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Panels from Mary Worth, 10/31/10

After a lunch spent mostly insulting and undermining Adrian, Jill leaves for an appointment, but the Sunday throwaway panels thoughtfully give us a glimpse of her as she walks away. Curiously, as she leaves the restaurant, her face melts from the cruel mask she’s worn throughout this episode into the dead-eyed, plump-lipped look of vagueness more typical for women in this strip. Could it be that she’s been cast into the role of emotional abuser against her will? That the masochistic Adrian pays her for the public insults and cruelty to satisfy some sick urge that her “perfect” husband-to-be Scott can’t know about? And this has been going on for months or years? No wonder she looks so exhausted in that second panel.

Panel from Marvin, 10/31/10

Just about all comic strip text is done on computers these days, so the strangely smaller font on “little candy extortionists” is probably just a lazy way for the artist to cram the words into the space available instead of rewriting or redrawing. Still, it does give the impression that something’s been changed at the last minute, and I sincerely hope that this word balloon originally ended in two or three of the foulest cuss words you can imagine.

Crankshaft, 10/31/10

The most horrifying thing any inhabitant of the Funkyverse can see is of course a member of the medical profession, since they will be spending their last agonizing months of life in a hospital, and sooner rather than later.

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You almost certainly have noticed that King Features has washed its comics in pink today in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month! How has our favorite art form managed to acknowledge this important issue in the context of its usual light-hearted fare? Let’s take a look!

Rhymes With Orange and My Cage, 10/10/10

Rhymes With Orange is, as near as I can tell, the only strip with the guts to do an actual joke about breast cancer. My Cage at least attempts a Breast Cancer Awareness meta-joke.

Marvin and Curtis, 10/10/10

Some strips did a half-hearted job of trying to explain why they were all pinkish without acknowledging the “you or your loved ones might get terrible cancer” subtext. For instance, Marvin’s parents are apparently giving him psychoactive drugs, and Curtis is attempting to up his enjoyment of ladies’ church hats by literally viewing them through rose-colored glasses.

Apartment 3-G, 10/10/10

Mostly, though, the creators just churned the strips through a Breast Cancer Awareness Photoshop filter, shoehorned a pink ribbon in wherever it would fit, and went about their business. This sometimes had awkward results. Here, the ribbon of female solidarity silently shames Lu Ann and Margo, who are engaged in petty intragender squabbling.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/10/10

Breast Cancer Awareness Month had the bad form this year to fall smack in the middle of Rex Morgan’s attempt to raise awareness of prostate cancer. At least the pink ribbon had the good sense to not float right next to June’s word balloon in panel one, stealing its awareness-raising thunder. Still, the noble ribbon is oddly juxtaposed with the mayor’s final-panel threat to decapitate whoever is raising awareness about his own personal tumor-ridden prostate gland.

Blondie, 10/10/10

Blondie deserves kudos for not simply slathering Pepto-Bismol all over everything but rather integrating pink relatively tastefully into the color scheme of the Sunday strip.

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 10/10/10

Shockingly, the Winkerverse strips are mostly pink-free, though Funky Winkerbean did pair up the boilerplate “Cartoonists Care” ribbon with a hand-drawn “Lisa’s Legacy” ribbon, as if to say “We don’t need to do this crap because we own this issue. We are aware of cancer and suffering and pain 365 days a year, to the exclusion of all else.”

Spider-Man, 10/10/10

And, of course, Spider-Man ignored the campaign completely, the better to reflect Peter Parker’s longstanding tradition of just stone cold not giving a shit.

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Family Circus, 10/9/10

Thanks to the many faithful readers who took time out of their busy weekends to email me the great news that millions of dollars are going to be spent creating a Family Circus movie. (The comments on that story I linked to are actually pretty great, my favorites being “Hell yeah! This means The Lockhorns can’t be far behind! Team Loretta!” and “Who asked for this? Ida Know. Who wants to see it? Not me.”) Apparently the strip is already moving into the edgier subject matter that Hollywood demands, with Dolly coming to the conclusion that her only way out of the Keane Kompound is as a child bride.

Crankshaft, 10/9/10

If the endless “Pam and Jeff reminisce about the violence Crankshaft has done to the English language” strips had to end — and, really, they could have kept at it for as long as comic strips continue to exist as a medium, as far as I’m concerned — then this is a pretty good way to wrap it up. Our two protagonists, having briefly rediscovered the emotion that normal humans call “happiness,” cringe in terror as they realize that Crankshaft’s soul, having been rejected by both God and Satan, has returned to his mortal form.

Beetle Bailey, 10/9/10

Honestly, there really ought to be someone employed at Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC whose sole job is to pose this question before the day’s Beetle Bailey is sent to papers. “Is this somebody’s idea of a joke? I mean, would any of our readers recognize this is a joke, or something resembling a joke? We are still doing strips with jokes in them, right?”

Mary Worth, 10/9/10

“Some people at the hospital use another word for her! Or, wait, ‘war criminal’ is really two words, isn’t it?”

Adrian sure is setting Mary up to hate and fear this “outspoken” “type A” lady. One can only imagine what sort of terrible description of Mary she’s been giving to Jill. I’m starting to guess that she’s doing the meddling biddy equivalent of putting a couple of bugs in a jar and shaking it up.

Spider-Man, 10/9/10

“Oh, right, because I’m a terrible actress. God, this play is going to flop! The boos will be deafening!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/9/10

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: Six to eight weeks worth of plotlines in which Tommie is not deemed interesting enough to appear.