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Family Circus, 10/22/06

I have to say that the Family Circus children do not strike me as being old enough, under ordinary circumstances, to have racked up the body count on display here. Of course, the circumstances surrounding this freakish clan of big-headed weirdos is never ordinary. What intrigues me most about this meticulously illustrated history of carnage is the fact that the wussily-named Kittycat was preceded by the much, much butcher Beast. Perhaps the name provides a clue to the motivation behind the carnage: all these hapless creatures were sacrifices to the greater Beast, our Dark Lord, who returns the gifts with a channel of raw power straight into the hearts of His little servants. You’re next, PJ!

I do wish I had seen the panel in which Bailey met his demise. I imagine Big Daddy Keane looking triumphantly at the bottom of his shoe as Jeffy wanders in saying, “Daddy, have you seen our new pet Bailey? He’s a cock-a-roach!” I also sincerely hope that Butterball didn’t buy the farm in a hilarious Thanksgiving-dinner mixup.

Judge Parker, 10/22/06

Oh man, am I going to need to add Raju to Molly on the list of Lovable But Hapless Comics Characters I Need To Worry About? I fear he’s going to get harassed by State College Bobby in some publicly humiliating way. Fortunately, in that get-up, the last time Bobby might have appeared threatening would have been in 1986, in some kind of bad teen comedy.

I’m intrigued by the idea of a “boat-wrestling scholarship”. Do you start with inflatable rafts and work your way up to car ferries and container ships? Is this a popular spectator sport? Do universities located in port cities have an easy leg up on facilities?

Apartment 3-G, 10/22/06

“But to pass the time until I find true love, I guess I’ll just have to settle for an orgy with the two women and eleven men who’ve been eyeing me as I walk the length of this block.”

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Judge Parker, 10/20/06

FOR GOD’S SAKE, SAM, HAVE SEX WITH YOUR WIFE! Jeez, how clear to she and her left breast have to make it to you? Because if you don’t service this hot, mature, mulleted woman, that job is going to get “outsourced to India” when the kids get home from the party, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

Blondie, 10/20/06

I think what everyone is thinking in panel two is not, “Ew, this kid hasn’t washed his hands?” but “What is this kid doing here?” Elmo sometimes drops hints about his home life, but I think it’s all a front: my guess is that he’s secretly living a Dickensian existence as a street urchin, and that the food that falls onto the floor out of Dagwood’s structurally improbable sandwiches is all that stands between him and starvation. If he is a hobo-boy, it would explain his unfamiliarity with basic hygiene skills. This is the first time I can remember him actually conning his way to the family table though, though the presence of the bathroom step-stool in the Bumstead household, where everyone is over the age of 16, indicates that he probably at least washes his one set of clothes in the sink there from time to time.

Against all logic, Dagwood seems to treat Elmo like the son he never had, something that must make Alexander die a little inside every time he sees it.

Mary Worth, 10/20/06

Speaking of children someone never had … the fact that Dr. Jeff reproduced, and managed to go two for two on doctors, is news to me, and I’ve read Mary Worth pretty much every day for the last four years. Since that represents about an month and a half in Worth-time, I suppose it makes sense that I’ve never met these two before. It does seem a bit creepy to me that the two siblings AND the dad all work at the same hospital, which I assume is called Our Lady of Perpetual Cory (Messrs Haim and Feldman could both check in for rehab stints).

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the relationship between Mary and her non-sexual beau’s children ought by right to be painfully awkward. The facial expressions in the second panel give me hope. While Adrian just looks garden-variety confused, Drew’s face appears to me to be caught at the moment when the polite smile he’s put on for his father’s girlfriend is starting to crack. “God damn it, I told dad that I don’t care if he wants to spend the next six months in a whorehouse in Phnom Penh, but I don’t want to have to lie to his old biddy about it!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/20/06

Lucy is a master of psychological warfare, and Ted is her unwitting bagman. I can’t wait to see Tommie try to tart herself up.

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Gil Thorp, 10/16/06

You might have noticed that i haven’t really been paying attention to Gil Thorp lately. That’s because it stopped being about homoerotic love channeled through chainsaw work and more about Sean Pettibone, everybody’s least favorite goody-goody. You may remember Sean from last season, when he scored the winning touchdown in the final game of the season but then negated his team’s victory by admitting unprompted that he had stepped out of bounds on the play; later, he broke cultural barriers by dating one of Milford’s token African-American students and alternately amused and horrified her parents with his well-meaning cracker antics. This year he’s voluntarily dropped out the student body vice-presidential race in order to placate student strife, and today he has single handedly pulled this unconscious fellow from flaming disaster and appears to be supplying the “breath of life” through his left nipple. Presumably soon he will come up with a plan to rescue Social Security, bring peace to the Middle East, and lead the Mudlarks to victory in the football playdowns. Everyone will still hate him.

The question remains: who or what is responsible for reducing this once-mighty light utility vehicle to a pile of flaming wreckage? Maybe these two punks have graduated from cherry bombs to roadside IEDs. “Mail call, SUV-boy!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/16/06

Aw man, see, this is why you gotta have a roommate like Margo. She tells it like it is! And by “tells it like it is,” I mean “puts the spin on things most likely to negate whatever positive emotions you might be experiencing at any given moment.” And by “gotta have a roommate like,” I mean “must change the locks while she’s out.”

For Better Or For Worse, 10/16/06

As noted, it’s been a while since Phil’s appeared in the strip, but I really don’t remember him being so, um, mustachtic. No wonder his own father doesn’t recognize him. Jim probably thinks he’s the dude from the Pringles can. “Did you bring the sour cream and onion kind? I love those!”

Six Chix, 10/16/06

I’m pretty sure that this is about monkey sex somehow, and I’m pretty sure that I don’t approve.