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Slylock Fox, 5/26/15

You know, for too long I’ve thought about the transition from human to animal rule in Slylock Fox in terms of revolutionary violence. But perhaps I’m mistaken. Look at the episode in today’s Six Differences: maybe the revolt began not with acts of carnage, but acts of love, as newly sapient animals freed their dear ones from enslavement. Like all oppressors, of course, the gentleman holding the leash doesn’t see it this way; he’s furious because he can only understand that his own previously unquestioned authority is now under threat. The Great Change did entail violence, of course, but maybe the animals didn’t initiate it.

Apartment 3-G, 5/26/15

Oh hey, remember Margo’s ex-boyfriend Greg, who plays James Bond? Well, here he is, the guy playing one of the most high-profile characters in the movies, just wandering around the streets of New York sans entourage, ready to bump into Margo and make small talk with her about her agency, which … you know, I sort of thought that Greg had been Margo’s client? Of course, she’s a terrible publicist and all, but probably even she’d be smart enough to advise him not to ruin his Bondian cred by appearing in public wearing a green jacket. Anyway, on the surface, this may look like the same kind of disconnected dreamscape conversation Apartment 3-G’s been mired in for months, but replying to your ex-lover’s “Have you missed me?” with “It’s lovely to see you” is from my point of view a delightfully sick burn.

Heathcliff, 5/26/15

Dear Heathcliff and Creators Syndicate: you can’t just make a character cool by having him stand next to another character widely considered cool and then have a third party say “That’s a whole lotta cool.” That’s not how being cool works!

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Apartment 3-G, 5/14/15

So Gabriella’s dead mom came back, turning Gabriella’s white hair black with shock, and told her … that her house was evil, or maybe Diane told her, who can say, but the important thing is that Martin’s reaction to this news is 100% hilarious. First of all, Martin’s profession, as near as I can tell, is “generic rich businessman,” so his assurance that he personally inspected their home is not particularly reassuring. “I inspected every inch of that house myself, Gabby. There are no wasteful structural redundancies or safety features that I could see. It’s extremely cost-efficient!” Then there’s his smug expression in panel two. “Heh heh, seems my beloved fiancée has been whipped into a terrified anxiety frenzy. There’s no way this won’t be a laugh riot! I gotta see this in person!”

Mark Trail, 5/14/15

So, yes, the chain of problem-solving so far has been very simple: we get fire to get rid of the beetles, and then we get the helicopters to get rid of the fire, and then we get the geese to get rid of the helicopters. Who are we going to get to get rid of the geese, though? Beavers? Do beavers eat geese?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/14/15

Yes, Sarah is an amoral creepazoid child-adult, but she’s just so cheerful about everything that I have a hard time really disliking her. “Oh, know that! I also write about how pictures make you happy or sad. Feelings, right? Feelings are things that the humans have?”

Mary Worth, 5/14/15

Today’s unsung Mary Worth hero is the guy staring down into the basket of this hot air balloon. “Christ, what a mess! I can’t believe they left this for me to clean up. What did those two do up there?”

Family Circus, 5/14/15

Thanks to all those pamphlets Daddy keeps leaving around the house, Dolly knows that fiat money inflates away the wealth of industrious savers, while specie retains its value!

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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”