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It’s another fun Sunday of individual panels from individual strips! Let’s see what’s up. Say, has Mary ingested some kind of powerful mood-altering drug that has caused her to pupils to dilate to pinpricks as she blathers on about sunny nothingness?

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/23/10

Sure looks like it!

Panel from Crock, 5/23/10

Crock trufans of course know that the strip’s title character’s full name is “Vermin P. Crock.” This is hard information to come by for the casual reader, because his terrified underlings never refer to him by first name; apparently only the local man of God has that privilege. So, for the 99 percent of humanity who is not aware of this Crockiana factoid, it would appear that Crock is being verbally abused by a priest, which would actually fit in nicely with the general attitude of cruelty that defines the world of the strip.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 5/23/10

This is the same A3G fight that’s been happening all week, but it’s nice to see a comically rendered narration box breaking up the ennui. Perhaps it’s a phenomenon related to this classic Margo word balloon.

Panel from Curtis, 5/23/10

Yes, many elementary-age children have the name of a special effects artist whose work last appeared in a major full-length motion picture 29 years ago right on the tips of their tongues. Barry is a true cineaste and student of film history, which is why he complains so much about the terrible movies Curtis drags him to, I guess.

And hey, is Mary still tweaking along at full blast?

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/23/10

Looks like it!

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Hi and Lois, 5/17/10

As obsessive comics readers know, Hi and Lois have four kids, none of whom are in college, which makes their “UConn Dad/Mom” shirts kind of confusing. Is it possible that, since nobody in the family ever ages, they actually have a phantom fifth child off in Storrs, perpetually in his or her sophomore year and never mentioned ever since s/he decided to waste his/her life and the Flagstons’ money on a French lit major. It’s also possible that Hi and Lois has just experienced a Funky Winkerbean-style time jump, and that Chip is now away at school, Dot and Ditto are hitting their awkward adolescence, and Trixie is being traumatized by Sunbeam’s refusal to follow her into her windowless kindergarden classroom. This, I suppose, is the sort of disorientation that casual Funky Winkerbean readers, those who didn’t follow the trade press’s reporting on the upcoming temporal leap forward, experienced when they opened up their paper and discovered that Les and Funky and the gang were 10 years older. (The trade press did not bother to report on this event in Hi and Lois because nobody, not even people who cover the newspaper comics industry for a living, really cares all that much about Hi and Lois.)

I note also that Lois the realtor, realizing that this family of poor saps is selling off their car in order to provide a better life for their children, might be close to cashing in on the family home as well, and naturally her professional instincts are kicking in. The real estate industry: profiting from, and causing, America’s financial problems for most of the 21st century so far!

Curtis, 5/17/10

It’s 99 percent certain that this is not going to be a “Curtis and Barry find their parents’ sex tape” storyline, but this is the strip that brought us the syrup chapter, so we can’t be sure. Until all is revealed, I will merely point out for your interest that Curtis is so dedicated to hip-hop as a genre that he apparently owns a poster extolling not some specific artist but rather the abstract concept of rap.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/17/10

Due to its isolation, Hootin’ Holler is years behind most of America when it comes to pop-culture trends. For instance, streaking is only now starting to catch on there, a full 35 years after its heyday in the rest of the country.

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Curtis, 4/12/10

I’ve been wondering for the last couple weeks where the “Flyspeck Island peanuts give you psychic powers” plotline in Curtis was going, and now I know: fulsome praise for a terrifying Orwellian police state where one isn’t even safe in the confines of one’s own skull.

Marvin, 4/12/10

Marvin is taking a break from the poop jokes to bring us hilarious gags about old people in sad, loveless marriages, to which I say: bring back the poop jokes.

Family Circus, 4/12/10

“But until then, we’re letting Barfy crap all over the lawn.”

(See, Marvin? It’s so easy!)