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Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/13

I feel like I’m not lavishing as much attention on the story of the Party House With A Heart Of Gold and the Possibly Suicidal Cancer-Stricken Stripper in Rex Morgan as I should, but it turns out that tales of uninsured possibly suicidal cancer-stricken people are … actually kind of depressing? Still, my heart is buoyed by Rex’s palpable scheming in panel three. A magical pregnancy-predicting cancer-stricken stripper, eh? This sounds like something Rex can monetize for his clinic!

Funky Winkerbean, 2/7/13

Speaking of depressing stories about cancer, remember back in 2007 (side note: ugh, I am old) when Lisa was dying of cancer in Funky Winkerbean, and one of the questions was whether Darrin, the son she gave up for adoption, would meet his biological mother before she died, but also Darrin was courting Jessica, and she looked an awful lot like him, there were certain suspicions that they may have shared some biological parentage? Well, that turned out to be not the case, but even though this lady is actually his half-sister, not his stepsister, and is related to him via his adopted parents so there’s no genetic overlap, I still admit to being 100% squicked out that she put her hand on his knee in panel two.

Archie, 2/7/13

As is true for a lot of everyman viewpoint characters, Archie’s personality is actually not all that fleshed out, but if I had to describe it I guess I’d say he’s kind of feckless and oversexed. I certainly don’t think of him as being a fanatical athlete of any sort, nor as someone willing to risk exacerbating an injury when he could be hanging out at the ski lodge hitting on girls. Perhaps this is part of his class anxiety vis-a-vis Veronica’s family? Or perhaps the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000, in attempting to parse the human humor genre known as “slapstick,” has decided that if we’ll laugh at the antics of the Three Stooges or Looney Tunes characters, surely we’ll enjoy the thought of a teen boy flying down the slopes, teeth gritted in pain as his tendons tear horribly beyond repair.

Crankshaft, 2/7/13

Speaking of slapstick, some years ago Crankshaft introduced some loathsome yuppie neighbors who were even less likable than the strip’s title character, presumably so we’d laugh when Crankshaft attempted to physically assault them.

Shoe, 2/7/13

THEY’RE BIRDS ALL THESE CHARACTERS ARE BIRDS AND THEY’RE CRACKING WISE ABOUT A COMPANY THAT SLAUGHTERS BIRDS AND PROCESSES THEM INTO FOODSTUFF

THIS IS MONSTROUS BEYOND DESCRIPTION

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Mark Trail, 2/2/13

Usually Mark Trail flashback fashion takes us to the depths of the Eisenhower administration, which is why I am 100% amazed and flabbergasted (in a good way) by “Catfish” here. Now, none of us like to stereotype, but admit it: you probably imagined Catfish would be would be an angry, beefy guy with a mullet or perhaps a chubby fellow with a big white beard; either way, he’d be wearing overalls, obviously. BUT NO! No, Catfish is a bald sprite of a man who went back in time to 1987 and stole a sweet Ocean Pacific t-shirt out of my bedroom. He is such an odd bird in the sartorial world of Mark Trail that I am pretty much willing to forgive whatever crimes against competitive fishing ethics are going on in that van.

Herb and Jamaal, 2/2/13

Meanwhile, today’s unannounced “Classic Herb and Jamaal” is a repeat from barely two years ago! Although maybe even that appearance was itself a repeat from back when someone might have actually said “online talk rooms” and believed himself a vaguely with-it human being.

Archie, 2/2/13

I’m going to pass over the ostensible action of this strip — is Mr. Lodge’s “antique doo-dad” the table itself? How does one break a table? Wouldn’t even gluing a broken table-chunk back onto the table leave a visible seam? Does Jughead not know the world “table”? — and just point out that Archie really can pull off those skinny plaid yellow pants, though pairing them with the baggy sea-foam sweater is a bit suspect.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/2/13

Oh hi there, would you like a little secret illegitimate daughter in your grueling stroke recovery storyline?

Family Circus, 2/2/13

I genuinely love how unimpressed Jeffy is by Dolly’s dramatic theological musings. “I don’t know much about celestial courtesy, girl, all I know is that I just ran out of clean tissues and your shirt looks awfully inviting.”

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Archie, 1/30/13

OK, when it comes to “what year are the Archie reruns from, and what weird violence has been done to the text and art to make them seem vaguely contemporary,” I … I don’t even know anymore? Like, obviously there’s some kind of chronological discontinuity going on here, or else why would Veronica, in a public place, call Archie “on his cell” from what appears to be a wall-mounted pay phone? And yet nothing about the joke makes sense if Archie doesn’t have a portable phone-type device on him. My guess is that in the original version of the strip Archie had a pager, which puts the date probably in the late-ish ’90s. Because there was this whole trend of kids having pagers then, right? Am I remembering that correctly? Or maybe Archie is a drug dealer? And this is why Reggie didn’t sell out Archie immediately, as he normally would, because now he and Archie and Jughead are in a drug gang? The least terrifying drug gang in America?

Gil Thorp, 1/30/13

Have you ever looked at your hand? Like, really looked at your hand? Like, really examined all the weird nubs and fleshy protuberances, and imagined high-fiving someone with an identically freaky hand, big paws just slapping all meatily together, and gone into a gibbering fit where you want nothing so much as to saw your hands off at the wrist, so you never have to look at them again?