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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/28/12

I’m not sure what’s more off-putting: that li’l preverbal Tater is fully aware of and completely committed to his tuber-derived name, or that he’s capable of drawing a startlingly realistic potato in chalk on a moment’s notice. But most disturbing of all is Loweezy’s sinister sidelong grin in the second panel, hinting at the dark purpose behind her son’s strange name. The Potato Revolution is coming, ladies, as soon as the Chosen One is old enough to rule. Be ready for it.

Archie, 7/28/12

So based on the clothing and the in-strip technology and something someone said to me off-hand in an email once, I’ve always assumed that the current batch of Archie newspaper strips are from the mid-90s, an assumption upended by today’s references to online dating and Linux. Yes, Linux dates from 1991 and Match.com launched in 1995, but I refuse to believe that Archie comics would ever be so up on any technological trends (or indeed any trends of any sort) as to namecheck them before they could be sure that most of their audience would get the reference, which means I can’t imagine this strip running before, say, 2002.

On the other hand, the startling words are in italics, and we’ve seen the reruns updated before, so who knows what the original text was. “I spend most of my time working on my book learning.” “You give new meaning to the concept of reading things instead of interacting with girls,” says the guy who responds to all romantic advances from ladies with abject terror.

Apartment 3-G, 7/28/12

Oh, don’t worry, everyone, we’re not just going to skip over Lu Ann’s story without acknowledging it! We’re going to acknowledge that we’re skipping over it, then skip over it. Look at how excited Tommie is! “I’m too scared to go first, but it’s amazing that Margo gave me the option!”

Ziggy, 7/28/12

Ziggy can’t remember what company insures his car, probably because he just suffered a traumatic brain injury.

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Everyone: just wanted to offer a huge thanks to those who participated in my novel’s Kickstarter campaign, and those who helped spread the word. I have been humbled by everyone’s support and I promise to present you the best novel I can, in a year or so!

Family Circus, 7/27/12

I hope I am not breaking any hearts or spirits when I tell you that the Family Circus, like many legacy comics, is pieced together from a huge library of clip art that is modified to the extent necessary and usually no further. At least we know that today’s panel features a genuinely new joke, both because today really is the opening of the 30th Olympiad and because only in today’s fallen, degraded society would the squeaky-clean Keane Kids even know that “XXX” denotes morally repugnant grown-up kissing without baby-making. Still, the TV in today’s panel is kind of interesting to me, as it’s not the usual Carter-era console set, but instead appears to be a flatscreen sitting directly on the floor, which … I don’t think is how anyone actually watches a flatscreen? Especially kind of a small one, like this? Which makes me think that this is just a modified version of an older drawing where a weird brown flatscreen has replaced the traditionally faux-wood-paneled console set. Although who knows, maybe this little TV-on-the-floor is specifically for Jeffy and Dolly (they’re not allowed on the furniture, for OBVIOUS REASONS) and the fact that they have access to such things explains why they now suddenly know that sin exists.

Gasoline Alley, 7/27/12

I really don’t have much to say about it, but I am in awe that this Gasoline Alley faulty DVD player storyline continues against all odds to exist, as it has gone on forever and nothing keeps on happening. Now they’re openly acknowledging that they’re repeating jokes! At least I assume that the referenced joke actually appeared in the strip in another go-round of this endless scenario. My memories of the details are vanishing into time’s mists.

Gil Thorp, 7/27/12

Honest question: Are there people who just assume that any amputee in street clothes is a war hero? What if they lost an arm doing something stupid (e.g., playing with dynamite) or evil (e.g., tried to strangle an orphan, had stranglin’ arm chopped off by an actual hero with a machete)?

Mary Worth, 7/27/12

Every Mary Worth of course takes place in a baffling dreamscape of non-Euclidean spatial relations, but I’m pretty confused about what we’re looking at in panel two. Normally a cruise ship’s deck wouldn’t be that close to the water, right? Is the boat tipping over, and the fellow in red isn’t so much leaping with unnatural strength to safety as tumbling out into space? Or is it sinking straight down, with the lower decks already swamped and the water quickly rising up to reach our heroes? Either way, I admit it’s a bit churlish to question anything about a Mary Worth panel that features a crazed man in a bow-tie screaming “It’s the only option!” as he points to the churning waters of the Mediterranean. But such is the critic’s curse!

Apartment 3-G, 7/27/12

Hey, remember when Lu Ann found out that the woman she always thought was her cousin was really her mother, and suddenly realized why the couple who raised her and her sister were always so bitter and distant, and went off to South Dakota to confront them all and sort out the emotional consequences of this elaborate web of deceit? That all sounds like it would have made for compelling drama! I guess we’ll never know now, though.

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Blondie, 7/24/12

I had always thought that, in the category of “Blondie gags that use fast-food ordering systems built into injection-molded plastic heads to demonstrate the workings of post-industrial capitalism,” we would never be able to beat “Say — then pay!” But you have to admire the pathos of the Buckaroo Burger mascot in panel two, spewing out corporate-approved and no doubt heavily focus-grouped cowboy lingo to nobody. Is there a real Buckaroo Burger employee somewhere in the bowels of this exurban fast food hellscape, being paid minimum wage to bark ahistorical nonsense into a microphone until he loses his mind? Or is it all just a recording, a computerized voice sailing unheard into the open air, raising tree-falls-in-the-forest philosophical questions?

Archie, 7/23/12

Teen couples have been watching scary movies so as to excuse fear-based snuggling since the beginning of cinema. The real question Betty ought to be asking Archie is why he was so cheap and/or dumb to rent a mockbuster rather than the actual Wes Craven classic.

Apartment 3-G, 7/23/12

“I’m totally going to be hitting on dudes with heavily pregnant wives all the time now! The ladies forgive everyone in a wash of post-partum hormones, and the gents go off and be a dad right when they would otherwise start getting clingy and I’d need to figure out a way to let them down easy. It’s a win-win!”