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Six Chix and Marmaduke, 10/5/11

I was pretty sure that today’s frankly S&M-themed Six Chix was the most perverse thing I’d see on the comics page today. Then I saw Marmaduke, and remembered that looking at Marmaduke is always like looking down a long, dark tube, at the end of which is the most terrifying hell you can imagine. It’s funny because he’s got melted-faced zombie Hitler on a leash, you see! Makes our cute li’l ginger dominatrix and her shirtless slave look positively wholesome.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/5/11

Speaking of unspeakable perversity, this strip would be bad enough if it were just about a pig who understood both English speech and the fact that she would be someday killed, dismembered, and eaten. But the fact that someone has added a prettifying bow to her head makes me all the queasier. Are we supposed to think that Lukey can’t bring himself to turn her into delicious pork because he’s bewitched by her beauty? What of the cheefully oblivious non-bowed pig who makes an appearance in panel two — does he know what awful things his fellow swine has to do, just to keep the two of them alive?

Slylock Fox, 10/5/11

2) The human hair that right now is lying on your head in a great, heavy heap is dead, dead, dead, and is basically a part of you that’s already a cadaver. Answer — 2) True! Your whole body is covered with death! Remember, kids, be sure you have plenty of Bactine on hand before you start screaming and pulling out all your corpse-hair in huge, bloody chunks.

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Gasoline Alley, 9/23/11

Wow, I’m pretty much in love with the way the word balloons in the first panel here are arranged. It’s too bad that it doesn’t really convey any meaning — Skeezix is no closer to the foreground of the frame than the innkeeper, and I don’t think he’s supposed to be talking over him — but the sight of the two balloons suddenly occupying real space, and lying at different degrees of depth from the viewer, is striking and beautiful just the same.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/23/11

It’s lucky for Lureen that Parson Tuttle is a notorious fraud without even the rudiments of a theological education, because I’d have to guess the a typical backwoods preacher in hill country wouldn’t take too kindly to devilish papist notions like “confession.”

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Momma, 9/8/11

The best installments of Momma (and by “best” I mean “most horrifying and unsettling”) are the ones where Momma feels compelled to meddle in the sexual lives of her children. Today we get a classic Momma euphemism (“I hope your vagina isn’t becoming too … involved, shall we say … with that Herby fellow’s penis”), which is always fun; but much better is the final panel, in which MaryLou, having suppressed the natural expression of her sexual feelings just long enough to get out the door, is convulsed by a full-body lust-spasm.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/8/11

Snuffy Smith has absolutely no achievements of note: he can’t hold down a steady job, he’s a notorious criminal, he survives only due to his poaching and petty theft, and he can’t even be bothered to help his wife with basic household chores. This all no doubt takes a toll on his self-esteem, so he’s looking for whatever glory he can get; unfortunately, the best he can do is try to claim (based on a vague similarity of his name to a common slang term) proprietary rights over the sort of low-level respiratory infection that is endemic to Hootin’ Holler due to the populace’s poor hygiene, which in turn stems from their refusal to acknowledge that flatlanders’ fancy germ theory of disease.

Gasoline Alley, 9/8/11

At long last, Skeezix and Nina have worked out their washer-dryer situation and are taking their long-awaited vacation! Day one: Some dude invites Sheezix to take a dump on his porch.