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Family Circus, 8/16/13

I freely admit to being charmed by the little drama in today’s Family Circus. It is a story told almost entirely in facial expressions. Dolly and Jeffy are largely uninterested in where they eat, so long as they get to eat soon; PJ doesn’t really understand what’s happening, but he can feel the anger in the air, and it makes him sad; Ma Keane is upset both about the sassback she’s getting and about the fact that once again she’s been assigned the role of the enforcer. And then there’s Big Daddy Keane and his eldest son, the axis around which today’s story revolves. Far in the background, but still deliberately made very visible to us, Daddy is practically glowing. It’s because he’s looking forward to an entire meal of adult conversation for once, of course, but it’s also because he’s getting to watch Billy get put in his place. Billy, meanwhile, is just as aware of what’s going on. He glowers back at his mother, seething at his banishment to the kitchen. Alone among the Keane Kids, he understands that the seating arrangements are based on status, and that he has fallen on the wrong side of the dividing line. Someday he’ll be at the grown-up table, he thinks, and the grown-ups will all be shut up in a nursing home somewhere, unvisited and unloved. Someday.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/16/13

Finally, after showing the main characters lounging around in their underwear and threatening to show them in a bikini and actually showing them in a bikini and having them walk in on people wearing just a towel and order people to take their shirts off — finally the strip gets to depict a naked butt. Jokes on you, prudes! That naked butt is a naked statue butt, so it’s art. Can’t argue with art!

Crankshaft, 8/16/13

Crankshaft’s viscera are still bathed in enough bodily fluids to keep them functioning, in case you were wondering.

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B.C., 8/13/13

Prehistoric or not, it’s time to catch up when Prince Valiant beats you to a technology joke by two years.

Crankshaft, 8/13/13

“And by ‘great practice’ we mean ‘pointless and expensive truck rolls that put us at risk, endanger the public safety, and have had no effect on the frequency or recklessness of your life-threatening behavior.'”

“As part of your award, your family and the Montgomery County Court have arranged a special honorary bunk for you at, um, ‘Firehouse Manor’, where you’ll be on special honorary permanent assignment under the “Honorary Heroes” program, Ohio Revised Code (ORC) 5122.01(B). Your new Captain will give you additional orders on your arrival. Be sure to take all the vitamins she gives you so you can perform all your special honorary duties! Been great knowing you, gramps!”

Dick Tracy, 8/13/13

Dick Tracy‘s new creative team has been referencing, recapping, and extending old characters and plots all the way from the strip’s 1930’s origins through the Moon Madness of the 1970’s. Today’s second panel recaps the final episode before the team took over from Dick Locher in 2011: in it, Mordred tries to kill Dick Tracy in an abandoned granary but is eaten alive by rats before he can seal the deal.

So what happens now? Does the strip move forward from the present moment, with new villains to overcome and crimes to solve? Or does it start recapping the recaps themselves in an ever-tightening spiral until Dick Tracy shrinks to a single image, of a solitary rat nibbling on the last morsel of a villain, every day forever?

Heathcliff, 8/13/13

Heathcliff Moves On, Part XLIV: By car, scooter, balloon, elephant, and now by cannon, a cat’s gotta travel.

BOOM, I’m outta here — apparently, I’ve been selected for some sort of honorary program, and I don’t want to be late for my initiation! Josh returns Wednesday morning with more of the rich, savory comic goodness you’ve come to expect from the Comics Curmudgeon. Thanks!

–Uncle Lumpy

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Lockhorns, 8/4/13

Today’s multi-Lockhorns experience brings us the usual marital friction — Leroy is terrified about their finances, Leroy never fixes things around the house, Loretta packs too many things, Leroy is and always has been out of shape — but then we get to the bottom left panel. Pizza? What kind of monster doesn’t appreciate two large, piping hot pizzas? We’re expected to recognize this as another sad moment in the Lockhorns marriage? You’ve gone too far this time, Lockhorns. Too far!

Crankshaft, 8/4/13

Young Crankshaft is sad and lonely because all of his friends are off playing with other kids! Old Crankshaft is sad and lonely because all of his friends are dead.