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Family Circus, 1/15/09

I don’t have kids, so I have to turn to pop culture to find out what the quiet little moments of parenting are like. So, a question for you out there who have successfully reproduced: do you like to stand in the doorway of your kid’s room while he’s doing his homework, staring at him for hours while he pores over his multiplication tables or whatever, as you desperately try to will the knowledge into his brain, hoping against hope and all evidence thus far that he isn’t a drooling submoron but actually a vaguely competent person who will be able to earn enough to support you in your old age? And all the while, he’s sitting there, looking at his workbook but not really reading it, thinking, “Really? Are they just going to stand there, looking at me, until I finish this? Don’t they have hobbies? Don’t they have somewhere to be? How on earth am I supposed to concentrate? Maybe if I do some cheesy silent-movie ‘I’ve got an idea!’ move, they’ll go downstairs and watch TV!'” Because if that’s the case, that … that seems kind of creepy, is all.

Crock, 1/15/09

Ha ha, you see, it’s funny, because it wouldn’t make any sense for them to sing about a boat, because they’re in the middle of the desert … er … or maybe they’re on the beach … next to the ocean … where, um, a cow’s skull is floating…

OK, that’s the last straw. This, combined with this, has left me determined to get to the bottom of this coloring nonsense. Who colors this stuff? Do they not speak English? Do they hate their jobs, and/or the comics? I know you comics industry people lurk out there, so: do you draw a comic that gets colorized, or work for a newspaper or syndicate or something where coloring occurs? Write to me! I shall present my findings for the world’s edification!

Marmaduke, 1/15/09

Things are getting pretty bad over at the Marmaduke’s Ownerses. Mr. Owner can only sit rooted to the spot in terror, knowing that the moment he moves he’ll be torn to pieces by his man-killing dog. His wife, meanwhile, can’t even bring herself to say the word “Marmaduke,” terrified that she’ll attract his attention — and his ravenous appetite — if she does.

Mark Trail, 1/15/09

“I think Ken is in the lumber business, but she doesn’t talk about him! But I do often hear her talk about a man named ‘Buck,’ and she always seems very happy when she brings him up. I hate to cast aspersions on her, but maybe she’s having an affair with this ‘Buck’ fellow! Oh, also, did I mention she’s fucking a deer?”

Seriously, Mark Trail, I was going to lay off on the bestiality jokes, but if this is how you want to play, I say BRING IT.

Cherry and Mark, meanwhile, have marital problems of their own. Mark actually admitted to noticing Cherry’s different hair, so Cherry is pushing her luck by wearing her sexy electric blue western wear. This can only end in tears.

Shoe, 1/15/09

“Also, while Olivia and I were playing doctor, she got pregnant!”

(Seriously, I always thought Skyler was a little old to be playing house. I guess it’s hard to establish the ages of your characters when they’re mostly mouthpieces for wry jokes written by and for grownups, and also when they’re birds.)

Oh, and: all your votes did not go for naught! For I am your 2008 Weblog Awards Best Humor Blog winner! Here, here’s an enormous graphic announcing my victory:

I promise I will not harass you to vote for me again! Unless I get nominated for something else. THEN ALL BETS ARE OFF.

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Mark Trail, 1/5/09

With yet another Mark-spurns-a-pretty-non-wife-lady plotline behind us, it looks as if Mark Trail is finally going to touch the third rail of Mark Trail storytelling, by tackling the pretty wife-lady whose advances Mark also routinely spurns. Cherry is so worked up that she’s dispensed with her usual polo shirt and put on a sexy pink robe that’s allowing us to see her collarbone. “I hope he notices that I’ve changed my hair again!” she says, as she gingerly touches the vaguely rearranged curls perched upon her unnaturally large skull and stares at nothing in particular with her horrifying pink eyes. All the while, she’s thinking about her plans to fall on Mark and ravish him the moment he walks in the door, like an owl grabbing a mouse in its razor-sharp talons and tearing it to bits with its beak, only hotter, and with Mark maybe not being killed at the end.

Meanwhile, Doc is thinking “I hope he notices that I’ve paired up this baby blue cardigan with my orange shirt! I think the color combo really does wonders for me!” But he’s too shy to say this aloud, so he just stands there smoking his pipe, and waiting.

Beetle Bailey, 1/5/09

As you may or may not know, for the first six months of its 58-year existence, Beetle Bailey was actually a college strip, following the antics of Beetle and his fraternity brothers; then, one day in March of 1951, Beetle spotted the two girls he was dating both heading towards him simultaneously, ducked into an Army recruiting office to escape, and has been in the military ever since as the subject of some kind of terrifying black-ops time-freezing experiment. The draft has ended and he completed his term of service decades ago, so technically he can leave whenever he wants; however, as his totally neat and keen outfit today suggests, the still twenty-year-old Beetle is completely unequipped to deal with modern collegiate life, with its Facebooks and casual sex and kids wearing flip-flops in the dead of winter for some reason. He will no doubt go crawling back to his captors at the Defense Department’s Chrono-Retardation Corps soon enough.

Crock, 1/5/09

Today’s Crock is actually a philosophical masterpiece of metanarration. Poor Figowitz’s whole purpose for existence in the world of the strip is to be an unlovable sad sack; by deciding to abandon his deepest essence and force his features into a grin, he unravels the very fabric of his universe and brings everything in it — that is, the strip Crock — to an end, plunging his world into inky nothingness. This is intriguing from a metaphysical standpoint, and heartening in that it implies that Crock will cease to exist and we won’t have to read it anymore. If we’re really lucky, the universe-collapse will also occur along the time axis, eliminating the past of the strip and our memories of ever having read it.

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Mary Worth, 1/4/09

While Mary Worth has always left a trail of shattered lives behind her, this is one of the first instances I can remember of Mary actually doing battle with someone else for the right to own, meddle in, and destroy a third party’s soul. I love the way that Mary pairs her figurative reflection with looking at her actual reflection. The high stakes of her meddle-war with Frank is indicated by the fact that she’s furiously thought-ballooning about Lynn all the while, when normally she’d just be thinking “There, my bouffant’s surface is perfect, once again. Aren’t I the prettiest?”

Incidentally, the fact that we can see Mary’s reflection rules out certain kinds of undead beings, for those trying to figure out exactly what sort of hellspawn walks the earth known as “Mary Worth.” Meanwhile, in the first panel of the bottom row, Frank’s eyes are beginning to glow red, as he draws strength from his demon master for the final conflict.

Crock, 1/4/09

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Algerian population was unable to resist French imperialism militarily, so they were forced to fight back with more devious methods. For instance, one Foreign Legion garrison was lulled into the pleasant haze of hashish addiction by the locals, then wiped out to the man when the batch delivered for New Years celebrations was poisoned.

Family Circus, 1/4/09

Barfy the dog is apparently unable to distinguish between a round-headed lump with an eternal dumb grin on its face and not a single thought in its head and a snowman.

Panel from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/4/09

This panel shows a way that Snuffy Smith could become relevant to modern audiences: by highlighting the health dangers of meth addiction, which is so sadly prevalent in America’s rural suspender-wearing communities.