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Archie, 11/3/10

So I think it’s important that we start asking ourselves what the deal is with Jughead and the homunculi. We all know that he keeps a tiny version of Archie, with its hands gruesomely removed, in his locker. Now we can see that a similarly stump-handed model of Jughead himself sits smiling on his bookshelf. Are these tiny figurines intended to represent the souls of Jughead and Archie? Does Jughead use them to manipulate their relationship, through ominous voodoo rituals? These are the sorts of questions that should be the root of the panic we see in Archie’s eyes in the final panel, but he appears to be more shocked that Jughead is working himself up into a frenzy by looking at hamburger porn on his laptop, when this ought not to come as a surprise to anybody.

Apartment 3-G, 11/3/10

Oh look, it’s Mrs. Bloom, aka the beloved crazy taser lady of six or eight storylines ago. Mrs. Bloom is excited about visiting her son in Florida, except she worries that she won’t be able to sneak her taser, which she’s nicknamed “Prissy,” onto the plane.

Beetle Bailey, 11/3/10

It appears that the Halftrack-bot needs a visit from the repair shop, because it’s disabled itself by humping the corner of its desk too vigorously.

Jumble, 11/3/10

As ever, I’m too lazy/dumb to actually do the Jumble, but I note that “IT’S ‘POISON'” fits nicely into the blanks of the answer and into the scene in the comic panel. Look at the ostentatiously casual way the waitress is checking out that customer out of the corner of her eye. Ha ha, that’s what you get for never leaving a tip, buddy!

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Archie, 10/25/10

The lame ostensible joke in today’s Archie is hardly worthy of mention, though I do like the all-purpose “ARCHIE DID IT” frame-up note Coach Whoever is holding in panel one. But I’m intrigued by the scene in panel two, in which we see that the Riverdale team mascot is so committed to his mascotting duties that he stays in his sweaty, claustrophobic fursuit even when there’s no game on and he’s trying to woo the ladies. Perhaps he’s been told that his eyes are his best feature, and he believes that their sexiness will be enhanced if his face is obscured by a fake dog-neck and only his eyes are visible, staring eerily out of an otherwise black slit. He is mistaken.

I suspect that he in fact is the one who framed Archie, since the strip protagonist’s well-known if incomprehensible sex appeal was probably ruining the chances of all the other male-types in the room. This strip also makes this episode from last year even less comprehensible, since the squirrel-man in the background there doesn’t even have the excuse of “Oh, I’m the team mascot” to exist. Perhaps at some point the school board decided that the “Dogs Of Indeterminate Breed” made a more menacing team avatar than the “Insanely Grinning Tree-Rodents.”

Apartment 3-G, 10/25/10

Clearly Tommie’s slightly different haircut is not enough to radically alter her personality, because Aunt Iris is here to loosen her up! This will be fun until we find out that Iris is actually in New York because her home’s been foreclosed and she’s one step ahead of her creditors.

Mark Trail, 10/25/10

While there is literally no way within the laws of physics as we know them to defend against Mark Trail’s fists, it’s actually quite easy to win a battle of wits against him, as he’s a semi-autistic with little understanding of how and why humans behave in the way they do. “What’s that, man who I punched in the face and publicly humiliated just days ago? You want to help me with something? That’s great! How helpful of you! Yes, I will meet you in the ambush-location of your choosing!”

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Gil Thorp, 10/23/10

So there’s multiple boring storylines going on in this fall’s Gil Thorp, most of which revolve around golden boy/team captain/foster child Cody Exner, who is selfless and noble and may be buying drugs down at the park in the middle of the night, who knows, probably it will end up being something stupidly innocuous. But today’s strip contains one of the most subtly hilarious panels in many weeks of Gil Thorp, featuring young Cody frolicking with his real, unfit parents. Look, mom is smoking! And dad has a damn ponytail! Monsters! Presumably Child Protective Services stumbled onto this bucolic scene mere moments later and whisked young Cody away to a better life, where tobacco is forbidden and no man’s hair extends below the collar.

It’s even funnier to imagine that Cody is buying drugs down at the park and this story about his parents is an improvised ruse, because that would probably mean that the “parents” in his vision are just his dealers.

Spider-Man, 10/23/10

There were some hints at the beginning of this storyline that the Mole Man was going to drag Aunt May down to his subsurface kingdom and make her his unwilling bride, and Spider-Man would be required to preform a certain degree of superheroics to rescue her. But now it looks like the subterranean weirdo and Peter’s aged aunt are going to embark on a wholly consensual romance, which means that the drama will involve Peter whining about having to go have dinner with them despite the fact that the Mole Man creeps him out. This is frankly much more this strip’s speed.

Archie, 10/23/10

Oh, God, those aren’t the eyes of an adorable and mildly mischievous tyke; those are windows into a soul of PURE EVIL. Leroy knows that what he’s done was wrong, and that’s exactly why he’s going to do it again and again.

But where will he find his bride?

Family Circus, 10/23/10

“How many sins must I commit before the voices in my head stop, grandma? HOW MUCH EVIL MUST I DO TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT?”