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Heathcliff, 1/16/13

IMPORTANT HEATHCLIFF NEWS, EVERYBODY! America’s second-favorite orange comic strip cat who’s kind of a dick is matching arch-rival Garfield by securing a CGI/live-action movie deal, and then one-upping the Monday-hating indoor-only layabout by also snagging a 13-episode animated TV series, both from “family-based production company Waterman Entertainment”. The news is on actual film industry insider blog Deadline Hollywood, so you know it’s true! Where “true” means “a Hollywood shell corporation has acquired the intellectual property rights necessary to create the aforementioned entertainment units, but actual filming is dependent on nailing down funding and will happen sometime between five years from now and never.”

There are definitely narrative difficulties in bringing Heathcliff to the big/small screens, and today’s panel offers a good example. No, not the burp joke; the entire 21st century film industry is built on burp and fart jokes. I refer instead to Heathcliff’s mute nature, which combined with his apparent literacy results in him holding up signs and flying flags inscribed with various messages. How will movie and TV viewers deal with a non-talking protagonists? Heathcliff artist Peter Gallagher earnestly told Deadline, “We want our existing fans to identify with the characters they know while introducing him to an entirely new audience. As a creator I know that [Waterman Entertainment] will be attentive to our lasting vision for the brand and welcome our input, which is very important to me,” which pretty clearly means that they won’t change a facet so central to the strip’s history as Heathcliff’s inability to spehahaha I can’t even finish that sentence because obviously they’ll just get some mid-range actor who needs work to do the voice, like they got poor Owen Wilson to do Marmaduke. Who’s going to voice Heathcliff, do you think? Chevy Chase? Chris Tucker? Owen Wilson again, because why not?

(By the way, all this important Heathcliff knowledge was brought to my attention by amazing Minnesotan comedian Brandi B., whose Twitter consistently breaks important Heathcliff news, like this movie/TV deal thing. She also got beloved The O.C. star Peter Gallagher to go on the record as saying that he is not the Peter Gallagher who draws Heathcliff. And she has a Heathcliff blog, of course!)

Crankshaft, 1/16/14

Oh, whoops, Mary isn’t freaking out because she drank Lena’s coffee; she’s drinking Lena’s coffee because she was already freaked out. I’d complain about the strip just showing us a bunch of people sitting around talking instead of actually depicting the events being described, but, you know, I’m not sure I’d actually want to see a child almost get hit by a car in the comics, so let’s just let it slide.

Apartment 3-G, 1/16/14

Ha ha, it is very romantic, if by “romantic” you mean “a fairly glaring sign that your supposed beloved’s intentions are not what they seem.” Are Tommie and her mom being taken in by a handsome pair of con artists who will win the ladies’ hearts, gain access to their bank accounts, and then vanish into the ether after having spent the bare minimum of time with them? One can only hope!

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Crankshaft, 1/13/14

One of Crankshaft’s beloved/tiresome running gags is “Lena’s snack food is extremely poorly prepared and thus largely inedible,” but I don’t particularly remember her coffee being a punchline before. At first I thought it was the same gag, but note that Mary is taking another deep swig even after having spun into pin-eyed freakout mode in panel one. Clearly, while Lena’s brownies are dangerously unchewable, Lena’s coffee is dangerously addictive, with only a single sip of the pure stuff capable of turning you into a mindless junkie, drinking huge gulps even as your mind turns to mush.

Blondie, 1/13/14

Boy, Dagwood looks awful cheery for a guy who knows he’s going to die at five o’clock today! One can only assume that he has this attitude because he’s chosen this death; probably it will take the form of a spectacularly gory and public suicide capping off a killing spree in the office he hates so much. But as a final fuck-you to his employer, he’s going to dick around on the Internet on the company’s dime all day before he murders everybody.

Archie, 1/13/14

Mr. Weatherbee’s thousand-yard stare in panel two is the proper result of sudden, terrible knowledge: he realizes that we are well into the second generation of food’s transformation from a craft to commodity. Soon nobody left alive will remember a meal that was formed by your own hands or the hands of someone you loved. Whether or not we have any particularly fond memories of family dinners from our childhood, the marketing construct of “Just like mom used to make!” is so embedded in our brains that we’ll repeat it to each other endlessly as we scarf down machine-shaped corn byproduct extrusions dusted with MSG flavor crystals.

Apartment 3-G, 1/13/14

I’m not sure what’s sadder: that Margo doesn’t know anything about Tommie’s car situation, despite the fact that she’s her roommate and ostensibly one of her closest friends, or that Tommie thinks she can drive to England to see her fiance.

Slylock Fox, 1/13/14

Oh my God … that Footprints Jesus poster … it’s really a crime scene

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Lockhorns, 1/7/14

For too long, the Lockhorns has offered us a fairly static view of the title characters’ squat, oblong bodies. Today represents a new artistic direction for this feature, akin to the first-person shooter genre that dominates the video game market. Why just stare at Leroy and Loretta making passive-aggressive remarks to each other or to their hapless acquaintances, when you can ride along on their shoulders and experience those whinges as if you were making them! Thrill as Loretta digs years back into the very earliest days of her marital disappointments and unloads her still shockingly raw pain on … some lady! Watch that lady’s face freeze into a carefully composed mask, to keep from bursting out laughing or bursting into tears! Can you live one panel a day as a Lockhorn and emerge with your sanity intact?

Mary Worth, 1/7/14

Ha ha, whoops, it seems that Mary has been so busy besotting Broadwayman Ken Kensington without any intention of reciprocating his feelings that she’s forgotten that she already has a handsome suitor whose feelings she has no intention of reciprocating! And now he’s back from Vietnam and wants to talk dirty. “What do you have on, Mary? Is every inch of you covered in loose-fitting dusty grape? Tell me everything.”

Crankshaft, 1/7/14

“It will cover our town with a toxic chemical layer that will induce convulsions in most any living thing it touches — pets, children, the elderly and infirm. Even the young and strong who escape its immediate effects will carry the terrible poison in their bodies, shaving years off their miserable lives. The question is, ladies, how serious are you about getting rid of weeds? Do you have the guts to follow this through to its logical conclusion? We must die so our perfect lawns might live!”

Apartment 3-G, 1/7/14

“Because if a woman’s sad, you know what she needs? A man! A man named Roy. Three cheers for men named Roy!”