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Lockhorns, 9/27/13

This isn’t the first time that Loretta and Leroy have gone to see one of the Twilight films, but it’s always jarring and delightful when a smidgen of contemporary pop culture forces its way into the Lockhorns’ eternal 1962, isn’t it? I am also 100% in love with the fake Twilight poster hanging up at the Lockhorns’ local cinema. It reimagines Robert Pattinson’s dull, pasty visage as the brooding face of a proper Weimar-era expressionist vampire. And the graphic design! Doesn’t the striking image of the undead fiend’s face floating over the single word “TWILIGHT” have a million times more impact than, say, this piece of overbusy airbrushed garbage? Kudos, Lockhorns, for daring to imagine a better world than ours.

Mary Worth, 9/27/13

“The specific reason is that I have no friends and no life and writing advice to people desperate enough to send me letters is literally the only thing that gives my existence the barest shred of meaning! Uh, I guess I sort of covered that earlier, but that’s the much more specific version.”

Family Circus, 9/27/13

“I mean, he’s a competent adult and he could just learn how to cook properly, but I guess he figures that if he does, that’ll undermine the whole patriarchal structure that gives him power. So, your parents abandoned you at the world’s dullest mall kiosk too, huh?”

Shoe, 9/27/13

Huh, had it been established in this strip that the Perfesser’s mother is still alive? I guess it never hurts to introduce a new character in order to set up a hilarious joke! In this case, the joke is that an old man dropped dead during a social event for senior citizens, which probably cast a real pall over the rest of the evening.

Archie, 9/27/13

Meanwhile, the streets of Riverdale are haunted by roving packs of vicious feral dogs.

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Archie, 9/26/13

“Ha ha, yes, it can be somewhat inconvenient to read a newspaper outside, especially if there’s a breeze. But let’s be honest: Is there a way to get the day’s news, features, sports, and weather, along with fun stuff like comics, other than printed on paper? Nope! So if you like keeping up with current events, or just want to enjoy good-natured Archie Comics Publications Inc. content in bite-sized chunks, you’re going to have to subscribe to the newspaper, and that’s the way things are going to be for a long, long time.” –An Archie newspaper comic originally written some time in the late 1990s

Mark Trail, 9/26/13

“I want the senator to reconnect with the joys of killing animals one at a time! Sure, it’s not as efficient as destroying their habitat to drill for oil, but it’s much more emotionally satisfying.”

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Mark Trail, 9/24/13

Mark Trail is tired of only portraying ancient technologies like Ma Bell-supplied bakelite phones from the ’50s, d’you hear? From now on, this strip is future-proof. That’s why today’s installment features a next-generation communications device: a flat, featureless, book-sized object that sits on your nightstand, from which you need to extract a smaller flat object that you talk into. Presumably it only takes 30 to 90 determined seconds to pop out that handset as the flat thingie rings and buzzes, though don’t cut your fingernails too short or else you’ll be in real trouble.

Archie and Apartment 3-G, 9/24/13

I’m pretty sure the comics pages are supposed to be a refuge from the intense and troubling emotional scenarios that bedevil our everyday life. Thus, I deem today’s Archie, in which a teenage girl is so wracked with need for romantic affection that she declares her willingness to throw every other happiness aside for it (declares this, it must be pointed out, directly to her rival for the attentions of her beloved), a complete failure at this core mission. Much safer for teens is today’s Apartment 3-G, in which a girl learns that her beloved dad is deliberately withholding information about his brain tumor from her because he only shares that sort of thing with sexy blondes that he wants to sleep with. That’s the sort of dilemma that none of us can relate to! What a relief!