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Mary Worth, 12/20/07

Sadly, rules about depicting animal violence prevent us from seeing the bloody glory of this little-dog-on-littler-dog battle, but it’s obvious that Chester won, since his Margo Magee lookalike owner had to fish him out of the fighting pit. The motion lines in panel one also make it look like Mary just backhanded her nemesis in the back of the head for good measure. But for my money the greatest thing about this comic is the wordless exclamation point Mary is emitting in the second panel. It’s clear that nobody has told Mary that anything was her fault, ever. Watch out, fur-collared-coat lady! Mary got a bunch of her friends together to help her talk a guy into suicide once, and his crimes were clearly nothing compared to you attempting to cast blame on the Queen of Charterstone.

Marmaduke, 12/20/07

Marmaduke’s troubling slide into insanity accelerates. Never mind the fact that if Marmaduke wasn’t sitting, he’d just be running around and destroying things, and possibly humping his owner’s hapless guest; his sitting would probably be less intrusive if the various pieces of furniture in the living room were, you know, more than eight inches apart.

Crankshaft, 12/20/07

I’m always kind of interested in the flashback scenes in Crankshaft. This woman is (if I have the family relationships right, which I’m still not 100 percent sure that I do) the ’Shaft’s daughter, so it’s intriguing to see the man’s family when he was younger and maybe not so cranky and HOLY GOD WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT THING IN FRONT OF THE LITTLE GIRL’S FACE IN THE THIRD PANEL WHERE THE HELL IS HER MOM SHOPPING FOR ORNAMENTS HOLY CRAP!

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Slylock Fox, 12/9/07

Oh, Cassandra! Your attempts to snare Slylock’s heart grow ever more transparent — and ever more pathetic. “Accidentally” leaving the heel of your shoe behind? Come on. Staring brightly ahead as you wear that prim little pastel outfit isn’t going to fool anyone.

Getting a lineup together in world shared by many kinds of sentient animal life isn’t easy, but the crew assembled by Officer Duck today is particularly motley. The two creatures of indeterminate species on either side of Cassandra look like they’re hoping that this will be their big chance to break into movies, or at least reality TV. If I were Slylock, I’d start looking into the background of the elephant lady at the far right — she looks guilty as hell, and presumably has got some kind of home counterfeiting business or meth lab set up back at her trailer. The pink-haired bunny, meanwhile, is way, way too stoned to care.

(If you wish Cassandra would “steal some files” from your “office”, you obviously need some Bob Weber Jr.-designed Cassandra Cat gear from the Comics Curmudgeon store!)

Crankshaft, 12/9/07

You might chalk this up as a garden-variety generation gap comic, but with young chinbeard and his sister watching their parents turn into their grandparents and worrying about turning into their parents in turn. But recall that the grandparents in question are rageaholic Crankshaft and the somehow even more loathsome Ukrainian hate machine. The kids probably thought that they’d at last be free once their grandparents kick off, but now are worried about enduring their post-transformation parents. Junior is right to look so terrified.

Family Circus, 12/9/07

Note the bit that I’ve highlighted. Billy is clearly in the “Anyone but Obama” camp for the 2008 elections.

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 12/9/07

Yeah, osmosis! Osmosis and time travel.

(Yes, I know there’s a neo-swing scene that’s alive and well today in New York and elsewhere — but the kids today out doing the Lindy Hop tend to be young hipsters like these. Tommie and Gary are soooo very much not hipsters; and I don’t care how old they’re supposed to be, I refuse to even qualify them as “young”.)

Panel from Shoe, 12/9/07

It’s not like I’m in love with the word “barmaid”, exactly; I just think “bartenderness” sounds kind of creepy. “Come on, baby, I’ve been lookin’ at you all night; show me a little bartenderness.”

Site meta-note: I’ve decided that I’m going to start doing the comment of the week/ad love posts on Monday instead of Sundays. I often don’t even get to Saturday’s comics until Sunday, and doing the Sunday strips takes me longer than usual because I can’t easily see them all at once on the Chronicle site, so often doing blog work eats up a good chunk of what oughtta be a weekend day of rest and relaxation! So, Trilobite’s comment gets an extra day of glory thanks to the shift.

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Crankshaft, 11/2/07

I know that life in the now temporally disjointed Funky Winkerbean/Crankshaft space/time continuum is a nonstop parade of ghastliness, but I do thinks the expressions of shock and despair sported by the two poor saps in panel three are bit overblown. They look less like “contemplating yet another one of the ’Shaft’s asinine schemes” and more like “just freed from a multiday hostage ordeal.” Or, to put it another way, less like “contemplating yet another one of the ’Shaft’s asinine schemes” and more like “actually watching one of the ’Shaft’s asinine schemes put into action, only many small children have been tied to the tree limbs before it was set alight.” I guess the inhabitants Funkyworld are always imagining the absolute worst-case-scenario for their lives at any given moment, and with good reason.

Dennis the Menace, 11/2/07

Oh, ho ho! That Dennis the Menace! Mr. Wilson is a fat lump, and Dennis isn’t afraid to point it out! He has no sense of social propriety! Ho ho!

OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, please tell me the planet on which the following exchange would not be creepy and inappropriate:

Mr. Wilson looks disgruntled not because the neighbor brat has insulted his appearance (he’s sadly used to that by now) but because he’s suddenly realized that his increasingly senile wife has accidentally gotten out the “special” photo album. OH MY GOD MARTHA DON’T TURN THE PAGE!

Judge Parker, 11/2/07

Longtime readers of Judge Parker know that Sophie (here looking more disturbingly like a tiny monkey than ever) has a problem with voyeurism; recall this installment from one artist and 22 months ago (I think that works out to three days in JP’s internal chronology), in which Sophie gloats over having seen Neddy make out with her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. At least that was just good clean trembling-on-the-edge-of-puberty curiosity and fun, and neither of the kissees was married to her adopted mother. But don’t worry, Sam! Her lips are sealed! Now let’s talk about a raise in her allowance. Indian personal assistants don’t come cheap, you know.

(By the way, those of you who chortled at JP’s Raju storyline as unrealistic should probably read this.)

Marmaduke, 11/2/07

I’d really like to believe that the white band around Dottie’s waist is the broad white belt that the artist intended us to see, and not the result of her pants falling down so we can see her ass crack and garters. Really, I would. But somehow I don’t think I’m going to be able to pull it off.

On the other hand, I’m very pleased to see Marmaduke revealed as a three-headed demon hound.

Spider-Man, 11/2/07

I really am constantly impressed by Spider-Man’s ability to disappoint me. Just when I think my standards for the strip couldn’t possibly be lower, suddenly some new plot twist comes along to indicate that things are going to be much, much lamer than even I could imagine. Take the Persuader, here. When his upcoming appearance was hyped in a NEXT! box a Sunday or two ago, I was convinced that he was going to be a costumed supervillain of some sort — a spectacularly goofy one, to be sure, à la the Shocker, but a supervillain nonetheless. But now we see that he’s just a beefy guy in a suit. OOOH! He’s blows up newspaper trucks! He cleans his fingernails with a knife! He has a vaguely Hitler-esque haircut! SCARY!!!