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Fate, monstrous and empty — a whirling, malevolent wheel;
Well-being is vain, and always fades to nothing – how you plague me!

What goes around comes around in the Sunday funnies:

For Better or for Worse, 3/2/08

Years from now — perhaps at her wedding — you’ll wonder how she turned out like this: the string of pointless relationships she shed so easily. The marriage to some pasty nonentity, based on no more than habit in the vain hope affection would follow. The grandchild — no kin of yours — whimpering alone in the dark.

Remember this night. Your daughter does.

Marvin, 3/2/08

A week of “Laffs” from Mom griping about the trials of pregnancy; now it’s payback time for Baby. Although this “people typing jokes into computers” theme is getting awfully tired, the nasal syringe on the desk is a good sign: after years of poop jokes, Marvin is finally branching out into snot.

Curtis, 3/2/08

O Curtis, consider your life’s path — listen to Barry! Sure, it may amuse you now to mock these good ladies as they try to bring some simple joy into their lives and others’. But consider your future! You could end up like old Cedrick there, clowning to coax one more rattling wheeze out of poor Harry’s failing lungs. Or worse, like some assistant comic blogger hurling slurs at hard-working cartoonists who only . . . who . . . .

Oh, crap.

– Uncle Lumpy

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Panels from Apartment 3-G, 2/10/08

Margo knows that a big crowd is best primed to appreciate fine art when it’s very, very drunk.

Panels from Curtis, 2/10/08

Actual conversation I had just moments ago with my wife, who went to a Quaker college:

Me: Hey, sweetie, did you know that Curtis learned about Quakers in school today?

Her: Why was Curtis in school today? It’s the weekend.

Me: [Sound of mind being completely blown]

Panel from Spider-Man, 2/10/08

THIS JUST IN: Spider-Man is not, in fact, an elephant.

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We mock, but cartoonists’ lives are hard. The drumbeat deadline, day after day for decades, enfevers the brain ’til it cries out, “Stop!” And stop it does — every cartoonist has a trademark way of putting the strip on autopilot so they can take a freaking break. And February, when the days are grey and the year ahead looks endless, is a great time to knock off for a bit. Here’s how they do it:

Crankshaft, 2/6/08

Tom Batiuk relaxes by expanding weak puns into multiple panels for weeks on end. This one is part of a recurring series, “Crankshaft mispronounces stuff.” The setup is completely arbitrary: Ed doesn’t cook, and wouldn’t use a frou-frou ingredient like balsamic vinegar if he did. If you really must make sense of it, assume that vinegar is Ed’s beverage of choice and they ran out of malt.

Dick Tracy, 2/6/08

Dick Lochler just hits the “pause” button on his calendar. Honestly, Chief Liz has known for more than a month that having your “gross” portrait in the museum gets you disappeared — that’s why she called Dick in the first place. Today’s strip is the equivalent of, “Yeah — what you said.” Somebody needs his Gretchen.

Curtis, 2/6/08

Ray Billingsley famously repeats the same themes year after year (this one is “Curtis’s Black History Month essay”). I suppose we should be grateful that Curtis recycles its material every year — Marmaduke does it every freaking day.

Get Fuzzy, 2/6/08

Darby Conley creates some of the best characters on the comics page today, but everybody deserves a break, and goddammit, he’s taking one. Lately, he seems to have taken to his bosom the cause of the television industry writers’ strike — an issue of pressing concern to no one on the face of the earth.* Phone us when you get back, pal.

– Uncle Lumpy

* Emphatically not true! See discussion in the comments, and retraction at #144