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Mary Worth, 12/4/12

Good news, everybody! One-armed Jim didn’t just happen to wander down to the pier because he cured himself of his deep-rooted psychological problems with sheer willpower. No, he overcame his deep terror of the sea and all it represents (i.e., boat-caused amputation and/or death) especially to see Dawn, and rather than using one of the many communication methods she made available to him, he decided to just lurk down by the water until she showed up, so he could startle and unsettle her. Add this to the “I want to protect/sex you because you look like my dead sister” and “I only like you as a friend, that’s why I’m calling you and texting you and emailing you a zillion times a day” and we know that this relationship can only be healthy from here on in!

Crock, 12/4/12

Well, here you have it: what I’m pretty sure is the first Crock I’ve ever laughed at unironically. Naturally it somehow arrives more than six months after the strip stopped being published, which I don’t understand any more than you do.

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Crock, 9/11/12

Wow, congratulations, Crock, for creating the Platonic ideal of an “angry old person rages against something he doesn’t understand at any level” comic strip! Shall we enumerate the ways in which the word-sequences in panel one fail to map onto the world as we understand it? Let’s start with “‘Virtual reality’ is the thing of the future,” which should really be “‘Virtual reality’ is the thing of the mid ’90s,” since that was the heyday of term (everyone knows that “augmented reality” is the new hotness). Then we’ll move on to “TV game,” which is inherently funny, and which is part of “everyone needs a TV game with it,” which I guess is an awkward way of saying “Everyone needs a video game that includes virtual reality features”? Or maybe it just means “Everyone needs a TV game with ‘virtual reality’, which I have no idea what that is,” which seems more likely. “How many do you want?” probably is supposed to mean “How many of the aforementioned TV games do you want” but I prefer to interpret it as “How many virtual realities do you want, here, look at these small brown boxes, each contains a virtual reality.” Finally, Crock’s smug “Now that’s virtual reality” is I guess supposed to be a triumphant zinger that represents a victory over the kids today with their TV games and their virtual reality, with the only downside being that it makes no sense to speak of. Kudos to you, Crock! Truly, this is a stunning triumph of out-of-touchness!

Gil Thorp, 9/11/12

Kudos also go to everyone who predicted that Irish soccer star Terry O’Irishperson (did you know that in non-America places they call soccer “football”???) would end up kicking for the Mudlark football team, which means kudos go to everyone because this was a painfully obvious development. I do have high hopes for Terry’s “I feel like a knight!” line in panel three, as perhaps his “armor” will make him prone to Don Quixote-style fits of nostalgic insanity. Perhaps he’ll use the annual football bonfire as an opportunity to burn some Cathar heretics at the stake!

Apartment 3-G, 9/11/12

Haha, there’s nothing better than reminding your boss that you’re using a little light office remodeling as an excuse to take an extra week’s worth of paid vacation! Presumably Margo is suddenly ten feet away from her dining companions in panel two because she’s about to unleash some killing death-rays of rage on them.

Six Chix, 9/11/12

If, like me, you’ve always been a little unsettled by whatever sexual implications lurk beneath the whole metaphorical “kiss a frog to turn him into a prince” story, you’ll find today’s Six Chix particularly disturbing.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/10/12

I’m putting both yesterday and today’s Snuffy Smith up there to demonstrate that they’re both basically the same joke, which … I’m OK with? There’s something charmingly vaudevillian about having Parson Tuttle continuously lob the same opening to Lureen and seeing her bat “I’m so lonely and desp’rate!” punchlines back to him. Maybe they’ll keep it up all week! Or maybe tomorrow the Parson will stop hinting and just come out and say that he wants her to recruit men for the choir by going out and having sex with them.

Apartment 3-G, 7/10/12

Haha, will I ever get tired of Nina suffering and turning her physical pain and rage on anyone who gets too close? No, the answer is no. “You’d better be telling the truth! I know medical professionals lie to patients constantly. I know you’re a dirty liar! If you make me get into this awkward position and it doesn’t help, I will destroy you, Tommie, do you hear? I have connections! I’ll get your apartment building condemned and your nursing license taken away and have everyone in your family killed! Then I’ll strangle you, but I wanted to do that other stuff first to show that I’m in earnest here. And I’ll do it all using the rage-strength I gain during a single contraction!”

Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/12

Is Funky Winkerbean really going to make us worry about whether this kitten dies on the way up, or possibly down, Kilimanjaro? All signs point to yes! To be fair, the readership is wholly indifferent about the death of any the human characters, so dramatic tension has to be maintained somehow.

Crock, 7/10/12

So wait, Crock‘s done now, right? These are repeats? Enh, whatever, it keeps showing up in my online comics page, so I guess if I can rag on Archie reruns from the 1990s I can make fun of this. Anyway, today’s strip is about Trooper Benson, who was hit by artillery shells during combat and died screaming in agony.

Ziggy, 7/10/12

Despite all of the foregoing, nothing in today’s comics has discombobulated me more than discovering that Ziggy’s cat is a lady.