sort of forget to look up as the floating Atlantean Combat Platform drifted into the chambers? How did it get through the door, anyway? And why did a race that lives under the sea bother to developer technology that can make things float in midair? Anyway, I hope this whole sequence lasts long enough to not answer any of these questions but raise a lot more questions through endless additional hilariously dumb details.

Pluggers, 11/25/15

Do you think plugger-cat paid for this fantasy? I’m just imagining plugger-cat talking to some confused male escort he found on backpage.com, and saying “Your ad says you’re up for anything.”

Heathcliff, 11/25/15

You can tell by his blank, expressionless stare that the Garbage Ape is super not into this scene. “Remember when they used to cheer like this just because I was swinging garbage cans around?” he thinks. “When did I need to start getting topical all of the sudden? Why can’t they just love me for the garbage?”

B.C., 11/25/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because living as an adult makes you want to die!

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Funky Winkerbean, 12/6/15

As is the case in many societies, the economic and spiritual malaise that lies over Westview can be traced back to its education system. For instance, when a science teacher urges his students to “put on [their] thinking caps,” you’d think he was about to challenge them to use their knowledge of the scientific method to solve some problem or test a hypothesis. But at Westview High, this is just a prelude to a rambling punny joke-style utterance that might, if they’re lucky, teach them the Latin name of a constellation, a datum that at best you could call science-adjacent. The students look on in dumb incomprehension, which is a good preparation for their life in the Funkyverse, which will mostly consist of abuse structured as terrible unfunny wordplay.

Judge Parker, 12/6/15

You might be thinking, “The Spencer-Drivers are almost unimaginably rich. Isn’t it kind of unseemly for them to rush to cash this check, considering the solid possibility that Neddy is going to destroy the RV before delivering it to its purchaser?” Well, the joke’s on you and your bourgeois morality. How do you think the Spencer-Drivers got to be unimaginably rich? It certainly wasn’t by not cashing checks.

Marvin, 12/6/15

Kudos to Marvin for getting through a whole Sunday comic without a reference to urine or feces, I guess, but I have to say I find Jeff’s dead-eyed explanation of why dogs like nose-rubs pretty off-putting. It’s just because they have big noses, OK? There’s no pleasure to be had from rubbing the nose of your beloved pet. Any sense of bonding or connection you get from the process is false. It’s a simple physical reaction to an immutable physical fact. I kind of wish this strip was about Marvin shitting, honestly. At least Marvin enjoys shitting.

Spider-Man, 12/16/15

Backed into a corner and unsure how to respond, Peter Parker reacts like the hero he is: by slamming his head into JJJ’s computer until he can induce blessed unconsciousness.

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The Phantom, 12/8/15

We’ve now got to the part of the Tales of the Young Phantom where the Phantom had to ditch his posh American boarding school and go back to Bangalla and take over for his dad, who presumably was horribly mangled in a battle on the river against bandits and/or hippos. My favorite part of this strip is that Guran, who normally lets it all hang out in garb well-suited to Bangalla’s tropical climate, has been forced to put on Western clothes to fit in, and looks extremely unhappy about it. What is that, a blue chambray shirt tucked into jeans? Looks like faithful reader lumaca morente’s guess that this was all happening the ’90s was spot on.

Spider-Man, 12/8/15

One of my very favorite Newspaper Spider-Man storylines was when J. Jonah Jameson finally started offering health insurance to freelancers and Peter had to go get a physical before he could get insurance (which I’m pretty sure was never a thing, even in the days when you could be excluded for pre-existing conditions) and he wore his Spider-Man outfit under his clothes but then panicked when he forgot that visiting the doctor sometimes involves getting naked. I don’t remember how this ended, but he was briefly transformed into “Gown Man” and at some point the doctor tried to patent his spider-blood (the relative blood of a … spider?). What I’m saying is that I have high hopes for more medical hijinx from the quack J. Jonah Jameson keeps on retainer to certify that injuries suffered by Bugle contractors don’t qualify for workman’s comp.

