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Let’s start today by taking a step into the past — specifically, yesterday.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 5/17/09

Margo is about to jet off to China to single-handedly rescue her fiance and force the People’s Bank of China to revalue the yuan in the process, but first she’s stopping off at her mother’s for a free meal. What could possibly be the cause of the girlish glee occurring inside Gabriella’s apartment?

Apartment 3-G, 5/18/09

OH MY GOD, IT’S HER PARENTS! And they’re being all … nice to each other. Surely the last thing any of us want to see is our parents flirting like they’re on a third date and have consumed exactly the right amount of wine for magic to happen twenty to forty minutes in the future; this is especially true for Margo, whose very self-image requires her to imagine the act of her creation as a moment of pure mutual loathing and contempt, so you can imagine her disgust at seeing this happy little tableau here.

(Margo’s creation story is actually pretty sordid, which gives this whole scene a vibe of genuine ick that I’m not sure is intended.)

Blondie, 5/18/09

As panel three indicates, Blondie is under the suffocating, restrictive gaze of her husband at all times, so she’s learned to choose her words carefully so as to avoid his wrath while still speaking the truth. “I thought he was all those things, but boy howdy was I wrong. Look, Cookie, the results of my carefree flapper days should make it pretty clear that bathtub gin dulls both your eyesight and your judgment.”

Family Circus, 5/18/09

Oh, look, the Keanes have apparently acquired a crazed neighborhood enemy! This can only escalate; tomorrow, they’ll presumably wake up to find the words “HUMAN GARBAGE” spray-painted across the front of their house. The real question, of course, why it took so long for this to happen.

Mark Trail, 5/18/09

You’re probably laughing at this because you’re imagining Rusty, dressed in his best khaki paramilitary uniform and his brightest blue kerchief, earnestly showing a college admissions officer his “transcripts,” which consist entirely of poorly lit and composed pictures of those forest animals dumb or ill enough to be lured into the pen behind the Trail cabin. But that scenario, of course, assumes that Rusty has any idea what “college” actually is. Once he’s saved up enough, Mark and Cherry will probably find a glove factory or third-world rebel army willing to accept some cash in return for taking the mutant freak-child off their hands; then they’ll tell him he’s going to Bowdoin or something and send him on his way, never to be seen again.

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Apartment 3-G, 5/13/09

Hey, Margo’s Mousy Assistant Whose Name I Cannot Be Bothered To Remember (from here on in to be referred to as MMAWNICBBTR): take a cue from your boss and finger-quote! It’ll save you time!

Beetle Bailey, 5/13/09

I was going to say that Beetle should be charging more for his escort services, but then I thought, what kind of added value does he really offer the customer, anyway?

Dick Tracy, 5/13/09

“We’ll see who’s about to die” ought to be Dick Tracy’s mission statement.

Momma, 5/13/09

“Also, we’ll all be dead soon enough, so it’s not really our problem!”

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Hi and Lois, 5/11/09

Well, here it is: the first Hi and Lois in living memory at which I laughed more or less unironically, mostly because I think They Buried Beethoven Alive! would be the great name of a low-budget zombie flick. The thought of the greatest composer of the Romantic period shuffling through the streets of Vienna and moaning melodically for brains is ever so delightful to me. (The victory of the living would come when the film’s hero realizes that undead Beethoven was still deaf, meaning that anti-zombie hunters could sneak up on him from behind undetected.)

Anyway, my amusement at the joke was genuine enough that it seems churlish to point out that it doesn’t really make much sense. I suppose it’s just the usual “Ha ha, the hip-hop music that the kids today enjoy is the nadir of human creative expression, let us be ever so smug about it by invoking the name of people who died 200 years ago,” but I can’t figure out why exactly Beethoven’s corpse would find a teenager’s financial success in the music world to be shocking. Beethoven grew up a generation after Mozart had made musical child prodigies trendy, and had himself performed (paid) public concerts at the age of seven. Maybe he would just think it improper that the rapping lad is in control of his own finances and is spending money on gaudy palaces, when everyone knows that a great composer ought to live in an apartment rented for him by a bishop-elector or archduke.

Archie, 5/11/09

This strip gives me an opportunity to share a link to a blog post several faithful readers sent me a few weeks ago, explaining the origins of Jughead’s hat. In short, it’s about as retro piece of costuming as you can get, as you might have realized if you had, say, thought about it for more than 30 seconds. Still, I kind of like this strip, mostly because everyone is so angry at Jughead. They take their theme parties seriously in Riverdale, by God.

Apartment 3-G, 5/11/09

It’s no secret that Margo and Tommie don’t always get along, but it appears that, having joined forces to defeat a man in combat, they’re finally bonding a little bit. Margo has broken out a bottle of her finest black bile for the occasion, and is even letting Tommie wear her sexy Han Solo vest.

Luann, 5/11/09

Last week, Brad was injured saving Toni from a fall while the two of them were fighting a fire, and in gratitude she agreed to serve as his “day nurse” while he was recovering. Today, we realize that this storyline will be even more repulsive than any of us could have imagined. “But … all the naughty nurses in the movies on hotscatporn.com thought it was a real turn-on!”