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Dick Tracy, 1/21/15

Sure, Westview is haunted by death, but death of the quiet, drawn-out, hospice-based variety. Dick and Sam are about to bring a new kind of death to town: loud, abrupt, and very, very bloody.

Mark Trail, 1/21/15

Gotta be impressed with Mark’s hair, which has gone through a boat explosion and some quality time surrounded by flaming oil slicks and has barely moved at all.

Sally Forth, 1/21/15

Little did I know, when I wished for a new Apartment 3-G artist last week, that Sally Forth already had in the works a flash-forward that’s doubling as a backdoor pilot for an Apartment 3-G reboot!

Spider-Man, 1/21/15

Peter Parker has been forced to rescue Mary Jane from an out-of-control movie marketing robot out of costume. Presumably he’s unharmed because he has, uh, spider-durability (the relative ribcage strength of a … spider?), but if he pretends to be hurt and sues the movie studio, this will turn out to be his most effective and lucrative act of heroism to date.

Wizard of Id, 1/21/15

“Boy, I sure have noticed and/or been sexually aroused by a lot of young women lately! Fortunately, I have a nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip, so I’ll be able to talk about this fact in a way that won’t come across as creepy at all.”

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Apartment 3-G, 1/16/15

This is kind of a delicate subject, but: I feel like there’s been a marked decline in the quality of the Apartment 3-G art over the past year or so; artist Frank Bolle will be turning 91 this year and I wonder how much longer he’ll be up for doing the strip. Today Tommie has wandered so far off-model that it seems that even the syndicate colorists have failed to recognize her and given her the wrong hair color. Honestly, the strip could use the infusion of new energy from a younger artist like the ones who took over Judge Parker and Gil Thorp in the past decade. It would’ve been particularly nice to have someone new in place in time for the steamy shower lesbian three-way Apartment 3-G fans have been waiting for literally since the day the strip launched in 1961.

Mary Worth, 1/16/15

I honestly did not think I was going to see anything in today’s comics funnier than Hanna in panel two of today’s Mary Worth, her flute at the ready and her face demonstrating her grim determination to make beautiful music with it.

Spider-Man, 1/16/15

But then I saw panel three of today’s Spider-Man, in which Peter shows his steely resolve to not have sex with his wife like he wanted but instead show up for some publicity photos for her lucrative job that pays his bills, presumably sulking visibly the entire time.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/16/15

Hey, are you wondering what Herb’s mother-in-law is doing on this fine Friday? Well, she’s just sitting in an armchair, silently contemplating her own inevitable death!

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Slylock Fox, 1/14/15

I’ve spent literally years contemplating the strange, animal-dominated world of Slylock Fox, wondering about the terrible, transformative Event that separates it from ours. The lens I’ve seen things through has usually been scientific, but what if I should be thinking theologically instead? In the Genesis flood narrative, God famously promises Noah that He won’t destroy the world with a flood again, which is pretty specific and seems to leave some loopholes. The spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep” famously warns “God gave Noah the rainbow sign/ no more water/ the fire next time,” but God’s ways aren’t necessarily what we would expect. What if God chose to cleanse Earth of awful humanity by simply moving his favor down a rung to the animals, transforming them into beings capable of both moral reasoning and displacing us? If that was the goal — if Slylock Fox’s anthropomorphic beasts were an attempt at resetting the clock and creating a new Eden — then today’s strip reminds us that the fatal flaw, the indelible link between knowledge and sin, was baked into the design from the beginning.

Dick Tracy, 1/14/15

Aw, it’s funny because patriarchy dictates that detective prowess, like names, can only be transmitted down the male line! And also because none of these clowns are going to be the world’s greatest detective. Batman is the world’s greatest detective. Seriously, wouldn’t it be funny if they did a Batman movie where Batman was dressed up in a rubber bat suit but instead of punching bad guys and driving around in a tank-car he just looked for clues with a magnifying glass? It’d be a lot more entertaining than whatever they’ve got planned for Ben Affleck, that’s for sure.

Heathcliff, 1/14/15

Sure, you could look at this as Heathcliff just reusing the exact same joke twice in six days. But I choose to imagine that Heathcliff has been clawing viciously at the bars of the bird’s cage for nearly a week now, while his owner-family does nothing, leaving the bird to crazed with terror but still clinging to the household etiquette rules.

Apartment 3-G, 1/14/15

“Meanwhile, at two in the morning, after having been exiled from their home by Margo’s drug-powered mania, the girls wander the streets of Manhattan (?), talking to each other vaguely.”