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Mary Worth, 9/10/14

While I was busy voyaging across America, Uncle Lumpy kept you appraised of important developments in the story of Mary Worth and Olive The Special Sensitive Child: specifically, that Mary told Olive she should believe hard in her most powerful delusions, and then provided some weird pseudo-biological justification for this insane advice. Now Olive is laughing it up about the supposed “second brain” in her “tummy,” but I feel it’s important to make clear that Olive doesn’t have some bundle of nerves sending her crude flashes of insight from her torso; she receives literal divine messages from actual angels. Is Mary committing blasphemy against the Almighty by tricking His prophet into believing in a mundane explanation for His messengers? Or is the strip endorsing the bicameral theory of mind, with Olive slipping slowly out of the mental state of our distant ancestors and reconceptualizing her “visions” as part of her own consciousness and not from a separate being? Either way, it’s terribly sad.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/10/14

I mean, I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise, given the extremely low levels of educational attainment in Hootin’ Holler, but this school scene is extremely sad. Note that only two of the students have writing implements — not that that matters, as there’s nothing available to write on, and they’re presumably just serving as a talismanic reminder of the bygone era, several generations back, when they lived in a literate society. The Holler’s parents should be angry at the guv’mint, what with its complete abandonment of its mission to educate everyone, even those in the nation’s poorest communities.

Dennis the Menace, 9/10/14

Wait, does Joey have a … little sister? I can’t remember seeing anything about his home life, ever. I choose to believe that instead Dennis and Joey have, in a vaguely menacing fashion, just shown up on a neighbor’s doorstep and demanded to hang out with their toddler. “C’mon lady, let us in, we have a truly hilarious bit of wordplay planned but we need your kid as a springboard for it.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/19/14

Man, check out how depressed Lureen looks in this strip. An expression of lack of romantic interest in a particular gentleman shouldn’t be producing such distress, but her odd statement in panel two perhaps gives us a clue as to what’s going on here: she’s required to date every living Earth-dwelling human, no matter how objectionable, possibly as the result of some backwoods curse or hex.

Hagar the Horrible, 8/19/14

Sorry, Hagar! You chose to court a sea-creature based on her semi-human appearance, only to discover that she finds you distasteful! Meanwhile, Lucky Eddie is about to have enthusiastically consensual sexual relations with that lusty octopus. Eat your heart out indeed!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/7/14

When Snuffy goes to play cards, we usually see aces sicking out of his hat or various other parts of his clothing, and I’ve always assumed that we aren’t supposed to take this literally — that is, these cards aren’t actually visible to the other characters; rather, it’s a symbolic tip-off to the reader that Snuffy is a swindler. I certainly hope that’s the case, anyway, because otherwise Snuffy is laughing in his best friend’s face about looming domestic discord, and not even hiding the very large and dishonest role he played in precipitating the crisis.

Dick Tracy, 8/7/14

Sure, Dick is on a mysterious island that’s only a day or so drive away from Neo-Chicago and may have been mysteriously sent back into the past, and that’s all totally realistic, but there’s an obvious plot hole here, which is: wouldn’t he have sent an email to his wife at some point? Well, she couldn’t get email because their ISP had a virus, OK? Problem: solved.

Gil Thorp, 8/7/14

Just last year Gil Thorp made a delightful return to its usual insane summer storylines with a tale of Gil’s creative collaboration with a senile pro wrestler, which makes this summer’s plot all the most depressingly banal by comparison. There’s a star quarterback who might be considering coming to Milford? That’s it, that’s literally it, and today, in what’s definitely a shocking twist, he falls down and twists his ankle while trying to fish his phone out of his pocket. Can you taste the thrills? Still, let it be a lesson to you: cargo jorts aren’t just hideous, they’re actively dangerous.

Herb and Jamaal, 8/7/14

Herb’s pal Ernie is trying to open up and give some real talk about tough time’s he’s having in his life! Herb replies with a mean, corny joke, because he’s terrified of intimacy, and is also kind of a dick.