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Slylock Fox, 10/14/07

Hey, everybody! Cassandra’s back! She’s dressed sexily but still fairly demurely in her pedal-pushers and sensible sandals (though of course you can buy a t-shirt with her in a much groovier get-up). Today’s Cassie adventure reveals only the depth of Slylock’s total obsession with her. The poor cat’s barely gotten to the point of filling out her police report paperwork and the Fox has already broken and entered into her place, no doubt predisposed to ignore her plea to help. He probably moved the dust around just to spite her. And the “bad housekeeping” jibe is just cruel. She’s a sexy cat about town with a full social calendar, detective. Just because you have tons of free time to dust your place while fantasizing about gorgeous she-felines that no jail can hold doesn’t mean her life is snoresville.

Anyway, I hope that kids read this and learn how to perpetrate a successful insurance fraud. I also hope Max is enjoying his time staring at Cassandra’s ass.

Apartment 3-G, 10/14/07

Oh my God, Tommie made a funny! Mark your calendars, everybody!

I’m pretty much in love with everything about this strip, even though exactly nothing happens in it. I love Tommie’s little joke, I love the fact that Lu Ann and Tommie are fully dressed while Margo is just crawling out of bed (it’s probably 3:30 in the afternoon), I love the forceful period, a tiny black singularity of disgruntlement, at the end of Margo’s “fine” in panel six. I also love how damn happy Lu Ann is. She apparently is no longer concerned about her brain damage and resulting memory loss, although it’s possible she’s already forgotten about it. Based on her outfit, she’s also forgotten that she’s a big old prude as well.

Family Circus, 10/14/07

The self-referential causality loop that this strip is locked into is already a bit of a mind-bender, but what really pushes it over the edge is the little signature conversation at the bottom right. Daddy and Jeffy are having a nice little condescending put-down of moronic big brother Billy (who’s based on respected Disney animator Glen Keane). And then they use his joke anyway, while still pointing out that it sucks. It’s philosophical and dysfunctional all at once!

Spider-Man, 10/14/07

The world of journalism was shocked when Peter Parker, a virtually unknown freelancer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his “The Other America” series. But nobody who saw those photographs of the people standing in line to receive their unemployment insurance checks doubted that he deserved it. The range of expressions in the photographs — running the gamut from hopefulness to grim determination to despair to fear — was captured tenderly in what one critic called “an emotional tour de force.” So why, when Parker got on stage to accept his award, did he conclude his short speech by thanking J. Jonah Jameson? The pictures hadn’t run in the Bugle. Nobody at the awards dinner could understand it, though those sitting near the flamboyant flat-topped editor reported that he bit down particularly hard on his unlit cigar when Parker said it.

Crankshaft, 10/14/07

Hey, look, it’s Crankshaft’s ass! That’s what America wanted more of, apparently. Who knew?

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Crankshaft, 10/6/07

Wow, most comics characters at least make some sort of pretense of respecting religion and some vague concept of a Supreme Being, but Ed Crankshaft has officially added to his Most Cantankerous Comics Character Ever cred by sneering at the notion that any sort of just deity might respond to our pleas. Since he lives in a universe shared with Funky Winkerbean, in which characters are visited by afflictions both arbitrary (cancer, alcoholism) and ironic (hearing loss, limb loss) at a much higher than average rate, he’s obviously decided that begging his Creator for some droplet of mercy will only intensify the punishment to come. Still, the fact that he’s doling out his atheistic opinions to his fellow oldster, reading a book about prayer in a doctor’s waiting room and desperately trying to hold on to some thread of possibility for continued survival, reinforces the ’Shaft’s hardcore crank status.

Hi and Lois, 10/6/07

Of course, Crankshaft’s religious impulses may have been cynically flattened by cartoons like this. Remember, kids, if your congregation is large and wealthy enough to build an enormous, Medieval Times-inspired faux-castle for its church, its members must be one step closer to salvation! It just stands to reason!

Apartment 3-G, 10/6/07

Oh man, oh man, I am so looking forward to Lu Ann’s Adventures In Unrealistically Specific Memory Loss! Does she even remember that she’s an artist? Doesn’t she wonder why she’s an elementary school art teacher if not? Wait a minute — did she somehow manage to hold on to her art teacher job despite the fact the she presumably didn’t come to work in the weeks and weeks she spent barricaded in her carbon monoxide-filled art studio? Does she even remember what a “job” is? Is that why in the first panel she looks so baffled when Alan claims to have one?

Speaking of carbon monoxide poisoning — did anyone ever have words with the kindly studio landlord about the incredibly unsafe status of his building? I’m not up on New York landlord-tenant law, but surely the right to not be suffocated is at least implied in most commercial leases, yes?

Dick Tracy, 10/6/07

Good lord, I was really hoping that we wouldn’t have to look at the hideous visage of Dick’s commie nemesis anymore. But then I saw his weird, weird ass. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Dennis the Menace, 10/6/07

Dennis reducing his only friend to a urine-soaked lump of fear is pretty much par for the course for this strip, but I’m kind of intrigued by Henry’s little smile at the psychological hold his son has over his playmate. Presumably the Mitchells will spend this camping trip gaslighting Joey until he’s only fit for a locked mental ward. The only question: is there some financial gain spurring their cruelty on, or is it mere sadistic sport?

Mark Trail, 10/6/07

I haven’t been discussing Mark Trail much because it’s been so painfully moronic, but here’s the gist: Shirley the duck and her chicks, who have been saved first from bulldozers and then from (no, really) rain by Homer the construction foreman, Mark Trail, and some other chumps I refuse to go into the archive to identify, are now about to be eaten by this rather awesomely rendered fish. What lesson will we learn in the end?

• Sometimes nature itself can be crueler than the most rapacious developer.
• There’s no point in trying to protect the weak or care about anything; might as well give up and start drinking!
• Ducks are delicious, and baby ducks are especially delicious.
• Not even fish are safe from Mark’s patented Right Hook O’ Justice!

Discuss.

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Curtis, 9/4/07

Please forgive me for the terrible things I said.

Judge Parker, 9/4/07

Please, Señor Driver . . . do let this woman have her way with you!
No, not Rosa, you idiot — are you blind?
Not Sophie, fer Chrissake — ICK!
Rusty, dammit — Rusty!
What’s that?
Any way she wants, Sam — any damn way she wants.

9 Chickweed Lane, 9/4/07

Please, please, please — just shut the hell up!

Thank you.

— Uncle Lumpy