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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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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!”

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Archie, 7/21/12

Whenever a pretty girl walks by, Archie is so consumed by lust that he can’t even feel, say, a weed-whacker cable tearing into the flesh of his shin.

Spider-Man, 7/21/12

Haha, Spider-Man is super-worried that Clown-9 is bent on revenge against MJ’s dumb unwatchable play, when really he just wants to steal money and get drunk like a normal person.

Ziggy, 7/21/12

Ziggy’s plan to shame-binge on fun meals has been foiled.

Apartment 3-G, 7/21/12

“Gasp!! They know my real name! I’m going to have to kill all of them!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/21/12

Oh, the Morgans have more than $10,000 in “bug-out money” just lying around the house, by the way.