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My Cage, 10/6/10

Have I ever mentioned in this space that My Cage has been cancelled by King Features? Well, if I haven’t, My Cage is being cancelled by King Features, which is too bad because (a) I like it and (b) it’s not a 70-year-old strip being churned out by the grandsons of the strip creator. Anyway, the strip is spending its last month in newspapers in a cloud of meta, and since I’m a sucker for attention, I’m happy to repost this installment, which name-checks my site and an insult given herein. Cathy was able to attend the awards ceremony at the last minute since she now has no other commitments, but she ought to know that a strap-on duckbill does not a fursuit make.

Crock, 10/6/10

Dear creators of Crock: Despite the fact that the two concepts are often discussed in similar contexts, there is a difference between “camouflage” and “body armor”! Nevertheless, I hope the confusion in this strip arises from your confusing these two things, because otherwise it is nothing but a howling pit of gibbering madness.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/6/10

It should come as a surprise to no one that Hootin’ Holler’s one law-enforcement official is thoroughly corrupt, but the extremely paltry sum with which the locals can buy justice is a shocking commentary on the depths of the community’s economic despair.

Pluggers, 10/6/10

I don’t know which premise here I find less believable: that pluggers, whose lives are notoriously empty and meaningless, might be in a hurry to get somewhere, or that pluggers would even bother going to a restaurant whose very name implies that they’ll be forced to use a fork with their meal.

Apartment 3-G, 10/6/10

Who wants to see Margo ruin a perfectly nice wedding with her terrible behavior, just so nobody ever asks her to be a bridesmaid again? Me! Me! I want to see Margo ruin a perfectly nice wedding with her terrible behavior, just so nobody ever asks her to be a bridesmaid again!

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Family Circus, 9/4/10

There’s certainly a little something weirdly circular about Dolly praying for the power to pray more intently, but perhaps we ought to take this scene at face value and respect the poor girl’s fervent desire to keep her mind focused on the divine in the midst of a chaotic living situation. Her casual description of her middle brother wandering about the house muttering incomprehensible but threatening nonsense to himself is particularly harrowing.

Crock, 9/4/10

Though I once praised the poor damned souls who do the coloring for the comics, they still must be called to account when they err. Why must we buy into the beauty myth that only blondes are sexy? The Crock artist appreciates an attractive brunette, obviously, having gong to some pains to ink in the hair of Grossie’s sexy friend (since this is Crock, she’s probably just named “Sexy”). Why do you supply a blondeish nimbus that was not part of the original artistic vision, O Colorist?

B.C., 9/4/10

Ha ha, she made a real impression on him … with her enormous ass! Possibly by sitting on him! And her name is “Fanny!” And they’re, uh, ants, and probably when an ant has a distended rear thorax section like that it means something, but, uh, bugs gross me out so I don’t want to look it up. Probably it relates to breeding or something though, or feeding the young. Which casts this strip into a completely different and more disgusting light. Jeez, I think I liked B.C. better when it was just telling me I was going to hell.

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Crock, 8/30/10

Many comic strips set theoretically in some specific time and place often end up wandering afield from that time and place, either for humorous effect or just out of sheer forgetfulness. Thus, while the action in Crock once was meant to be understood as taking place in North Africa under French colonial rule, today the strip might be happening somewhere where the IRS has authority, or really any time and any place at all. Today’s dialogue, for instance, implies that the action of the strip takes place during the time period described in one of the earlier sections of the book of Genesis, just before the Deluge. This is good news for everyone — including, I assume, all of you — who wants to see every single Crock character killed by an angry God in a world-destroying flood.

Gil Thorp, 8/30/10

Our phoned-in summer golf storyline has finally, mercifully, ended; let the phoned-in fall football storyline begin! It’s just day one and already the characters are starting to ask why we’re even bothering to have a fall football storyline. “Man, what’s the point?” asks a nameless Mudlark. “I mean, my face is melting due to some horrible space alien virus, and you all are just standing around with arms stretched out looking bored! Hello? Melting face? Over here?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/30/10

There are few things simultaneously sadder and more hilarious than watching Les deliberate over whether to have his book launch party in his home town’s only functioning non-Toxic Taco restaurant with more anxiety and indecision than Hamlet trying to figure out whether he should kill his stepfather. But one of those even sadder and more hilarious things is watching two otherwise attractive and normal-seeming women compete to see who can debase themselves further to win Les’s mopey, self-absorbed affections.

Apartment 3-G, 8/30/10

Holy cats, is Apartment 3-G’s aged core audience about to be introduced to the great advances in hair extension technology that have taken place over the past few decades? Or does Tabitha simply plan to knock Margo out with some kind of sleeping potion, only for her to wake up 20 years later with her hair grown to ludicrous lengths, Rip van Winkle-style?

Slylock Fox, 8/30/10

Ha ha, it’s a trick question! There’s no such thing as “valuable” Kansas City Royals memorabilia.

Gasoline Alley, 8/30/10

I know I haven’t discussed the light-hearted Gasoline Alley strip lately, but in case you’re wondering what’s going on over there, here you go: a group of adorable schoolchildren is about to die in a terrible bus accident.