In other news, JJJ’s right hand in panel two is reaching … through his jacket? Or maybe over it, or around it? To drape it over his right shoulder? The less time spent thinking about this the better, honestly.

Momma, 12/8/15

I’m not sure what the “EXIT” sign in panel one is supposed to signify. It’s pointing the way out of … this outdoor space where Francis is extolling his new girlfriend’s virtues? Sadly, if Momma thinks it’s an exit from this comic strip, she has another thing coming.

Gasoline Alley, 12/8/15

“Remember, kids, being one of the most famous writers in the world won’t do jack shit for you, financially! If you want to get rich, you’ve gotta do something really profitable, like patent valuable scrapbooking paraphernalia!”

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Spider-Man, 12/12/15

J. Jonah Jameson may be a bottom-feeding tabloid journalist, but I’ll say this for him: at least he’s self-aware. “This could be the scoop of the century!” he shouted while making a jerk-off motion.

Pluggers, 12/12/15

Why would pluggers lie about their age? The slow physical decay of their bodies, the gradual accumulation of aches and pains until every movement is an agony — that’s the only thing they know about. They may not have one of those fancy Ivy League degrees, but they can tell you this: your body is mortal, and by the time you die, you’ll be glad to be rid of it.

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Mary Worth, 1/11/16

A good way to tell the difference between an actual human child and one or more small alien beings using a human-shaped meatsack as a disguise is the way they talk. For instance, do they start a sentence with the phrase “Being a kid” and end it with “window shopping”? Then they probably aren’t actually a kid. Anyway, it’s nice to see that Mary is going to reward Olive (or GleepGlorp 7, whoever) for giving a dollar to a homeless guy with an extravagant spending spree at New York’s finest, dowdiest boutiques.

Spider-Man, 1/11/16

Usually Newspaper Spider-Man is the dumbest guy in any given situation, but let’s give a shout-out to Namor, who has abandoned his plan to win his war against the surface dwellers by destroying New York with a nigh-unstoppable flying submarine, and instead will just be fighting a one-man battle against Spider-Man, which seems like a slightly less viable long-term strategy for conquest. In his favor, literally everyone assumes Spider-Man will lose.

Dick Tracy, 1/11/16

Ok, I know cute on-the-nose names are very much the core of Dick Tracy’s #brand, but “Spicy Condiment” is a bridge too God-damned far, my friends. How does it even relate to her character design? With her gleaming teeth, shouldn’t she be named “Minty Fresh” or something? This bothers me so much.

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Panels from Mark Trail, 1/17/16

Wow, it sounds like these so-called fishermen are making a ton of money from animals that aren’t even fish! What a bunch of frauds! Sure glad Mark Trail is on the case to blow the lid off of these seafaring phonies.

Spider-Man, 1/17/16

Oh, look, it’s my favorite kind of industrial accident, right after the kind that produces “Oops! All Berries” Cap’n Crunch: the kind that accidentally results in a comic strip being uploaded without any black in it! This will be probably fixed by the time you read this, but this is what the strip looked like when I found it. The panels are strangely beautiful, and definitely 100% less annoying now that you can’t read any of the dialogue or figure out exactly what’s going on.

Panels from Blondie, 1/17/16

“You don’t understand, Blondie! It’s just cheap and physical with Herb! He’s only for when you’re not available! You’ve gotta believe me!”

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Spider-Man, 1/23/16

NEWSPAPER SPIDER-MAN UPDATE: Spider-Man lost his battle with Namor, just like everyone assumed he would, and Mary Jane, in a last-ditch effort to save his life, agreed to be his undersea wife, which Namor requested way back at the beginning of this storyline and was totally heartbroken about when she said no. Yesterday Namor declined her offer, however, which I think we all assumed was for noble reasons … but noooooOOOOPE, he just wants to straight-up kill the shit out of Spider-Man. Truly he is Earth’s most selfless, and hilarious, ruler.

