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Mark Trail, 8/7/13

The cruelty of Nature is well documented, but the cruelty of Mark Trail, Man of Nature, retains its power to shock. Blissed-out Rusty nurses his otter and dreams of fishing, but mere days from now he will have neither otter, nor fishing, nor any last shred of hope. Mark just twists the knife, while Andy’s mind is all on dinner. Say — maybe they’ll have fish!

Beetle Bailey, 8/7/13

In the grip of his alcoholic hallucinations, General Halftrack misinterprets Lieutenant Fuzz’s invitation to Where the Wild Things Are costume sexplay. Lt. Fuzz takes it as a rebuff and retires to his quarters for another long night of Patton, tears, and self-abuse.

9 Chickweed Lane (panel), 8/7/13

OK, I take back all the terrible things I said about the Not-Ardins’ mouths yesterday.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/7/13

Heather’s hissy fit reminds Rex what June has in store for him when he gets home. Four months wasted figuring out Milton’s vomiting might be something he ate, and no boat or free meal in it for them anywhere? And now he’s supposed to look into the Alzheimer’s thing, too? These wealthy, entitled jerks! Why, if Milton weren’t his only patient ….

Shoe, 8/7/13

Well OK on the face of it this is one of those “reverse-engineered from the punchline” jokiform utterances we see so often in Shoe, Archie, and Herb and Jamaal. A real-life bird-woman would say, “I surprised my husband in fishnet stockings”, but where are you gonna go with that when you’re on deadline and that tee-time is coming up fast, huh?

But on a deeper level, blondie here is being really unfair — I mean, sometimes a fella just wants to feel pretty, and pantyhose is gross in August and it’s not like I didn’t double-check to see what time you were coming back. Wait — HE! He didn’t check!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Heathcliff, 7/15/13

Last week’s Heathcliff fish joke, while well within the expected whimsy-parameters of an inoffensive long-running legacy comic, still adhered to a basic logic, that logic being “cats like stealing fish, to eat.” Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh? Or … maybe, as I imagined last week, we’re meant to interpret the fish’s open eyes as meaning that it is still alive, which makes its bemused facial expression all the more hilarious. “Oh, now the cat’s using me as a baseball bat. That’s fantastic, just fantaaaastic.”

Archie, 7/15/13

The current run of Newspaper Archie Reruns From The Late ’90s Or Maybe The Early ’00s has actually involved a continuing plot that’s running over multiple weeks, which is kind of a new one, though not new in the sense of these strips actually being new, obviously. Anyway, Ronnie’s cruel father made her get a job! Obviously this job just became another venue for her long-running battle with Betty over Archie’s dubious charms. Which I guess is bumming him out? Look at how miserable Archie looks in panel two! I’ve never seen him sadder! And this is before he finds out that Veronica is stalking him with potentially malicious intent. Maybe he’s just sad that she gets access to all that delicious ice cream and he doesn’t?

Beetle Bailey, 7/15/13

As we already know, Camp Swampy exists in an pocket universe in which a single, awful day keeps on happening, forever. Dimly aware of the nightmarish nature of his reality, Beetle is attempting, through this conceptual artwork, to convey the horror of his damned existence.

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Spider-Man, 6/18/13

True story: Once, when I was living in California, I got the time zone math backwards and called my dad and stepmother at 11 p.m. my time, thinking that it was 8 p.m. on the East Coast when of course it was 2 a.m., and naturally they were less than thrilled about this. I should add that this was after nearly four years of living on the West Coast, so it’s not like I had any kind of excuse. Anyway, what I’m saying is that MJ has been sitting by the phone with no doubt increasing amounts of irritation waiting for Peter call while he’s been screwing around on the beach or whatever, and maybe he shouldn’t sound quite so insufferably smug in panel two? I mean, MJ still probably wouldn’t want him to come back, seeing as she’s already changed the locks on the apartment and had his name taken off their bank accounts, but still, it’s poor form.

Crock, 6/18/13

I love that “HMO” is bolded in the last panel, just so we don’t miss the point. “Ha, this HMO is crueler than I am, and my notorious cruelty is central joke of the strip! HMO! Eh? Social commentary? Right?”

Beetle Bailey, 6/18/13

Specialist Chip Gizmo, the adorably nerdy character introduced to Beetle Bailey in 2002 to bring some techno-savvy to the strip, has built himself a sex robot with metal breasts and sharp, claw-like hands! If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend the rest of the day screaming now.