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Hi and Lois, 10/18/10

The Flagstons may be the comics’ blandest suburban family, which is why they work so well as a vessel for commentaries on bland suburban life. That’s also why it’s so exciting to see the strip go knee-deep into madness, as a bug-eyed, crazy-grinning Lois stares rapturously at the silent television. The sheer size of this flat-screen monstrosity adds to the weirdness. Is Lois desperately attempting to reach out to a different form of spirituality, but still held back by her materialistic worldview? “I’d never be able to meditate so effectively if we hadn’t sprung for the 52-inch hi-def model, honey!”

Dick Tracy, 10/18/10

You probably thought that Dick Tracy could never top last week’s crazed hobo fight with money flying everywhere. But today’s strip, in which deceased radio personality Wolfman Jack informs a local beat cop that a Code 469, or “ruckus,” is in progress nearby, is pretty awesome too. The police officer is far enough away to not have heard the ruckus first-hand and there are still visible thousand dollar bills floating through the air, which really takes the concept of “making it rain” to a new level.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/18/10

Snuffy has always been depicted in the strip as a particularly diminutive feller, no doubt a result of the incredibly poor nutrition he received growing up dirt poor in Hootin’ Holler, so I’m not sure if his cellmate is supposed to be some freakish giant or merely of normal human proportions. Nevertheless, it’s good to see the two are getting on so jovially together and haven’t attempted to shiv one another with their time-hash-markin’ crayons.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/18/10

Oh, hey, did you think that nothing could make Funky Winkerbean’s inexplicable Les-centered love triangle any grosser? How about turning it into a love square? Damn it, we’re just going to keep adding women who want to comfort poor sad wounded emotionally stunted creepy creepster Les until you start believing it.

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Panel from Mark Trail, 10/13/10

The first panel of today’s Mark Trail is so glorious that I felt you deserved to see it as large as I could give it to you. It’s almost like you are some corpulent political insider, hoping to enjoy a little canned hunting and some desperate promises from the next governor, when suddenly a deranged little monster and her dead-eyed deer lunge at you, demanding that you refrain from doing exactly what you’ve paid to do.

Note that her upper body seems disproportionately larger than her legs. That’s probably a carefully crafted technique that provides the illusion of the little girl moving rapidly towards you. It certainly isn’t because she’s been crudely assembled out of whatever clip art has been left lying around on the floor of the Mark Trail studios, no sir!

Panel from Mary Worth, 10/13/10

Also worthy of close inspection is our first encounter with Adrian’s opinionated friend Jill, here expressing her opinions with an eye-roll so epic she appears to have sprained her face. We’ve all been preparing ourselves for some kind of epic battle of the meddlers over how Adrian’s wedding should be run, but Jill’s deep thought-ballooned sarcasm seems to indicate that she’s already bored with the whole exercise. Perhaps she will realize that Mary is eager to do dull stuff like watch Adrian model a series of indistinguishably hideous bridal gowns, and she’ll excuse herself to go do something that doesn’t make her want to slit her wrists.

Dick Tracy, 10/13/10

Wow, it seems that the famous hobo solidarity completely falls apart once it turns out that one of them has money, and that the true proletarians are about to turn on the kulak who’s been lurking in their midst. Dick Tracy will be truly conflicted if he ends up triumphing due to the thing he hates the most: class struggle.

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Dick Tracy, 10/12/10

Having discovered his target and infiltrated a sinister band of homeless people, Dick has decided that it’s about time to launch into the part of the storyline where the awful violence happens. You would think that, when a lone cop strides into an encampment of wrathful bums, the awful violence would be perpetrated against the isolated lawman. You would be wrong. As you can see, the misguided soul who’s attacking Dick in panel three is already screaming in agony only seconds after the battle begins. Is Dick’s unseen hand punching his filthy attacker in the gut, or worse? Is Dick’s razor-sharp chin, concealed under that fake beard, slicing the hobo’s arm open? Or does our hero’s aura of American decency and law and order cause real physical pain to undesirables?

Wizard of Id, 10/12/10

Ha ha! It’s funny because prisoners only have disgusting, rotten food to eat!