Mary Worth, 1/23/16

I’ve genuinely given up on trying to figure out where this plot is going to meander off to next. Maybe Olive is going to try to play matchmaker? “Sounds like you have a lot of restraint, Mr. Dill. Speaking of restraints, guess who here enjoys consensual, erotic B&D play?” [winks in Mary’s direction]

Gasoline Alley, 1/23/16

Gasoline Alley has transitioned to a storyline about talking animals fleeing in terror from a raging forest fire, and yet somehow is still about God-damned scrapbooking.

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Spider-Man, 1/29/16

Ah ha! I knew Dr. Liz Bellman’s introduction was meant to imply that there was something significant about her identity. Seems she’s the granddaughter of Betty Dean, who, according to Comic Vine, “played a large role in convincing Namor to aid America and the Allied Forces in the fight against Nazi Germany,” so I guess she only convinced him that some of surface men were not his people’s enemies, ha ha! Comic Vine goes on to say that “Betty would eventually be reunited with Namor and the two would engage in a romantic relationship,” and that her “powers” include “Attractive Female”, which, come on, Comic Vine. ANYWAY, I guess Namor’s Surface-Dweller Fever will probably save humanity again, or at least give Spidey enough time to regain his strength and run away.

Gil Thorp, 1/29/16

Speaking of soap opera plots I don’t care much about, over in Gil Thorp the basketball season plot is about Kenzie Hanley, a very tall and strong elite rugby player whose athleticism has earned her a spot on the basketball team but mostly as a hulking enforcer, as her actual basketball skills are lacking, demonstrated by an egregious airball from the foul line earlier this week. I’ve been so bored by this that I don’t even have any strips posted to demonstrate the fact that up until two days ago, Kenzie was white! But never mind this colorist mixup, because we’ve at last arrived at what I hope will be the hilarious heart of this storyline: Kenzie switching to Rick Berry-style underhand free throws. Will this start a craze of underhand free throws, with the usual gang of Mudlark idiots working to outdo each other in how awkward they look? We can only hope!

Family Circus, 1/29/16

Ha ha, how much do I love Jeffy’s facial expression here? It’s like he’s finally figured out that he’s not the dumb one.

Pluggers, 1/29/16

Pluggers peaked in high school and are 100% OK with that.

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Beetle Bailey, 2/5/16

I haven’t really tried, but I imagine that it’s nearly impossible to make a pancake that actually looks like anything other than a collection of circles, so I guess if we’re being realistic it’s impressive that Cookie has managed to create pancakes that look even vaguely like Sarge. However, considering that this is the fantasy world of the comics, where imagination and tiny printing sizes in newspapers are the only constraints, for this strip to work I think they should’ve looked … more obviously like Sarge? I think a lot of people are just going to read this as Cookie offering the soldiers slightly malformed pancakes, grinning broadly, and saying “Chew them good!”, which they might find off-putting. I find it off-putting and I know what the joke is supposed to be.

B.C., 2/5/16

Right, right, so, Thor is the brown-haired one! Pretty bittersweet that I’m finally learning to tell these characters apart as they’re killed off one by one.

Dennis the Menace, 2/5/16

“I don’t know if I want to engage in constant low-level violence on a lawless frontier that encroaches on the land of indigenous peoples, or serve as the right-hand man to a genocidal dictator!”

Gasoline Alley, 2/5/16

“My God, not the scrapbook! Pilot, shake loose the ranger and the boy, fly directly down into the inferno, and kill that bear as hard as you need to — the scrapbook must be rescued unharmed!”

Spider-Man, 2/5/16

ANOTHER VICTORY WON BY THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

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Mary Worth, 2/11/16

Obviously my number one version of this storyline involves Olive watching Mary reject old suitors, but it just keeps going and going and I’m willing to follow it, at this point. So will this turn into some kind of pseudo-Socratic dialogue in which the young and inexperienced Olive advocates for total freedom, while Mary patiently explains that only the strong hand of a Philosopher-Queen can impose the rigid order and structure that our species needs to survive, and that perhaps Olive, with her special tummy-brain powers, can be that queen? If so, I’m here for that!

