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For Better Or For Worse, 8/22/08

A lot of my readers have been appalled by Ellie and Phil yukking it up as their father lies dying, but I think you’re missing some vital context here. This is For Better Or For Worse, where all emotions are expressed over three to five panels in the form of puns and wordplay. Making a little verbal jest, as our worried siblings do here, is the highest form of concern that anyone can express in this universe’s culture.

Ha ha, just kidding, they’re obviously terrible heartless monsters. Phil would probably be angry, but as his eyes in the final panel indicate, he’s completely baked. It’s a good thing he had time to freshen up his mustache wax before he got there.

Gil Thorp, 8/22/08

I feel like every time we see Jimmy (like here and here), he’s impossibly wide-eyed, intoxicated by either absolute power or angel dust. Today is no exception, and this comes after sitting through Elmer’s attempt to produce some kind of interminable Midwestern tribute to the work of Bela Tarr. The only way he should look like that after seeing nine hours of roadsides is if this is the kind of “roadsides” we’re talking about, and even then only because of the chafing.

The payoff here — that Jimmy will go to college because an older has-been never-was also went to college before embarking on a poverty-level semi-professional sports career — makes absolutely no sense, and is therefore the perfect capper to yet another Gil Thorp plot.

Mary Worth, 8/22/08

You may ask yourself: Why would a sexy, naturally hirsute man like Ian Cameron go through the discomfort and expense of waxing his prodigious belly so it’s all ultra-smooth? So that his wife can rub her be-swimcapped head all over it, naturally! These kids like to get freaky.

The only way my brain can accommodate the sentence “It’s never boring with you around, Ian” without exploding is to imagine that Toby is saying it an extremely sarcastic tone of voice. Or perhaps she’s pretending that she’s talking to someone interesting named Ian, like Booker Prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan or deceased Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis.

Archie, 8/22/08

Though the dialogue is ludicrous, I think the Riverdale gang’s expressions of stunned horror pretty accurately display the reaction you’d get if you brought a severed human head into a beloved teen hangout.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/22/08

This comic didn’t make me want to gouge out my own eyes at all, right up until the part where I saw the look of coquettish satisfaction on the cow’s face.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/10/08

Tarnation, look at the logo on that bag o’ grain on the porch in the final panel! It looks like Target, having saturated the suburbs with its big box stores, has decided to expand into America’s rural hollers and rustic shack-based communities.

Family Circus, 8/10/08

Oh, man, Mom, you do not want to look too closely at the front seat of that little car.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/10/08

I think it’s intriguing that what Summer took away from her mother’s message was not “Don’t get knocked up when you’re sixteen” but rather “Your dad has a good track record when it comes to dealing with teen pregnancy, so make sure he doesn’t die of prostate cancer before you inevitably get knocked up when you’re sixteen.” Nevertheless, in the first panel of the bottom row she does look appropriately horrified at the thought of her mom going at it with some dude in the back of a van.

Mark Trail, 8/10/08

OKAY, MARK, I’LL BE SURE TO INSPECT MY CAT FOR FLEAS! NOW CAN YOU PLEASE STOP SHOUTING?

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Sorry, I did not get a chance to pen my “What it’s like to be on Jeopardy!” epic today — sometime tomorrow, I promise, OK? Meanwhile, enjoy this fine comic commentary.

Mary Worth, 7/23/08

Dear creators and publishers of Mary Worth:

The following is a list of subjects that I never want to see discussed in your feature under any circumstances at any point in the future:

• Mary’s “tender bud”
• Jeff’s “dirty root”

If you must focus on an intimate part of someone’s anatomy, why not do a sequence on the ass of the gentleman walking into the Bum Boat ahead of our reunited lovebirds? You’ve featured it prominently enough, and anyone who wears jeans that color probably wouldn’t bother with pretentious, repulsive plant metaphors.

Apartment 3-G, 7/23/08

“And then — and only then — I’ll let him see me with the top button of this shirt unbuttoned.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/08

Haw haw! Hillbillies live surrounded by piles of their own garbage!

Marmaduke, 7/23/08

Marmaduke doesn’t consider a shoe to be a “prize” unless there’s still a human foot inside of it.