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Luann, 8/27/12

Good morning, everyone! I’ve returned from my week-long comics-mocking sabbatical, and what better way to jump right back into the icy waters three-panel laffs than today’s Luann? Yes, Brad DeGroot has at last come into his own, lounging about in his tough-guy tank top, showing off his biceps and his fire department tattoo, running a comb through his greasy hair. The effect is somewhat undermined in panel one because that tank top looks long enough to be a cocktail dress, but still, let’s let him have his moment.

Momma, 8/27/12

Now let’s swim into full-on horror by moving on to Momma! Today’s strip is fantastic because just when you settle into a nice bit of disgust at the phrase “seeing some other mother,” you realize Francis is emitting audible groans of satisfaction and you want desperately to return to a world where the worst you had to deal with was a little light Oedipal humor.

Blondie, 8/27/12

Dagwood’s look of befuddlement shows that there can still be surprises in a marriage that’s lasted more than 80 years, and that those surprises are terrifying. “Wait a minute,” he seems to be thinking, “I’m the one in this marriage who goes on ‘wacky’ food binges in a doomed attempt to fill the yawning emptiness inside me. If that’s not my role anymore, then what am I?”

Hagar the Horrible, 8/27/12

In an example of the meticulous attention to detail that has made Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC famous, the irony in Hagar’s statement is driven home by the blasted, barren landscape his savage warriors trudge across, all the crops having been burned during the course of his band’s predatory raid.

Crankshaft, 8/27/12

Oh, goody, there have been 25 years of Crankshaft, so we will now be treated to some Crankshaft flashbacks! Nobody, not even Crankshaft himself, thinks this is a good idea.

Pluggers, 8/27/12

Hey, all you fancy-pants city folks with your computers! A little girl can’t sit on the dog-goned Internet, now can she? Check and mate!

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Blondie, 7/24/12

I had always thought that, in the category of “Blondie gags that use fast-food ordering systems built into injection-molded plastic heads to demonstrate the workings of post-industrial capitalism,” we would never be able to beat “Say — then pay!” But you have to admire the pathos of the Buckaroo Burger mascot in panel two, spewing out corporate-approved and no doubt heavily focus-grouped cowboy lingo to nobody. Is there a real Buckaroo Burger employee somewhere in the bowels of this exurban fast food hellscape, being paid minimum wage to bark ahistorical nonsense into a microphone until he loses his mind? Or is it all just a recording, a computerized voice sailing unheard into the open air, raising tree-falls-in-the-forest philosophical questions?

Archie, 7/23/12

Teen couples have been watching scary movies so as to excuse fear-based snuggling since the beginning of cinema. The real question Betty ought to be asking Archie is why he was so cheap and/or dumb to rent a mockbuster rather than the actual Wes Craven classic.

Apartment 3-G, 7/23/12

“I’m totally going to be hitting on dudes with heavily pregnant wives all the time now! The ladies forgive everyone in a wash of post-partum hormones, and the gents go off and be a dad right when they would otherwise start getting clingy and I’d need to figure out a way to let them down easy. It’s a win-win!”

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Blondie, 7/20/12

Because of my 100% total commitment to YOUR ENTERTAINMENT AND EDIFICATION, I actually determined, by looking it up on Wikipedia, that “Untold Stories of the E.R.” is not a made-up T.V. show but an actual program carried on TLC. This is how Wikipedia describes the show:

In this program real-life emergency room doctors tell about their most bizarre and puzzling cases. Typically these involve medical sabotage, violently or strangely acting patients, life-threatening injuries, or even situations in which the E.R. physician is too overwhelmed to handle the caseload and can’t transfer responsibility for the patient to someone else.

Which is funny, because based on the dialogue we’re getting on-panel, I had assumed that it was carried late nights on Cinemax and every episode started with “Dear ‘Untold Stories of the E.R.’: I never thought this would happen to me, but…” and depicted people who came into the hospital with high fevers or head injuries quickly getting to third base with the triage nurse. I’ve also never seen “Cake Boss,” because we don’t have cable and also live in Baltimore and so are required to be loyal to the “Ace of Cakes.” Does “Cake Boss” involve the creepy eroticization of desserts? Someone involved in the writing of this dialogue really wants to fuck a cake, is what I’m trying to say.

Mary Worth, 7/20/12

I know I never unironically praise the art in Mary Worth, but I would like to unironically praise the art in today’s Mary Worth. I love everybody’s faces in panel one: the lady in the foreground and the ginger dude with the flapping hair are just going for flat-out screaming in terror, while the blondie lady with the pearls is thinking “I’m well-dressed and well-to-do, so nothing bad could possibly happen to me! I’m sure this will all work out fine.” Meanwhile, Wilbur looks genuinely crushed that he’s brought his only child on a doomed cruise that will kill them both, while Dawn just looks resigned and numb. Life is brutal. She already knew it.

The second panel is, if possible, even funnier. “Mama mia!” says the captain. (That’s a swear word in Italian, so they had to censor it.) “I didn’t see it!” He shakes his fist at whatever obstruction he just rammed the boat into. Meanwhile, his three assistants are standing absolutely still with neutral facial expressions, hoping nobody notices that they’re there.

Gasoline Alley, 7/20/12

I’m really kind of in awe of how long Gasoline Alley has managed to drag out its not-remotely-interesting-even-by-Gasoline-Alley-standards “Skeezix buys a new DVD player” plot. But I’m comfortable saying that it was all worth it, because it led to the sentence “Now to hook this baby up so we can watch some DVDs!” appearing in newspapers nationwide. The fact that it depicts an old man somehow managing to electrocute himself while hooking up composite cables is really just icing on the cake.

Apartment 3-G, 7/20/12

“Have you come up with a name for my granddaughter, Scott?”

“Not yet, Fred. I was hoping for a girl.”

“And how about you, Nina? Are you going to answer me in a way that indicates that you actually understood the question I asked?”