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Spider-Man, 11/5/08

After a contentious election season, can we not come together as one people and agree that Spider-Man is hilarious? Our crack police duo, having solved this caper from the moment they arrived on the scene, raise their voice slightly for backup while the web-crawler lurches off at medium speed in a direction that does not appear to be towards the exits. As Spidey wrestles with those “nutty handcuffs,” one is also invited to contemplate how many lovely antique timepieces Big Time could have purchased legitimately, had he chosen to market this ultrahard yet malleable metal for the variety of industrial uses that might suggest themselves to anyone who thinks about it for more than thirty seconds.

Apartment 3-G, 11/5/08

So, after much comical drug use and a little light murder on the part of her boyfriend, Lu Ann has made good on her months-old promise to decamp to South Dakota (nickname: “The Baja Peace Garden State”), which leads Margo and Ruby to engage in awkward banter that seems to hint that Lu Ann is involved in some kind of contract dispute with the strip’s producers.

Anyway, Lu Ann’s absence ought by rights to provide the perfect opportunity for Apartment 3-G to provide us with a little Tommie time, but naturally that won’t happen because she’s boring even by soap opera comic standards. Hopefully, then, we’ll get to see fill-in roommate Ruby working in the wedding planning business that Margo so cavalierly abandoned when Eric conned her into running his art gallery. Extra bonus points if some discreet questioning of clients on Margo’s part reveals that Ruby’s simple, no-fuss steadiness is a marked contrast to Margo’s comical incompetence, which discovery would naturally lead to Ruby’s immediate dismissal.

(Side note: “a little Tommie time” is what Gary calls it when he gets to second base with Tommie.)

Crock, 11/5/08

Grossie and her friend have just seen Ing, a heart-breaking romance between two gerunds. At first, their love moved forward progressively, but they were eventually torn apart when they couldn’t agree whether their relationship should be governed by a possessive or objective pronoun.

Psst! Still ecstatic/outraged over the election? Chat about it here!

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Apartment 3-G and Judge Parker, 10/22/08

Today we have an object lesson on how two comic strip characters can be in remarkably similar scenarios and yet evoke very different reactions from their audience. Both Sam and Margo are talking about what a “tough day” they’ve had because they’ve been minorly inconvenienced as a result of being on the periphery of the brutal murder of somebody else’s loved one; yet Margo is of course loved and adored by millions of fans, whereas if anyone thinks about Sam at all, it’s something along the lines of “Oh, look, it’s that smug dick in the sunglasses.” That’s because Margo has the good sense to take things really, really over the top — bad-mouthing her bereaved roommate, deliberately dropping inappropriate metaphors, making it all about HER HER HER, just like everything else that happens within a ten-mile radius of her or anybody that she knows — whereas Sam is, well, just being a smug dick in sunglasses, as per usual. Sunglasses and a stupid vest.

Crock, 10/22/08

Let’s say that you run a major syndicate that, among other things, produces hilarious and engaging comic strips. And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have reason to hire people to color said comic strips who are for some reason not the same people who draw those comic strips in the first place. Now, because your strips are so hilarious and engaging, those professional colorists may well be wont to read them and be amused and/or engaged by them in the course of their duties. But if they take a few seconds to chortle under their breath or nod knowingly while on the clock, they are literally stealing from you, obviously, because you’re paying them while they’re engaged in what’s clearly a leisure-time activity. What to do, then? The solution is plainly to only hire colorists who (a) hate comics so much that they refuse to read them, (b) don’t speak English, or (c) are illiterate. And if that means that sometimes blatant in-strip color cues go ignored, well, that’s just the price you pay for running a tight ship, you know?

Herb and Jamaal, 10/22/08

So, are Internet service providers the new post office, not only in the sense of “organizations that deliver information from your home anywhere else in the world for a mere pittance”, but in the sense of “and can you believe how slow it is! Ha ha! And how about that airline food, ladies and gentlemen, am I right?”

I know that the back of this weird panda-faced dude’s cab is just one of the eight or so Places In Herb And Jamaal Where Jokes Occur, and the beauty of the strip’s setup is that any joke can plugged into any of those places, but might I be so bold as to suggest that perhaps the punchline might have been better if it involved the slow pace of the cab’s journey to Herb’s destination? Or, you know, Internet providers, whatever, and hey, men and women, they sure have different views on relationships, don’t they? Ha! Boy howdy!

Family Circus, 10/22/08

“Or are you dead? Mommy says that if you’re dead, we can have gin and ice cream for dinner every night, forever!”

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Crock, 10/19/08

I’m not sure which thought is more disturbing: that this is some sort of metaphor for pubic hair depilation, or that it’s a straightforward and genuinely insane comic about cactuses having sex.

Family Circus, 10/19/08

In order to keep Jeffy pure, his parents are sheltering him from troubling concepts such as “genitals.”

Slylock Fox, 10/19/08

Oh, Cassandra, isn’t trying to worm your way out of speeding tickets kind of beneath you? For that matter, isn’t stopping speeders kind of beneath the chief of police? Look, just show some leg, thus disabling the part of Chief Mutt’s brain that can do math, and we can all forget that any of this ever happened.

Panel from Blondie, 10/19/08

This is way more than I ever wanted to know about Mr. Dithers’ personal life.