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Mary Worth, 12/2/13

As Mary Worth whines to Broadway has-been Ken Kensington about how she misses New York’s “former charm,” let’s do a little age-math, shall we? I have a strong memory (though I can’t find it now) of some official or semi-official King Features source describing Mary as “perpetually 60.” Maybe she’s a little older, but surely not past her mid-60s. Mary has said earlier in this storyline that she used to live in New York when she was a young woman; again the dates are fuzzy, but we can say with relatively certainty that this period in her life was somewhere between 30 and 40 years years ago. The years from 1973 to 1983 were, of course, the Taxi Driver/Bernie Goetz era in New York City, so you probably need to rethink whatever you were imagining when Mary wistfully recalled the city’s “former charm.” Presumably she’s one of those people who can’t go through Times Square without muttering about how it looks like a God-damn mall now that that asshole Giuliani shut down all the porn theaters. “After your experience with that mugger, it may be hard for you to agree!” “I’ll be okay, Ken. I’m shaken … shaken by how half-assed that mugging was. What self-respecting New York City thug would just give up when confronted by a portly actor? Why aren’t I lying dead in a puddle of my own blood right now?”

Heathcliff, 12/2/13

How exactly are those lids staying on the trash cans as the Garbage Ape swings them to and fro? Don’t those owls look like they were just cut and pasted from another drawing and plopped onto a picture of a pine tree without regards for what exactly might be holding them up? I hate to say it, but rampant Garbage Ape mania has upped the demand for this lovable/mysterious character so much that the strip is churning out some slapdash art to keep up.

Beetle Bailey, 12/2/13

Article 115 of the U.S. Military Code of Justice, “Malingering,” says that “Any person subject to this chapter who for the purpose of avoiding work, duty, or service feigns illness, physical disablement, mental lapse or derangement … shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.” So, good news for everyone who ever wanted to see Beetle Bailey locked up in a military prison. Camp Swampy is clearly not a “hostile fire pay zone” but I’m guessing that the military still considers us to be living “in time of war” for legal purposes, so he’s looking at three years of hard time!

Marmaduke, 12/2/13

Ha ha, look at how terrified that little blonde child is! “He’s heavy! So heavy! Heavier than anything alive from our space-time continuum has any right to be! You’ll die in agony, your bones crushed to powder under a pile of impossibly dense meat, all while he sleeps his ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep!”

Judge Parker, 12/2/13

“I don’t think it matters that we live in a world where mysterious, incredibly skilled black ops troops with no obvious allegiance to any nation-state can swoop into anywhere in the world, with tactical data gained from omnipresent and near-omniscient surveillance tech, and snatch up anyone they want, killing dozens of insurgents, criminals, and terrified bystanders in the process! Just don’t worry your pretty little head over the fact that unimaginable military power will protect you, so long as some member of the ultra-rich mega-elite takes a shine to you and orders your rescue on a whim! The important thing is that Ross is safe! You know, for now.”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/13/13 (panels)

What is the relationship between art and reality — among the dreamer, the dream, and the dreamed? Magritte gives us one viewpoint, Snuffy Smith another.

Snuffy reveals how the artist not only creates a work but selects its audience, source of his reputation and claims to authenticity. He is his own best example: once a mere usurper in Barney Google’s strip, he now asserts his own membership in the very elites who read his Sunday “throwaway panels” in their expansive flatlander newspapers or on high-falutin’ electronic devices. With a delicate hanky-dab at his nose, he rises — refined and redefined, “Snuffy” no more!

Judge Parker, 10/13/13 (panel)

Boy, this lady sure hates hats, doesn’t she?

Beetle Bailey, 10/13/13

You know, there are plenty of attractive and willing human partners around, like Sarge’s Sgt. Louise Lugg, Beetle’s Miss Buxley, and Killer’s groupies, but it’s all surrogates with these guys: robots, trees, and again with Beetle’s beloved pillow here. I’m just saying that’s kind of messed up.

Mary Worth, 10/13/13 (panel)

We had to wait a long time to see Mary’s head impaled on a fish, but I think we can all agree it was worth it.

Mutts, 10/13/13

Mooch ignores the comics’ prohibition of “FLICK” to imply that Earl has sex with his own parasites.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Slylock Fox, 10/6/13

There’s an awful lot of fun things going in today’s Slylock Fox — that “How To Draw” bull looks more exasperated than raging, for instance, and I’d dearly love to know what’s going on in the Six Differences, in which ordinary animals seem to be ganging up on a baffled Grimace-thing. But the best little detail is that Max Mouse is surreptitiously dialing 911 as Slylock outlines the ratiocination sequence that will convict Shady Shrew of larceny and assault. He knows Sly’s been pushed to the limits by Shady Shrew’s constant low-level criminality, and fears that this might be the day when, instead of handing Shady over to the owl-run justice system, the predator-detective will just grab the insectivore between his powerful jaws and shake him back and forth until his neck snaps. Even though they’re on different sides of the law, Max can’t stand to see his fellow small mammal go down like that.

Beetle Bailey, 10/6/13

Welp, Beetle Bailey is still fixated on sex robots, but at least this time they’re imagined as part of the camp’s chilly rationalist’s vision of a dystopian, dehumanized future, so I guess that’s progress?

Momma, 10/6/13

Haha, it’s funny because Thomas and Tina’s house is literally infested with vermin, augh augh augh augh