Spider-Man, 2/11/16

“Haha, look, you’re lucky you’re not all dead, OK? Who could stop Namor? Certainly not me! I’m Spider-Man, and people talk a lot about the proportional strength of a spider, but how strong is that, really? Here’s a hint: not very strong! Have you ever stepped on a spider? Ever noticed that it used its amazing spider-strength to lift up your shoe and save itself? Of course not! Because it can’t! It’s tiny and feeble, just like me! Welp, off to fail at superheroics somewhere else!” [flies skyward crotch-first]

Judge Parker, 2/11/16

“You’ve been in this band for several days now, so why are you not already making all the decisions and reaping all the profits? Do they not know that you’re a Spencer-Driver and never have to prove yourself to anyone at any time? HOW DARE THEY”

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Spider-Man, 2/18/16

I’m trying to figure out if Peter is being sarcastically self-loathing in panel two or if he’s genuinely perking up. “Oh, that’s right! I was present when this storyline’s villain was defeated! I was wearing my superhero outfit, too! Thanks, TV!”

Dennis the Menace, 2/18/16

I was going to make some joke about a menacing pride in illiteracy, but honestly, is there anything less menacing than a child gathering his friends to watch the news together, with no adults present?

Family Circus, 2/18/16

NOOO DOLLY NATIONALISM IS IDOLATRY, you’re gonna have to do a lot of Hail Marys to walk this one back

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Dennis the Menace, 2/21/16

I can imagine nothing more menacing than this cartoon. Children cynically acting out the most shopworn tropes of gender dynamics for our amusement? Dennis hoping against hope to spend his middle age in sloth and lethargy? This ought to chill the very souls of all right-thinking people.

Spider-Man, 2/21/16

Dr. Strange is the one they’re making into a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie with Benedict Cumberbatch, right? I love that they haven’t bothered to make him look even slightly Cumberbatchish in the last panel here. I also am going to spend the rest of the day imagining Benedict Cumberbatch intoning “the wand of watoomb!” in grandiloquent Cumberbatchian style. This is code for, like, tickets to Hamilton or something, right? Those are about as magical an item as MJ could lay her hands on.

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Dennis the Menace, 2/24/16

It’s the quote marks around “out to pasture” that make this truly menacing. They indicate that Dennis knows he’s not being literal. Literal horses literally get put out to pasture, it’s true, but in other contexts, the phrase’s connotations are a bit grimmer. And Henry Mitchell is not a literal horse. Dennis is finding his father too physically weak for the level of roughhousing he requires. Henry should be put down — humanely, of course — and a new, more vigorous father acquired.

Crankshaft, 2/24/16

Ha ha, it’s funny because the kids today are so dumb that they think an “old movie” is one that came out a year and a half ago! You know what always works out really well, is when you introduce young characters into your story despite the fact that you clearly hold young people in visceral contempt.

Hi and Lois, 2/24/16

If Trixie finds the emotional labor of keeping the rest of the Flagstons entertained crushing, wait till she finds out about all the people around the world who cut Hi and Lois strips out of their newspapers and hang them on their refrigerators. You’ve got to bring joy to the whole world, Trixie, not just your family!

Spider-Man, 2/24/16

You know how you can tell when the cycle of neighborhood gentrification is complete? When all the damn wizards start moving in.

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Spider-Man, 3/4/16

You know, last week when I accidentally mistook this storyline’s antagonist for Dr. Strange, some people got mad at me. How dare I call myself the Comics Curmudgeon when I can’t even properly curmudgeon about prominent comics characters! Well, joke’s on you people: I care a million times more about Mary Worth than I do about anything that happened in a superhero comic book ever. The fun thing about reading Newspaper Spider-Man for me is having really no preconceptions about what exactly is supposed to be happening at any given moment. Like, if I had been paying attention to the Marvel universe at all the I wouldn’t have the joyful moment of discovery today when I learned that Dr. Strange’s name is Stephen. Steve! Steve Strange! Oh, this is a delight.

