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Apartment 3-G, 8/14/13

Hi everybody! I’m back from scenic Canada, and as always am appreciative for Uncle Lumpy’s fine comics-mocking skills and your pleasant behavior. Just to show you how dedicated I am to vacationing: I found out that Mark finally took Rusty fishing just like you did: on joshreads dot com, your #1 source for Mark Trail news. It was an interesting feeling and it made me think: what if I treated my relationship with the comics like the normals do, and didn’t bother to read the ones that I missed while I was away? This idea lasted roughly five seconds, because Apartment 3-G left me floundering in confusion, because wait why is Peter kissing Margo oh wait that’s Zoey what the hell did she always look exactly like Margo only with short hair? Turns out no, she used to look more like Margo’s mother Gabriella, but expecting Apartment 3-G characters to maintain stable facial configurations for more than a week or two is pretty much asking for disappointment, so whatever.

Mary Worth, 8/14/13

I also went back to see what was happening (for certain extremely limited definitions of “happening”) in Mary Worth, but I kind of regret that now. Wouldn’t it have been better to take in today’s strip without any buttressing narrative structure and just appreciate it for what it is: a guy with a mustache angrily complaining about his terribly disappointing life to the vaguely sympathetic members of a “talk group”?

Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/13

I actually deliberately stopped myself from going back and reading previous Funky Winkerbeans. I don’t want any context for this. I don’t even want the context supplied by the first panel. I just want the image of Harry Dinkle, smiling beatifically as he imagines a freakishly huge version of his younger head vomiting out a marching band. Where is the band coming from? What horrible non-Euclidean hell-dimension lies inside the Dinklemaw? I want this image and only this image, forever.

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Mary Worth, 8/5/13

I’m someone who does a lot of swimming, and I’m hard pressed to explain the physical activity in which Mary is engaged in panel one. Her torso appears to be more or less vertical, so she sure doesn’t seem to be swimming. If we imagine her making airplane noises as she flies her hand around, that would explain a lot. Frankly, I’m more concerned with panel two, in which we see Mary’s “negative feelings” dripping from her face in huge, viscous drops. Every rude remark and flash of anger Mary has ever masked under a veneer of vaguely passive aggressive cheer for years is soaking into that pool. If any normal human were to enter it, their flesh would be seared off in seconds.

Better Half, 8/5/13

Stanley is deeply, deeply invested in the traditional social construction of binary gender. Also, his doctor wouldn’t write him a scrip for Viagra, so he’s trying to wheedle it out of his pharmacist.

Hi and Lois, 8/5/13

Oh, man, check out that sexy look Lois is flashing Hi in panel two. Is there any conversation between these two that doesn’t immediately become foreplay? Though Hi’s response seems less “aroused” than “I’m about to be pushed to my physical and mental limits of endurance.”

Heathcliff, 8/5/13

I guess the caption here is supposed to evoke the Game of Thrones “Winter is coming” tagline, and we’re supposed to imagine Heathcliff unleashing a nightmarish storm of meat-acquisition violence on the helpless butchers. But I’m afraid all I can think of when I hear “meat storm” is terrible farts, sorry everyone.

Mark Trail, 8/5/13

“This isn’t going to be that easy, Trail! I’ve got to put down what’s in my hands, grab this shotgun, turn off the safety, cock it, and get a bead on you, all before you have a chance to run across a fairly small ro — oops, didn’t make it. Well, I did my best!”

PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCEMENT! I’ll be on vacation for the next week, but your favorite Uncle Lumpy will be filling in for me, so be nice to him. I shall return to comics mocking on Wednesday, August 14. See ya then!

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Lockhorns, 8/4/13

Today’s multi-Lockhorns experience brings us the usual marital friction — Leroy is terrified about their finances, Leroy never fixes things around the house, Loretta packs too many things, Leroy is and always has been out of shape — but then we get to the bottom left panel. Pizza? What kind of monster doesn’t appreciate two large, piping hot pizzas? We’re expected to recognize this as another sad moment in the Lockhorns marriage? You’ve gone too far this time, Lockhorns. Too far!

Crankshaft, 8/4/13

Young Crankshaft is sad and lonely because all of his friends are off playing with other kids! Old Crankshaft is sad and lonely because all of his friends are dead.