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Special message to Baltimore-area readers: Psst! Don’t forget to come see me do comedy at Magooby’s, tonight!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/3/13

You know, not to get too meta about my own shtick, but sometimes I get into so much of a groove exaggerating a strip’s tropes for humorous/queasy-making purposes that I forget that those tropes don’t always even need exaggeration! For instance: did you know that much of the intended humor value in Barney Google and SnuffY Smith derives from the fact that all the characters are desperately poor? It’s true! Like, I don’t think I ever fully grasped it, but instead of having “rooms” in their shack, the Smiths just have a tattered curtain running across the middle of the interior, providing rudimentary privacy when Snuffy and Loweezy want to get away from each other — when the latter’s resentment towards the former for never, ever helping around the house reaches a seething crescendo, say.

Mark Trail, 4/3/13

So Rusty is holding some kind of taxidermied monkey’s paw on the end of a long stick, right? There’s no way that withered hand at the bottom of panel two is (a) connected to his shoulder by an ordinary arm or (b) is a human hand or (c) is living tissue with blood pumping through it. What a strange, upsetting little boy. Mark at least seems to understand that Rusty is best experienced in small doses, though his attempt to express the idea using normal human syntax is somewhat unsuccessful. “Consider that a deal, friend! And remember, we can’t visit you if we don’t go home first! So we’re going home! Trust me, once you stop looking at Rusty, that weird inexplicable tension you have in your jaw will go away!”

Edge City, 4/3/13

Fine, Uncle Lumpy, fine, you’ve got me hooked on Edge City’s obsessive neurotic stylings! Anyway, today obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s hopes for a little emotional intimacy with her husband have been dashed, even taking into account the extremely low bar she’s set for herself.

Mary Worth, 4/3/13

After a busy day of not giving Tom’s lovelorn messages to her daughter, Elinor relaxes by reading the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe and rattling her beloved bottles of prescription meds. This raises the question: How will Tom die? Tied to a table and eviscerated by a huge swinging blade? Or from a mysterious pill overdose?

Dennis the Menace, 4/3/13

Dennis and Joey are dragging a wagon of garbage around the neighborhood! Yes, Margaret, you are right to be horrified.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/28/13

Rex and June may have forever left the land of magical stripper fights behind them, but there’s still the embryonic Morgan-spawn gestating in her womb, which I guess will be the fulcrum of however many Rex Morgan plots make up seven or eight months of strip time. Today’s fun: did you know that ladies who are pregnant crave certain foods, like waffles, even when, as we learned yesterday, the only waffle mix in the house expired more than a year ago? June is completely mesmerized by this ancient box of not-quite-shelf-stable-enough powdered breakfast, which should have hilarious results as she attends this afternoon’s lecture. (“Picking up on these subtle indicators could help medical professionals intervene in a domestic violence situation before it becomes deadly, and … yes, Nurse Morgan? Do you have a question?” [CUT TO: JUNE SITTING IN BACK ROW, HER FACE COVERED IN RANCID WAFFLE MIX, EYES WILD LIKE THE COCAINE-CRAZED TONY MONTONA IN SCARFACE])

Funky Winkerbean, 3/28/13

Ever since Funky Winkerbean began its Turn To Serious Art And By Serious Art We Mean Disease And Addiction And Death, it’s often featured multi-day or even multi-week story arcs. This week, though, the strip has returned to its gag-a-day, high-school-antics roots. For instance, today’s strip, in which Les is a smug dick to his entire class for no reason, has no larger narrative context, but is just sort of a discrete lump of unpleasantness.

Dennis the Menace and Family Circus, 3/28/13

Wow, Dennis, you got outmenaced by Jeffy. I think you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.

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Dennis the Menace, 3/18/13

Oh, man, the knowing glances Dennis and Mrs. Wilson are exchanging here speak volumes. Mr. Wilson’s look of peaceful repose, hands crossed contentedly over his chest, can only mean one thing: he’s been dead for months, and Mrs. Wilson hasn’t told anyone so she can keep collecting those sweet Postal Service pension checks. Dennis found out, naturally, but just as naturally is happy to keep her secret, as long as Mrs. Wilson keeps the cookies coming. Preserving Mr. Wilson’s corpse through some no doubt ghastly home mortuary science was not strictly necessary for running the scam, of course; that’s just to allow Mrs. Wilson and Dennis to glory in their satisfaction at the old crank’s death.

Curtis, 3/18/13

Seeing as 90% of Curtis strips are variations on the same five or six jokes, I would not have picked it as the first newspaper comic to use the resignation of Pope Benedict as fodder for a punchline. Only five weeks after he quit, too! In the world of syndicated comic strips, that’s an amount of time that can only be detected with the most delicate of scientific instruments.

Slylock Fox, 3/18/13

More haunting evidence of the terrible cataclysm that wiped out humankind and left Earth in the hands paws of sentient beasts: although New York survived more or less intact, elsewhere whole mountain ranges were submerged by massive flooding. Typically, these creatures may be wearing hats and sailing boats and thinking they’re the ones in charge, but they’re still very keen to dig up some of the valuable remnants of the far superior civilization produced by the late lamented Homo sapiens.

Crock, 3/18/13

This camel is outraged that a bird wants to use his hump for sex.

Heathcliff, 3/18/13

It’s nice to see that Heathcliff and his owner went through the trouble of putting up a festive banner in their living room, to create some holiday context for just staying home and getting bombed out of their skulls.