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Mary Worth, 12/21/15

One of the low-key weirder details out of many in this Olive storyline in Mary Worth is that Olive’s parents are vaguely implied to be bad and neglectful because they can’t stop getting their fuck on. And now Mary’s aggression on this subject is getting a lot less passive! “You two love birds keep doing what you’re doing, which is enjoying the physical aspects of the sex act without true emotional intimacy! We have things under control here, unlike you, who can’t even control your engorged genitals!”

Momma, 12/21/15

Speaking of shameful lusts, Momma’s recent strips that seem to accidentally be about incest have been so weird and disturbing that today’s installment, in which Francis has literally twisted himself into a sexual frenzy as he stares at a parade of hot ladies out his mother’s front window, is a relief, in that none of those hot ladies is his sister.

Curtis, 12/21/15

At least there’s no overt sexuality in today’s Curtis! No, Greg’s soul isn’t stirred by lust or passion of any sort. It’s not because commercialism is any worse today than it used to be, it’s just because years of adulthood have crushed his spirit and now he can’t feel.

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Mark Trail, 11/13/15

This game of cat-and-mouse has gone on long enough. Mark and Ken lurked in the bushes and let the bad guys empty the clips of their machine guns harmlessly into other bushes; now, the punching can begin. Mark graciously allows Ken first punch, and it’s a doozy: a flying leap that catches two bad guys at once, sending their sunglasses and now-useless firearms flying. Kudos to the anonymous colorist for accurately recognizing that arc of liquid coming from the left-hand bad guy’s mouth and making it blood red! Anyway, if this is what Ken has to offer, surely Mark’s punchery is going to be even more impressive.

Curtis, 11/13/15

When Curtis launched in 1988, it totally made cultural sense for Curtis to be a huge fan of rap music and for his dad to hate it. Now, nearly 30 years later, thanks to comics time this is not so much the case: it seems unlikely that Greg, the father of two young children, is much older than 45 or so, which would have made him a teenager himself during the age of old-school hip-hop. Anyway, the matter of Greg’s age has been left more or less untouched for most of the strip, which is why it’s all the more shocking to learn that one of his first-ever crushes co-existed with the age of web browsing, which would certainly make him younger … than … me? Oh my God I’m older than Curtis’s dad

Crankshaft, 11/13/15

I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of our post-9/11 surveillance state, but if Crankshaft just accidentally watched an al-Qaeda video and is now on some government watchlist that will get him extremely thoroughly searched every time he flies anywhere, I’m not gonna complain.

Blondie, 11/13/15

JULIUS C. DITHERS: BRONY

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Curtis, 9/23/15

Oh look, it’s a Curtis plotline that’s probably of interest to me and … nobody else? Curtis’s family has always been portrayed as being of modest means, and they live in a high-rise apartment building in a dense city with a subway that Curtis’s dad takes to work, and I’ve always just assumed that they just didn’t own a car for financial reasons or by choice. I’m pretty sure it’s never come up in the strip that Curtis’s dad couldn’t drive or that he claimed to not have a license. But, you know, if you were Curtis, and you knew driving was a pretty universal thing in American society but that your dad never did it, maybe you would assume he didn’t have a license! Maybe if I had a hypothetical tweenage son, he would assume that about me, so let me tell you, child who does not exist: I do, in fact, have a driver’s license that I got in my teenage years in the usual way, but then I had a bunch of accidents and near accidents and lived in cities with decent public transportation and eventually decided, you know, maybe driving isn’t for me. But even though I haven’t driven a car since 1998, I take the written tests and get a new license every time I move to a new state, because who knows what the future holds! Is this Curtis’s dad’s deal too? Guess we’ll find out! Hopefully at least the fact that he works at the DMV will be mined for ironic material somehow.

Mary Worth, 9/23/15

Toby’s pantomiming here just reinforces my belief that this storyline is, in its low-key way, one of the greatest Mary Worth has seen in years. “No, Mary! I’m not here! Lie for me! Lie for … aw. Poop.”