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Shoe, 8/16/10

Upon first glance, you probably found this Shoe comic pretty depressing! After all, it reveals the fact that our hero Cosmo is such a slob that he spilled enough spaghetti sauce on himself to soak through his clothes, or maybe that he simply sits around eating spaghetti with no shirt on, to make cleanup easier; furthermore, it appears that he was so numb to his own slovenliness that the resulting mess went unnoticed for hours or perhaps even days. However, I would argue that he still clings to a shred of dignity, in the form of that towel around his waist. Someone who had totally given up on life would just stand there in the nude while rambling to his doctor on his cell phone, but some feeble sense of modesty causes him to cover his lower bird bits, despite the fact that, given that he’s describing his symptoms verbally, he is presumably not speaking on some kind of advanced picture phone.

Crock, 8/16/10

I first saw this comic as a somewhat smaller graphic, and in that form the Desert Sage’s eyes looked sad to me, and the strip seemed quite poignant: the Sage knew he had to clear the bats from his sand-cave home, but he had grown to love them, and would thus do them one last kindness before euthanizing them. But in this larger version of the graphic, his eyes look downright sadistic, as if he’s cackling with delight at the prospect of drawing the bats’ last days out as long and as cruelly as possible. Then I realized the real tragedy, which was that I was trying mightily to discern human emotions from the meaningless scribbles that make up a typical Crock strip.

Marmaduke, 8/16/10

Ha ha, don’t be silly: nothing resembling “democracy” could possibly be happening in a pack of dogs surrounding by Marmaduke. No, those dogs are raising their paws because they’re pledging their allegiance to their Dark Lord, who will soon lead them in an assault on the poor townsfolk that will leave rivers of gore in its wake.

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Crock, 8/1/10

Why the long face, Captain? In addition to all the other advantages to being a handsome Legionnaire that you mention, you apparently are also in possession of eternal youth! Go on, seduce the young woman, safe in the knowledge that, like her grandmother, she will age and wither and eventually die, while you grow more handsome with each passing day.

Family Circus, 8/1/10

Wow, is this the greatest Family Circus ever? It provides no punchline, no play on words, and yet still gives America exactly what America wants: little Jeffy crying his little eyes out. Of course, we may come to regret this momentary pleasure, as history may record August 1st, 2010, as the day that the Winkerbeaning of the Family Circus began.

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Wizard of Id, 7/24/10

If you need an enormous interpanel onomatopoeia representing an action that is essentially silent in order to make your joke clear, perhaps you should just start over from scratch.

Crock, 7/24/10

The new edgier Crock is also experimenting with narrative forms: today we see the waiter who is enraging Grossie by flirting with her friend instead of taking their order, while behind him we can already see the the blood that will soon festoon the walls when Grossie acts on her anger.

Dick Tracy, 7/24/10

Dick Tracy is tired of his little bon mots going unappreciated by his wife, and so is just going to thought-balloon his gnomic tough-guyisms from now on.

Marmaduke, 7/24/10

Do you really want to draw attention to what’s going on here, Mr. Lifeguard? “Four local children eaten by shark” would be an awful headline, but at least it falls into a realm that people can understand. “Four local children eaten by nightmarish demon-hound pretending to be shark” would be so incomprehensibly terrifying that it would be certain to set off a total panic.

Ziggy, 7/24/10

Ziggy’s dog has been aggressively stalking Jim Davis, for some reason.