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Apartment 3-G, 11/2/10

Oh, say, what’s that on Iris’s left hand, which is being thrust meaningfully into our faces in panel two here? It sure looks a lot like a wedding ring to me. It seems that her projected image as a wacky, carefree aunt who (in the words of Sunday’s strip) has “adventures” instead of the “homes and families” other people have, is fake, and she is in fact nothing but a common married person. Her vaguely hipster glasses and all her talk about partying in Paris with the Situationists and ’68 are nothing but lies, and she certainly isn’t heading to some kind of bedbug-infested hostel in Bed-Stuy; she’s probably taking the train back to her suburban cul-de-sac in Connecticut, ready to curl up on the couch with her husband Irv and watch whatever iteration of NCIS is on tonight.

(Sorry, this is just my attempt to drum some interest up in this boring storyline. EVEN THE WORST SCANDAL I CAN COOK UP IS INHERENTLY BORING. IT IS IN FACT ABOUT BORINGNESS.)

Crankshaft, 11/2/10

Ha ha! Crankshaft and his old buddies have no idea that it’s already November, and that it’s election day today! They’ve probably been sitting in that booth, muttering nonsense, for days now. Nobody has come looking for them, because they’re all unlikable.

Actually, for once I can’t suspend my disbelief at this strip. Old people never forget to vote! It’s what they live for!

(And if the mere mention of “voting” has inspired you to go off onto an election-related rant, I urge you to do so over here, instead, on last election’s thread.)

Mary Worth, 11/2/10

Mary, Adrian’s heart is telling her that she should obsess endlessly over every little detail about other people’s opinions, because she can’t function unless someone is telling her what to do. She can’t stop thinking about the opinions held by other people! Honestly, it’s like you don’t even know her.

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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.