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Family Circus, 3/23/13

You know that I don’t usually wish good things for the Keane Kids, but my heart does go out to them a little bit here, imagining them paging through book after book with gritty, morally complex endings in which love fails to conquer all, good doesn’t triumph over evil, and ambiguous characters try and fail to grapple with a world they never made. But still, PJ and Jeffy look insufferably smug as they prepare themselves for the sweet, sweet fairy tale action they have coming to them. “Aw, yeah, in this book the attractive and virtuous are going to defeat the hell out of their ugly enemies, who are cruel to them for reasons that are never fully examined! Can’t wait for the wedding at the end, heteronormativity rules!”

Wizard of Id, 3/23/13

Huh, I guess I’m not surprised exactly that the Wizard of Id is the first newspaper comic strip to depict an actual steaming turd, but it wouldn’t have been my first guess. (First guess: Marvin, obviously.)

Mary Worth, 3/23/13

“Enough of this coy literary flirting! Are you two going to fuck or what?”

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Family Circus, 3/17/13

I’m having fun trying to parse out Grandma’s relgio-moral philosophy from these three quotes. Here’s what I got: There is a creator God; sins can be forgiven, so long as you sincerely repent; but if you die unrepentant, there’s no purgatory or similar chance for forgiveness, so you’d better get your soul in order as if each moment could be your last. Do I have this right? I live it for wiser folk to figure out where she lies on the spectrum of Christian theology, but I do want to point out the hilarious middle panel, in which everyone was enjoying themselves watching basketball until she wandered in with dark warnings about the fact that death looms over us all, constantly.

Spider-Man, 3/17/13

So, why does Spider-Man even bother with a secret identity, anyway? Yeah, Peter, you worry about making noise while you climb up the side of a building, unmasked, in broad daylight, in order to get around an extremely minor inconvenience.

Panels from Beetle Bailey, 3/17/13

Beetle Bailey’s attempts to be sexy are exactly as misguided and off-putting as Beetle Bailey’s attempts to be funny.

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Spider-Man, 3/15/13

Great things are happening over at Kingpin Laboratories! Under the inspiring guidance of the company CEO, Kingpin researchers are producing breathtaking innovations in neuroscience — with potentially profitable real-world implications! Meanwhile, across town, a freelance photographer manages, with some effort, to remember the name of a lawyer.

Blondie, 3/15/13

So it turns out that Dagwood’s inability to understand basic finance is just a symptom of his retreat into magical thinking when confronted with scarcity of any sort.

Ziggy, 3/15/13

Scram, Ziggy! Rats want to use your house for fucking!

Apartment 3-G, 3/15/13

Wow, darkness is falling on the city … pretty abruptly there, huh? I mean, in panel one it looks to be about mid-afternoon and then Margo expresses affection for another human and then an inky eternal shadow descends over new york, there is no escape and it is so so cold

Family Circus, 3/15/13

“All this suburban bourgeois bullshit that you think is important? It’s like you’re smothering my soul with a pillow! Just thought I’d let you know.”

Wizard of Id, 3/15/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because the dragon likes to eat his own poop!