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Slylock Fox, 9/6/10

One of the great meta-mysteries of the Slylock Fox strip is: who exactly is Slylock’s employer? Does he work for the mostly dog-staffed police force, or is he a private eye for hire? Today’s strip seems to suggest the latter. The library system, not trusting the generally incompetent law enforcement system, obviously scraped together what it could out of its tightened budget to hire the best detective around to get that computer back. But the cemetery, whose fresh graves Count Weirdly is raiding for body parts that he can sew together and reanimate in a ghastly parody of life? Did they write Sly a check? No? Then screw them. What corpse-monster? I don’t see any corpse-monster. Just hand over the computer, Count, and I forget everything else I saw here.

Apartment 3-G, 9/6/10

Well, it’s yet another Monday, and the chances that this makeover storyline is the secret cover for a change of artist seem to be pretty much nil at this point. Certainly everyone in the audience is looking as appalling as ever. Any makeover show host worth her salt would, as soon as she laid eyes on Martin, stop in mid-sentence and rip that orange suit/yellow tie combo right off his body, then grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him back stage to fix whatever is going on with his hair.

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Does a bear make mischief in the woods?

Slylock Fox, 9/1/10

It doesn’t surprise me to see this bear casually destroying a nice sign that a thoughtful forest ranger put up. Bears are a sinister menace who will stop at nothing to lure humans into feeding them … with human flesh. What does sadden me is to see that an innocent beaver has been roped into this tomfoolery. “Hey, beaver friend,” the bear probably said, “that sign says ‘Don’t feed the beavers!’ You don’t want that sign still standing by the riverside, do you?” Beavers are notoriously semi-literate; this beaver probably just saw that the last word started with ‘B’ and ended with ‘R’ and believed the bear’s lies, the poor trusting soul. At least he looks happy, doing the bear’s bidding. I hope the bear doesn’t eat him after this.

Dennis the Menace, 9/1/10

Dennis does occasionally do a bit of legit menacing, and my favorite type is when he humiliates his father in public. I like to think that today he’s been sitting on this gag until he spotted the preppiest, douchiest guy on the golf course to use as the agent for his father’s debasement. “My dad can’t drive a golf ball very far, and he also wears a brown sweater with black pants. That’s because he’s lower-middle class, and always will be, no matter how much money he makes! Did you know that he went to public schools — even for college?“

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Crock, 8/30/10

Many comic strips set theoretically in some specific time and place often end up wandering afield from that time and place, either for humorous effect or just out of sheer forgetfulness. Thus, while the action in Crock once was meant to be understood as taking place in North Africa under French colonial rule, today the strip might be happening somewhere where the IRS has authority, or really any time and any place at all. Today’s dialogue, for instance, implies that the action of the strip takes place during the time period described in one of the earlier sections of the book of Genesis, just before the Deluge. This is good news for everyone — including, I assume, all of you — who wants to see every single Crock character killed by an angry God in a world-destroying flood.

Gil Thorp, 8/30/10

Our phoned-in summer golf storyline has finally, mercifully, ended; let the phoned-in fall football storyline begin! It’s just day one and already the characters are starting to ask why we’re even bothering to have a fall football storyline. “Man, what’s the point?” asks a nameless Mudlark. “I mean, my face is melting due to some horrible space alien virus, and you all are just standing around with arms stretched out looking bored! Hello? Melting face? Over here?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/30/10

There are few things simultaneously sadder and more hilarious than watching Les deliberate over whether to have his book launch party in his home town’s only functioning non-Toxic Taco restaurant with more anxiety and indecision than Hamlet trying to figure out whether he should kill his stepfather. But one of those even sadder and more hilarious things is watching two otherwise attractive and normal-seeming women compete to see who can debase themselves further to win Les’s mopey, self-absorbed affections.

Apartment 3-G, 8/30/10

Holy cats, is Apartment 3-G’s aged core audience about to be introduced to the great advances in hair extension technology that have taken place over the past few decades? Or does Tabitha simply plan to knock Margo out with some kind of sleeping potion, only for her to wake up 20 years later with her hair grown to ludicrous lengths, Rip van Winkle-style?

Slylock Fox, 8/30/10

Ha ha, it’s a trick question! There’s no such thing as “valuable” Kansas City Royals memorabilia.

Gasoline Alley, 8/30/10

I know I haven’t discussed the light-hearted Gasoline Alley strip lately, but in case you’re wondering what’s going on over there, here you go: a group of adorable schoolchildren is about to die in a terrible bus accident.