Post Content

Family Circus, 7/24/08

They say that smell is strongly associated with memories, and when she got just the faintest whiff of mimeographic fluid from the papers she kept in the chest, suddenly she was twenty-one years old again, and working as an assistant in that downtown office. There weren’t many women in business jobs in those days, but her boss, Mr. Franklin, seemed to take her opinions about things seriously. They spent a lot of time in his office, talking about sales strategies and advertising, and somehow she barely even noticed it when it became something more — something much more — than just a business relationship.

He told her he’d make her part owner of the company, told her that they’d travel around the world together, to London and Buenos Aires and China — but in the end, she couldn’t see herself living that life. Despite so badly wanting to say yes, she turned in her resignation, and Mr. Franklin accepted it, looking like a broken man. She married that boring but reliable boy from her high school class, the one that she knew would be a good provider, and would help her raise children, and grandchildren … grandchildren … moronic, melonheaded grandchildren … Jesus, what were they rambling on about over there? If she heard one more basic piece of English vocabulary mangled by one of those little genetic rejects, she swore she’d take a belt to them … anyway, the mimeograph sheets were nothing important. Some reports, about what she couldn’t even remember — they were just what she happened to be holding when she walked away from Mr. Franklin for the last time. She put them back in the box, carefully, knowing that she would inevitably come back to them again.

“Whatever they are”? Christ, usually the oldest one at least could muster something close to a pun at least. She imagined that nobody in Buenos Aires had even heard of “Ida Know” or, God help her, “Not Me.”

Crankshaft, 7/24/08

“Josh,” people ask me, “what keeps you reading comics that you obviously don’t like, day after day, for your entire life?” Well, sometimes you have to seize on to small bits of hope, no matter how unlikely they seem. For instance, I know that every day when I turn to Crankshaft, I’m probably going to see pettiness and anger and mean-spiritedness and quiet despair. But now I can say to myself, “Hey, maybe today’s the day when Crankshaft’s horrible yuppie neighbor is finally going to go on that killing spree with his hedge clipper.”

Momma, 7/24/08

This is Momma. The title character’s interaction with her children will make you profoundly uncomfortable. It’s a real comic strip, that runs in the newspaper, where everyone can see it!

Post Content

Mark Trail, 7/15/08

I knew there was something missing from this storyline, and at long last we have it: a heavily armed Cherry Trail! Once she fells the charging moose with her shotgun, it will obviously be time to turn her weapon on the woman who’s tormented the whole expedition with her antics. Then comes the shallow grave, and the Oath of Silence.

Crankshaft, 7/15/08

OK, I’ve come to terms with the fact that we will occasionally be reminded that the Duncans (of Zits) enjoy getting their legally-sanctioned marital freak on, and that the Forths (of Sally Forth) are actually experiencing the joys of intimacy more frequently than usual, what with the baby-making attempts and all. But … but … please don’t make think about the ’Shaft-in-laws getting it on mopily, their owlish glasses clinking against each other as they do it, OK? Please? Please?

Cathy, 7/15/08

July 15, 2008, will go down in history as “the day we saw Irving’s ass crack.” Will the interminable and all-too-frequent “Irving and Cathy try to sort their digital photos” strips be made somehow more palatable, or at least more intriguing, by the knowledge that Irving probably isn’t wearing any pants while they ACK at their laptop? Does the fact that he isn’t wearing pants tells us something about the content of those digital photos? The mind boggles.

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 7/13/08

Justice for Cassandra! There’s nothing illegal about walking your dog in painfully high heels and a ludicrously short skirt, and there’s nothing illegal about huffing glue and rooting around in the back seats of taxicabs to see if anyone left anything valuable there. If you don’t want your precious gems studding the collars of local pets and/or S&M bottoms, you should probably keep better track of them.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: the fact that there’s a mouse crawling around on the back of the dog owner in the top Six Differences panel, or the many unsettling possibilities as to where that mouse might have gone in the bottom panel.

Judge Parker, 7/13/08

“Sam and Steve shop for golf clubs,” scheduled to run for the six to eight weeks, will make you long for the days of such exciting Judge Parker fare as “Raju gets a makeover,” “Marie sprains her ankle,” and “Sophie recites global warming data she found on the Internet in an unsettling monotone.”

Crankshaft, 7/13/08

It’s nice to see Crankshaft trying to fill the void left by the departure of They’ll Do It Every Time, but the execution seems to lack a certain zing.

Dennis the Menace, 7/13/08

“Meditating” = “high as a kite,” obviously.