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Pearls Before Swine, 9/21/09

Pearls Before Swine parodies Apartment 3-G. Poor Margo.

Edge City, 9/21/09

Last holiday: avoid bread products. Next holiday: promote bread products. Religion is so complicated.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/21/09

For some real money, try ‘Pie-the-Author’: you can pick up cowpies free at any dairy farm.

Dick Tracy, 9/21/09

What? The clown? The one we saw with a blunderbuss back in July? Say it ain’t so!

Judge Parker, 9/21/09

OK blah blah blah Gloria Sanchez sure is hot blah blah blah blah. Got it.

Mark Trail, 9/21/09

Hey, if it’s a good idea to just leave him bob, put him in the water!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Cathy, 8/24/09

For most of mid-August, Cathy revolved around Irving’s Facebook-inspired loathing of his current haircut, followed by his intense anxiety about switching hairdressers, so his studied nonchalance upon actually getting a new ’do is deeply irritating, matched in that regard only by everything else that’s happened in Cathy ever. Fortunately, in the final panel, it appears that our put-upon stylist is planning to behead her annoying customer with her clippers.

Dick Tracy, 8/24/09

I’m pretty curious about the conversation that led up to today’s first panel of Dick Tracy, in which the creepy Mr. Pops attempts to explain to Dick the rudiments of his job description. “So, Mr. Pops, I noticed that when you and your similarly dressed cohorts were performing, the audience members’ mouths were pulled up at the corners, and they were expelling air from their lungs in a series of short, staccato bursts that sounded like ‘ha, ha’. More troubling still, in those moments they appeared to not be consumed by thoughts of torture and death. What sort of diabolical scheme is this?”

Slylock Fox, 8/24/09

This may be the first Slylock Fox mystery strip I’ve seen in which two humans interact with each other, and I’ve got to say that I find it very disturbing that Slylock is there to protect the property rights of a man who sells animals for a living. Despite all of his nosey police work, Slylock appears to be nothing more than an vulpine Uncle Tom, happy to buttress the institutions that enslave his fellow beasts! For shame, sir!

Also, seeing as Slick Smitty must be freakishly strong to be able to hold up a bag of water more than three feet in diameter, I certainly hope that Slylock’s human overlords trust him enough to arm him, or else this could get ugly.

Mary Worth, 8/24/09

“…but then Ian said something pompous that irritated some drunken hooligans, so, long story short, he got stabbed to death. Hey, is Charley Smith still single?”

Sigh. Sorry, Scotland, I don’t mean to make cruel jokes about your reputation as Britain’s knifecrime capital. It’s just that, while a Charterstone pool party is usually a happy occasion to me, the one getting underway here can only be a source of sadness, as it marks the definitive and anticlimactic end of the Charley-Delilah-Lawrence storyline, which was once so promising. Sure, we’ll always have that deliriously wonderful week in Charley’s love pad, but I can’t help but think that the strip could have reached even greater heights of entertaining insanity. Would Ian’s cruel, violent death at the hands of junk-sick thugs alleviate my ennui? Well, maybe a little.

Hi and Lois, 8/24/09

Speaking of Scotland, today’s Hi and Lois offers a particularly pathetic look into Hi’s inner life. Sure, it’s only natural that a guy would want to ditch out on his wife and family to go play golf among the stab-happy Scots — I mean, how can wives and families ever match up with golf, right? However, it appears that Hi’s reverie consists not of him actually taking a golf vacation, but rather of him telling his layabout neighbor that he wishes he could take a golf vacation. It’s a sad day when your fantasy life consists of turning down opportunities that really aren’t even that exciting in the first place.

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Dick Tracy, 8/13/09

OK, when I see “cutting” bandied about as a noun like this, I think immediately about people who self-harm. However, it’s obvious that Dick Tracy lacks the depression, self-doubt, vulnerability, and ability to feel emotional pain of any sort for that to be what he’s proposing; plus, he’s offering the suggestion with an unseemly amount of enthusiasm. Therefore, I can only assume that he’s actually planning to perform an impromptu autopsy on our poor dead trapeze artist, right there on the floor of the Big Top. “The sawdust will easily absorb the blood!”

Oh by the way, Dick, IT WAS THE CLOWN THAT DID IT. THE CLOWN WITH THE SOULFUL, SHIFTY EYES. HE KILLED HER. AND SENT THE NOTE. JUST FYI.

Mark Trail, 8/13/09

It’s now clear that we can’t refer to this gun-toting, orange-clad individual as an assassin, or even as a hit man, but nevertheless I’m beginning to really sort of be in awe of him. You have to respect the years of weapons training it must have taken for him to master the craft of not quite killing people. I wonder if every day he picks up his gun and shakes his head and thinks, “Thank goodness this rifle is in my capable hands. If you didn’t know what you were doing, you could really hurt someone with this!”

Crankshaft, 8/13/09

Since Cranksaft is, as near as I can tell, standing at floor level, I’m not sure whose perspective the first panel is supposed to be drawn from. One of the garden club ladies who drank too much gin and quietly slumped out of her front row seat onto the floor? The cheering throngs gathered in the public square to look up in adulation at their gardener-dictator giving a speech from a balcony, a scenario that frequently plays out in Crankshaft’s mind? Meanwhile, panel three is definitely one of the scariest things I’ve seen this week, and replicating or even approximating it in real life would probably loosen the tongues of everyone from the perps down at central booking to al Qaeda masterminds. “NO, NOT CRANKSHAFT! I’LL TELL YOU THE REAL ANSWER! JUST DON’T LET HIM NEAR ME!”

Ziggy, 8/13/09

If you’re going to be claiming ownership over sentient beings, Ziggy, perhaps you ought not to have acquired so many of them. You can wave paperwork around all you want, but why should you expect them to respect any system of law that perpetuates their enslavement? The grim expressions make it clear that a bloody revolt is in the offing, with each animal using its particular skills in the cause of their collective freedom. You don’t even want to know what that angry little fish is going to do to you.

(Psst! Interested in seeing a piece I did on various computers in various vehicles?)