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Herb and Jamaal, 10/31/14

It’s true: feelings can be tricky! Like, for instance, you may feel close enough with your best friend to just ask him about his current emotional state with a new love interest: a pretty intimate question! And yet even so, you might be embarrassed to admit that you like to weave elaborate water-metaphors about feelings, and so instead of sharing them with him and risking embarrassment, you just lean on the counter and smile to yourself, imagining those emotional waves crashing over your head. Don’t tell him what you’re thinking. He can never know.

Blondie, 10/31/14

I guess what bothers me about this is that Dagwood thinks he needs to add a jack o’ lantern to this costume to make it Halloweeny. It’s a costume. Costumes are inherently Halloweeny. Dressing in costume is pretty much what Halloween is about these days. You don’t need to gussy it up with Halloween iconography. Just dress up as a sexy slice of pizza and get on with it, already.

Heathcliff, 10/31/14

GOD DAMN IT

MUMMIES DON’T EAT BRAINS

YOU’RE THINKING OF ZOMBIES

YES THEY’RE BOTH REANIMATED CORPSES BUT THEIR MYTHOLOGY AND CULTURAL HISTORIES ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

MUMMIES PUT CURSES ON YOU AND … UH … SHAMBLE TOWARDS YOU MENACINGLY

AND I THINK THAT’S IT?

ALSO THEIR ROTTING FLESH IS COVERED WITH BANDAGES

DEFINITELY NOT THE SAME AS ZOMBIES, IS MY POINT

GET IT TOGETHER, HEATHCLIFF

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Heathcliff, 10/21/14

I genuinely love that Heathcliff’s owner-child has been so defeated by his cat’s weird, off-putting text-flag antics that he doesn’t even draw attention to them as he walks resignedly home. “Yep, that’s our house. The one with the cat outside it. The meat house. We’re the meat house today, I guess. Better than being the meh house. Yeah, meat, the house is like, made of meat, or full of meat, or something meat, I dunno. Do you wanna hang out together after school again tomorrow? No? That’s OK, I totally understand.”

Blondie, 10/21/14

I genuinely love how sad Dagwood looks in panel three. He’s never once stopped Elmo from just wandering into his house and doing whatever he wants, so presumably he’s bummed out because now his teenage daughter is going to be married to a prepubescent child and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Dick Tracy, 10/21/14

Having finally wrapped up its Little Orphan Annie crossover fake time travel story, Dick Tracy has clearly concluded that mid-20th century nostalgia is the core of its brand. So, why not just spend the next three to six months re-enacting all of Arsenic and Old Lace? I loved that movie, didn’t you?

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Blondie, 10/16/14

Amphetamine variants, across a socioeconomic scale running from meth to Adderall, are often used as productivity drugs: they focus the mind and, in the short term, make it easier for you to do work, especially work you don’t particularly want to do. By rejecting his friend’s offer of a little illicit worktime pick-me-up, Dag emphasizes his commitment to decadent leisure: as with food, his interest in drugs is entirely sensual, not utilitarian.

Spider-Man, 10/16/14

Last week Doc Ock skittered off from his penthouse lair to go enjoy the work of his earthquake machine … somewhere … else? “Somewhere else” turned out to be just straight-up chilling on his couch, presumably in a different lair, while his tentacles dangle forlornly, waiting for the artificial earthquake that never comes. Is he supposed to be watching TV? I bet he’s supposed to be watching TV. Everyone in this strip is always watching TV, all the time, and if there isn’t one there when you need it, it’ll just sort of appear, conveniently.

Marvin, 10/16/14

It’s pretty impressive that, in a strip whose punchline is that Marvin’s family is in such constant terror of his poops that everyone keeps careful track of his digestive velocity, the most unsettling part is actually his smug little smile in panel three. “That’s right, my bowel movements are so vile my own grandfather refuses to deal with them! Heh heh.”

Dennis the Menace, 10/16/14

The Mitchells have done the math and figured out that they can afford to meet their legal obligations as parents without interacting emotionally with their son at all! Look at them, smiling to themselves and not even making eye contact with him. Someone just found out what true menacing really is.

Archie, 10/16/14

Based on the sad, reverent way Jughead has doffed his cap, I’m going to assume that Archie died in the ring.