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Apartment 3-G, 2/23/12

Since Nina has agreed to be her husband’s smoke-filled incubator and nothing more, he’s left with the responsibilities of tricking out the future kid’s nursery, and as someone with external genitalia is obviously totally unfit for the task. Look at the little lost lamb, wandering around Manhattan with a giant stuffed bear, mewling for help! If you didn’t know anything about these characters, you might imagine that this is the start of some sort of sexy sex affair between Scott and Margo, but since this is Margo we’re talking about she’ll probably just end up berating him again like she did in 2006:

Haha, how much do I love that panel? A lot, is how much!

Archie, 2/23/12

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny that hockey goalies wear masks that make it difficult to tell who they are, despite the existence of other cues such as height and build, but I think we’re all missing the important point here, which is that Coach Kleats thinks that saying “Now I really want you to block that goal” imparts useful information about goaltending. I mean, I know what with the budget cuts he’s got a lot on his plate, but sure he could do a little online research and come up with some slightly higher-level jargon?

Mary Worth, 2/23/12

Oh, man, can we count all the amazing things in today’s Mary Worth? Let’s start with the classic word-sequences-that-would-never-be-uttered-by-humans “middle-management sales” and “I still can’t believe the events that led to Nola’s promotion!” Then there’s our male gossip’s hilariously exaggerated gestures and facial expressions; he appears to be auditioning for a nonexistent vaudeville revival circuit, in his mind. And of course there’s also his female counterpart’s bright blue hair, framing her sad, worn-down face. Probably she dyed her hair blue six years ago when she got this corporate job, as a last act of defiance to reaffirm her identity as someone vaguely cool; and yet here she is, having kept that color more out of habit than anything else, carping pettily about the new vice president of sales, without a hint of irony. These people deserve Nola, is what I’m saying.

Spider-Man, 2/23/12

Man, I wish I could get people to start referring to my naps as “the fabled Josh-sleep.” None would dare wake me then!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/27/12

Aww, isn’t that sweet? Hootin’ Holler must be the most loving, romantic community on the entire planet. I say this because Barney Google and Snuffy Smith characters wag their tongues and roll their eyes constantly. Look, they’re wagging their tongues right there in the second panel, as they’re talking about people wagging their tongues! I’m glad to learn that these are symptoms of an overabundance of affection, as I had assumed that residents of Hootin’ Holler were just prone to seizures due to some combination of inbreeding and malnutrition.

Archie, 1/27/12

As noted, the current run of newspaper Archie strips consists of reruns from the ’90s, which is fairly clear when you have it pointed out to you. But never let it be said that Archie Comics is simply digging out strips at random from its no doubt enormous archives (side note: I dearly hope that Archie Comics refers to its archives as “the Archie-ives”) and mails it out to the syndicate. No, first they have some entry-level employee make sure there aren’t any blatant anachronisms in the strip and quickly fix them. Fun game: what non-Glee TV show do you think Mr. Weatherbee was originally referring to in the third panel? I’ll bet its name is significantly longer than four letters!

Dennis the Menace, 1/27/12

Dennis seems to think that his baby sitter will find his mastery of bound morphemes menacing! Sorry, Dennis, but this is not the case.

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Archie, 1/26/12

I don’t know why, but Jughead’s statement that “a lot of famous people take naps” really bothers me. I mean, I guess strictly speaking it’s almost certainly true, as a nontrivial portion of the human race takes naps, and celebrities are humans, but is there anyone who’s actually famous for their napping? (Rip Van Winkle doesn’t count.)

I’m also unsettled by just how vigorously Jughead is laughing in the final panel. It reeks of desperation. “HA HA HA HA TRIGONOMETRY HA HA HA NAPPING HA HA HA but seriously I need to take a God-damned nap right God-damned now.”

Ziggy, 1/26/12

If you weren’t repulsed by Ziggy before when you thought he was just bald, are you repulsed by him now that you know that his smooth, pasty flesh is completely hairless? Do you think he scoops up big piles of dog hair and makes wigs and merkins for himself, of varying styles? Will you ever be able to stop thinking of it again?