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Mary Worth, 8/19/12

As advertisers of electronic devices, apps, and Web services are learning, it’s tough to make a compelling image out of somebody staring at a screen. I mean, a CEO can feign rapture while eavesdropping on his sales team’s BS from his iPad, but when that ad runs on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, he’s just gonna look like an idiot.

So pity Mary and Toby, stuck on the couch watching Wilbur’s Italian Adventure this week. No amount of compulsive cheek-touching or sedative chit-chat can make them more than props in this turgid recap.

But what’s going on with Ian?

Mary Worth, 8/15–19/12 (excerpts)

Our Favorite Blowhard has been going through the changes all week — from smug confidence that somehow this will all work out well for him, through shock that it doesn’t seem to be going that way, to feigned indifference, alarm, then petulant dismay at the continued disregard of his Presence, and now RAGE that no one — NO ONE — is paying any attention to him at all! Toby’s in for a rough night.

Crankshaft, 8/19/12

Aw, look — it’s a charming and gently amusing Sunday Crankshaft! You gotta love Quad-Cane Guy at second, right? And nobody’s talking! Wait, I guess that’s not a coincidence, is it?

Mark Trail, 8/19/12

Oh, Aristotle my ass: animals that live in the water are fish. Deal with it.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/18/12

Hey, Comic John — that was you whining to Funky about your sex life Monday, right? So maybe you could find some way to comfort your wife and assure her that in your eyes she’s no three-year-old, but a desirable, capable, undeniably adult woman? Perhaps some kind of cooperative adult activity, suitable for the place and time, that would help restore her confidence and could actually work out pretty well for you, too?

No? You’re going with the cheap putdown instead? OK, then — on with the glasses and down the hall: that copy of Power Girl #18 ain’t gonna stain itself, you know!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/18/12

This would be just another episode of “Rex exploits rich old ladies for stuff”, but for two things. First, this old lady is Melissa Claridge, for fifty years a straitlaced hypochondriac who berated Rex for his indifferent courtship of June. Here’s “old” Melissa schooling her lying niece Heidi, thanks to the careful scholarship of Lena Delle at In Search of Rex Morgan, M.D.:

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/16/1971

Yes, that’s old June, née Gale, in the first panel.

The second thing about today’s strip is that look on June’s face in the third panel — of what, exactly? Avarice, which passes for lust in her loveless, superficial life? Maybe, but I like to think it’s hope — of escape, of a normal vacation free from menacing floodwaters, shipboard plague, or psycho boyfriends just this once — or maybe for a return to those sweet old days when despite all Melissa’s prodding Rex stayed far, far away from her.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/18/12

And Grampy has had a long long life, wasted trying to dull the misery of his empty marriage with porn and likker. Everyone finds this hilarious.

Love Is, 8/18/12

Heh, heh — it’s funny because DEATH.

Hey, Josh is off-grid for the week at his Secret Writer’s Retreat in the Northern Part of the State. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net with site issues, spam alerts, etc.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Sunday serials mostly summarize the preceding week — apparently newspapers put the interests of decent Sunday-only and weekday-only subscribers over those of degenerate free-rider Internet obsessives. Thanks a lot, newspapers! Here we go:

Apartment 3-G, 3/25/12

This week’s Apartment 3-G “action” consists of Tommie asking Nina Gaines if she wants to take a walk. While we wait for her answer (give it a month or so), consider that poor Nina is trying to balance her commitment to a career with loyalty to her insensitive clod of a husband amid a storm of powerful lady-hormones that make her weep uncontrollably over every little thing.

Compared to the motivations that drive principal characters Lu Ann (“Shiny!”), Margo (“Blood!”), and Tommie (“What?”), this makes Nina the most complex, nuanced character in Apartment 3-G — its Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, and Hedda Gabler. She really deserves her own strip, maybe teamed up with Professor Papagoras fighting crime or rescuing pets.

Mary Worth, 3/25/12

Whoa, here’s an unexpected development! Long months after their encounter in the shopping district, Nola remains rooted to her park bench, paralyzed by shame. Smithers — now sober and wiser, his tear-stained tie traded for a snappy cap, and CEO of his own environmental-services startup — returns to help her move on: “Nola, my life as Sales VP was a desperate, lonely wasteland until your lies led me to a greater truth. Because of you I have found enlightenment and peace, so thank you, thank you, my sweet, wonderful *&@#%$!”

Dick Tracy, 3/25/12

Aww, we’ve been neglecting this strip since its conversion to representational art and narrative coherence. Here, criminal gargoyle Blackjack takes a break from his crime spree for some strategic Dick Tracy-related product placement.

Judge Parker, 3/25/12

Hey, remember that story in Judge Parker? The one about the black sedan tailing Li’l Judge Randy and his Walther PPK and the botched murder attempt and how April Bower was implicated and that showdown with the mysterious lady assassin? The story that’s been going on since September, 2010? You do remember it? Well, forget it.

That’s it for me — Josh will be back Monday with a frothy mix of comics, COTW, and all the rich Joshy goodness we’ve come to know and love. Thanks for a fun week!

— Uncle Lumpy