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Blondie, 2/10/14

The Winter Olympics, in addition to being a stage where the greatest athletes compete at the highest level to achieve glory, is also a carefully managed corporate product with armies of lawyers. They are not to be joked about, OK? You can’t just publish in hundreds of newspapers a dumb joke about how the kids today like texting and wouldn’t it be funny if someone at the Olympics were texting while competing in their chosen event? No, that would be unthinkable. You can only have someone make that joke, then immediately acknowledge that it was just a joke, ha ha, obviously the Olympics has no such event, that would be degrading to the sport, please, tune in for primetime coverage on NBC!

Apartment 3-G, 2/10/14

Tommie’s fiancé has stopped by her apartment in New York on the way to the airport … from … England? Which makes no sense? Anyway, he’s missed his plane now, because they’re “drowsy from happiness,” which I’m assuming is some sort of code for sex that you’re allowed to use in the comics because it’s completely opaque. But now he’s missed his plane! And his head is bobbing suggestively! And he’s going to figure out that his fiancée is a crazy person who is keeping a baby deer in her New York City apartment! Everything about this whole scenario just screams “surrealistic dream narrative” to me, starting with “somebody agreed to marry Tommie.”

Herb and Jamaal, 2/10/14

Ho ho, these fellas are lost but they won’t stop and ask for directions? Men, amiright? In unrelated news, Herb has a malignant melanoma.

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Blondie, 2/5/14

Today’s Blondie is mostly standard-issue Mismatched Marital Hijinx, but I have to say I’m pretty in love with the weird and delightful second panel. It’s as if the sudden disruption of their comfortably distant routine has sent Blondie into a vertiginous spiral; even the low-level boost in emotional intimacy that comes from just making eye contact with her husband has sent her reeling. This is a couple that deliberately arranged their living room furniture so they don’t have to see each other even when they’re in the same room, remember. After only a moment of looking at her husband, she takes the opportunity afforded by his sipping his coffee to put her head most of the way down, maybe to overwhelm her senses by taking a big whiff of whatever’s on her plate, or maybe to just calm her nerves so she doesn’t vomit. In short order, she needs the barrier between her and Dagwood again. This experiment in spousal interaction is now over.

Apartment 3-G, 2/5/14

I find it deeply hilarious that Tommie answers what I assume is either Apartment 3-G’s landline or the phone connected to the building’s intercom system by saying “This is Ms. Thompson.” I guess she wants to put her most formal foot forward because she’s been eagerly awaiting a phone call — not from her fiance, with whom I assume that not even Tommie would be on a last-name basis, but from the producers of the hit reality TV show I Can’t Stop Hoarding Baby Animals! “This is it! I’m going to be famous!” she thinks. “Just let me finish dusting up all this deer urine!”

It should of course come as a surprise to nobody that Tommie’s fiance is a Identical-Looking Apartment 3-G Male Type (Dark-Haired Model), but it is a little weird that he appears to be calling from downstairs but also sitting in an office somewhere. Maybe he got a job as the building’s doorman, to be closer to her?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/5/14

Oh no

Oh NO

The devil’s rock ‘n’ roll has finally reached Hootin’ Holler

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Mark Trail, 2/3/14

I don’t want to brag or anything but haha who am I kidding obviously there is NOTHING in this world I like more than bragging about my ability to predict Mark Trail plots! Anyway, I think it’s pretty clear from this strip that Jessica Canupp and her taxidermist boyfriend “Marlin” (they gave him a nickname based of the dead animals whose skins he fits over a rigid frame and then fills with sawdust!) are going to turn out to be bad guys. That’s because Mark stopped a guy from spearing an endangered turtle just off the shore of their private island and instead of being all like “THANK GOD YOU STOPPED THIS SENSELESS TURTLE SLAUGHTER” they’re eyeing him with suspicion and doubt. Probably Jessica’s seemingly benign pelican-rescue operation has a sinister purpose, like creating an army of attack pelicans for al-Qaeda, or illegally harvesting pelican livers, which are most delicious when wrenched from the guts of still-living elderly pelicans.

I do, however, want to make clear that I’m not showing you this strip just to prove that I’m right about everything all the time, but also to share with you Mark saying “Unless you want to end up in jail, buddy, you’d better stop killing turtles.” This sentence ought by rights to replace everything ever written in the history of English literature, and the accompanying depiction of the turtle-killer’s hat dramatically flying off his head should replace every work of visual art ever made.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/3/14

Normally I angrily rebel against every dumb “cutesy” wordplay punchline in Funky Winkerbean, but if Cayla’s quip here means that Les will literally die from exhaustion trying to churn out a terrible television movie script about his wife’s suffering, then I will revise my stance on the issue.

Apartment 3-G, 2/3/14

Nooooooo let it go on forever let the deer just keep pooping everywhere let it replace Lu Ann as the third 3-G roommate