Mary Worth, 3/4/16

“That’s great, Mary, great. You always have friends. I never have to worry about you being lonely. I just, sometimes … how come nobody ever worries about me? Poor, lonely Dr. Jeff. You were gone, what, six weeks? Eight? I just … I get tired, you know. Tired of this life. I gotta … I’m just gonna rest my forehead on the steering wheel for a few minutes. Just rest my eyes. Wave the other cars around us, OK?”

Mark Trail, 3/4/16

“I meant … I meant sex, OK? I regret it now. It’s stupid and I regret it. I don’t want to die in a cave!” [sobbing]

The Lockhorns, 3/4/16

If there aren’t a half-dozen improv teams named Drunk Leroy Lockhorn formed by the middle of next week, I’m going to be very disappointed.

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Spider-Man, 3/19/16

I genuinely neither know nor want to know what is going on below Spider-Man’s waist in panel two here. The relative ability to rotate your femur bones all the way around of … a spider? Anyway, this is nicely distracting us from the fact that, when running to find his wife only in the company of a guy who already knows his secret identity, Peter Parker feels obliged to abruptly put on his spider-suit. It makes him feel safe, and powerful!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/16

Parson Tuttle may be a grifter, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t experience pangs of conscience now and then. That’s why his wife is always there, to keep him on the plan! Those fancy hats aren’t gonna pay for themselves!

Dennis the Menace, 3/19/16

In the end, this is the most effective way the old can menace the young: by letting them know that the long life they have ahead of them will be filled with disappointments.

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Dennis the Menace, 4/4/16

The Mitchells strike me as an extremely 1950s respectable upper middle class types, which means that they’re probably high church Episcopalians. Certainly they’re not going to be Catholics, or members of one of those “ethnic” Orthodox churches. (Yes, I know other denominations have bishops, but I don’t think any of them wear mitres as in the picture here.) Anyway, this panel suffers the same problem of a lot of Dennis-says-the-darndest-things-in-class gags, which is that it’s not clear at all what the correct answer to this extremely open-ended question is supposed to be. Are these eight-year-olds supposed to describe the bureaucracy of church governance, or talk about Apostolic succession or the long struggle in the 16th and 17th centuries over whether the English church should have an episcopal or presbyterian structure? Give me a break. Also, a child demonstrating knowledge of how chess works is one of the least menacing things I can think of.

Spider-Man, 4/4/16

Oh, shoot, I haven’t been keeping you up to date on Spider-Man, because it’s been all about the mildly superheroic tussling amongst Spidey, Steve Strange, and the sinister Xandu, and not about, say, supervillains memorializing their triumphs via selfie. My favorite part is how the mind-controlled Spider-Man is desperate to stop Xandu from uploading this photo to Instagram, but cannot. What would he do if he weren’t under Xandu’s spell? Post a 2,000-word screed to Medium about how selfies are a symptom of a narcissistic civilization in decline?

Crankshaft, 4/4/16

Have you ever wondered about the sexual scenarios that Crankshaft claims to be disgusted by and yet can’t stop visualizing? Then today’s strip is for you, my friend.

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Spider-Man, 4/9/16

“Oh, thank goodness! Another, better superhero is awake! We’ll be free in no time!”

Beetle Bailey, 4/9/16

We all remember the famous Blondie unspeakable filth strip, but that was just accidentally about dog-fucking, or at least had plausible deniability. This … this is just straight up about dog-fucking, right? Or at least human-dog romance? There’s not really another interpretation, right?

Crankshaft, 4/9/16

Ha ha, it’s funny because Crankshaft’s body is failing, to the extent that even his favorite pastimes are physical agony to him now!