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Argh, those Sunday strips are so big! Let’s take them on in bite-sized chunks.

Apartment 3-G, 10/28/07

Yes, Ruby, and if your mad cosmetological skills don’t land you a hairdressing job, your mad unbearably-white-deployment-of-verging-on-outdated-slang skills should land you a role in that new off-Broadway production, Diff’rent Strokes: The Musical.

Panel from Beetle Bailey, 10/28/07

“I wish you got more to give me, Beetle. I wish you would just turn around and say ‘I love you, Sarge,’ never mind the consequences. But you don’t got the guts. So I’ll just stand here with my hand on your shoulder, your tight-football-pants-clad butt just inches from my crotch, for a few minutes. That’s all I’ve got. I wish I got more.”

Portion of the Family Circus, 10/28/07

I’m not sure which is more disturbing: the thought that daddy’s work pants are tattered and stained with cut-rate gin and urine, or the thought that daddy’s work pants are bright pink and end just below the bottom of his butt cheeks.

Panel from Mark Trail, 10/28/07

“Normal humans have nothing to fear from our friends the owls! However, horrible mutants — like this freakish, big-foreheaded specimen here — will be subject to vicious, merciless owl attacks. Remember, owls are your town’s first line of defense against mutant incursions!”

Panel from Mary Worth, 10/28/07

I guess those motion lines around Dr. Jeff’s head are supposed to indicate that he’s taking a deep, hearty quaff of whatever hard liquor he’s surreptitiously poured into his coffee mug, but they look more like bobble lines of shock and horror to me. Combined with his wide eyes, I imagine he’s thinking, “Wait, it isn’t? God damn it, woman, you know that if my son’s involved in this stupid comic strip, I need to show up in it every once in a while as well. Why can’t the plots involve Chinbeard and his trophy wife for once? Who are they sleeping with to get out of their contractually mandated number of appearances in this nightmare?”

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Archie, 10/22/07

Dear Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000: I realize that placing a character’s name in apposition with a role that character plays or a task he fulfills is a quick and efficient means to provide information needed to set up a joke. However, this grammatical structure is almost never used in actual conversation between humans, and it comes across as incredibly stilted. I don’t blame you for the mistake, as you do not actually communicate verbally with biological life-forms, but I would like you to file this away in your humor-generation ruleset.

Also, jokes about text messaging are not funny, and haven’t been since the end of a relatively brief window in the late 1990s. I can understand why the notion that transmitting data electronically could cause physical pain might seem incongruous and amusing to you, but trust me on this one.

Beetle Bailey, 10/22/07

Oh, this is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Don’t you believe it, Beetle! Every blow from Sarge’s fists is really a kiss that he can’t allow himself to give you.

Dennis the Menace, 10/22/07

“Especially since we put all those cameras in the basement and then locked him down there. Ha ha, look! He’s clawing at the door again!”

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Beetle Bailey, 10/17/07

Yes, thank goodness General Halftrack is keeping up with radical newspapers like Vorwärts and the Daily Worker to keep tabs on their stinging and remarkably specific criticisms of the quality of American general officers! By exposing the rot and incompetence at the upper echelons of the US military, they help forward the cause of proletarian revolution!

No, seriously, what the hell. My guess is that this cartoon is what happened when the whole ludicrous New York Times/MoveOn.org Petraeus/Betray Us kerfuffle managed to seep through the layers and layers of Out Of Touch that surround the Walker-Browne Amalgamated Funny Enterprises LLC compound. Though I’m guessing that if anyone bought a full-page ad entitled “General Halftrack or General Half Assed?” there wouldn’t be any kind of Congressional resolution condemning it.

On the other hand, Halftrack could be reading a radical right-wing newspaper, which puts a whole different spin on things. “Under Halftrack, Camp Swampy has sunk under the scum, his corps lousy with blacks, Asians, and homosexuals. Under his leadership, the army is incapable of bringing the cleansing fire to this nation that it so desperately needs!”

Momma, 10/17/07

This may mark me as a bad son, but when I see an (I assume) adult describe living at home with their dwarfish, clown-haired freak of a mother as “a spiritual and emotional pleasure,” I don’t think “happy, well-adjusted young man”; I think “budding serial killer.” More specifically, I think “pretentious budding serial killer.”

By the way, when I first saw this strip, I read the final word balloon as “–is that the same as ‘the pita’?” Which, frankly, is funnier than the actual punchline. The “pita” version isn’t actually funny at all, but the real gag is anti-funny, and zero is greater than a negative number.

Mary Worth, 10/17/07

If you’re not following along at home, yesterday Vera’s creepy, estranged brother Von bought her forgiveness with a check. We have to assume that it was large enough to overcome the huge chip on Vera’s shoulder; sadly, it was not an oversized novelty check that would have allowed us to see the exact amount. Anyway, I’m hoping that now desperate Drew is ready to resort to an overworked, overpaid, oversexed young man’s answer to any current problem, which is to throw money at it. I’m sure Mary will approve of Vera’s masterly techniques of holding grudges for fun and profit.