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Family Circus, 12/6/12

Meanwhile, at the North Pole: “Hmm, what’s this? Why, I see … a little boy who’s drawn a bell at school. Let’s take a closer look! Hmmm that … that’s the crappiest bell I’ve ever seen. Look at how weird and lumpy it is on the right side! And it’s colored a boring silver, not a festive gold. This little brat has desecrated the very concept of a bell, and bells are of course the 17th most important symbol of my holiday, Christmas. Nothing but socks and books under the tree for you this year, young man!”

Spider-Man, 12/6/12

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our irregular series, How To Be An Unlikeable Douchebag Nobody Wants To Spend Time With! Today’s lesson: “Celebrate with grotesque theatricality whenever you’re right about anything.” To keep your technique up, it’s important to do this even if nobody else is around!

Blondie, 12/6/12

I give the people who color the daily strips crap all the time for ignoring explicit in-strip cues when picking what colors to dump in via the Photoshop paintcan tool, so I have to give minor props for someone’s slightly on-the-nose decision to slather Dagwood in pine-tree green for this.

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Apartment 3-G, 12/3/12

I feel like this is a perfect opportunity to emphasize one of the most unbelievable A3G plot developments in years: namely, that Greg, a vaguely handsome American actor who not only hired Margo Magee as his publicist but also bought a co-op apartment in her so-so building — is the new James Bond. Today’s strip will disabuse everyone of any notions they might have about top-tier actors living a “glamorous lifestyle” or whatever. Nope, here’s Greg late at night, rambling around his apartment, still wearing his electric blue suit jacket, his yellow tie still knotted tight. On his nightstand: a pile of books, a framed picture of his publicist, and an empty jar of protein supplements. He wanders into the next room, wondering, not for the first time, who talked him into the mauve curtains, and what exactly this piece of furniture was that came up all the way to his armpits. Ah, well, it’s a good place to keep heaping glasses of scotch, just waiting for a moment of melancholy.

Family Circus, 12/3/12

I really wish that the joke in this Family Circus panel had made a bit more sense, because then I wouldn’t have stared at it as long as I have. And if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed some unsettling things. Like how Mommy Keane’s hands, shoulders, and bosom seem freakishly large compared to her tiny, reed-like neck and (surprisingly, considering the anatomy of her offspring) smallish head. Or the window, which looks not out onto some soothing winter scene but just into empty, featureless blackness, with a green Christmas wreath/portal floating in the void, beckoning the unwary to pass through into yuletide nothingness. “How ’bout you tell me what you want for Christmas,” says Jeffy, “and then I’ll tell you what I want. And then you tell me what you want.” [Mommy’s head gets smaller] “And then I’ll tell you what I want.” [The wreath begins to spin, emitting a thrum just below the lowest register of human hearing that you can feel in your guts] “Tell me what you want.” [Mommy’s hands are the size of dinner plates now, and her head is no bigger than a golf ball, her tiny mouth moving and squeaking incomprehensibly] “Me want you want.” [madness madness madness CHRISTMAS IS COMING CHRISTMAS IS COMING]

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Heathcliff and The Family Circus, 12/1/12

Celebrate, everybody! Three and half weeks of the Holiday Season lie before us, and if these whimsical one-panel cartoons for children are any indication, they will be a singularly grim and joyless affair. Billy is rooting through his box of toys so he can make his list of gift ideas; he literally has so many geegaws that he’s in real danger of getting duplicates. His toys may be spilling out of the top of a box that comes up to his shoulders, but they can never fill his bottomless need. Dolly looks on, expressionless. Meanwhile, Heathcliff, who is a cat and therefore not a participant in human religion or holiday celebration, merely sees the hustle and bustle at the mall as another opportunity to assert his dominance. He’s disrupting a farcical Christmas tradition meant to generate more sales revenues, and neither the bored mall Santa nor the stoop-shouldered children waiting in line can work themselves up to be even slightly upset by his antics.

Archie, 12/1/12

I bet you thought that yesterday’s late-night recycling laffs were just a one-off Archie joke, but no! Morning has come and now Archie and his dad are going down to the recycling center to return … the papers … which are now pamphlets about environmentalism? Or maybe the newspapers are being turned into the pamphlets, right there, at the recycling center? Anyway, the point is that recycling’s for chumps, kids, make sure your newspapers end up in a landfill, or, to go that extra mile, find a small endangered bird and smother it with the sports section!

Herb and Jamaal, 12/1/12

Do people outside of wacky fictional settings ever do elaborately sarcastic performances like this? I mean, it’s one thing to mock your lonely, heartbroken friend by telling him he’s having a “pity party,” but it’s quite another to take off your apron and leave the room and announce that you’re going to make actual concrete preparations for such an event. I certainly hope Herb has the determination to see this thing through to the end and really go to Kinko’s to have something printed up, or at least create a Facebook event and send invites to everyone Jamaal knows.

Ziggy, 12/1/12

God, this squirrel is quite the little name-dropping asshole.