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Crankshaft, 9/18/12

One of my favorite things about Crankshaft (sorry, don’t have time to figure out all the levels of irony involved in my spontaneous decision to apply the word “favorite” to Crankshaft there) is that even when its characters are just bandying dumb puns back and forth, their facial expressions make it look like they’re the last survivors of a genocidal assault that took their entire families. Normally this is just a result of the vague sense of anxiety and unease that pervades the Funkyverse, but in this case Jeff is probably worried, with some justification, that his wife’s mind is going, and she’ll soon be an irritated, malaprop-spouting shell of her former self, just like her father.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/18/12

We often see the same situations over and over again in Hagar the Horrible, and as I’ve said before, I’ve come to believe that this is because events in the strip are playing out in a nonlinear narrative. Thus, every castle raid shown is really just a different moment in a single castle raid, every strip that features Hagar and Eddie in the dungeon is a different moment in the same stretch of imprisonment, etc. “Hagar and Eddie on a desert island” is another repeating trope, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the rest of the crew of Hagar’s ship similarly marooned with them. Still, I’m going to assume that this is again the same shipwreck, and what we’re seeing here is the early days of their time as castaways, before the turn to cannibalism.

Archie, 9/18/12

The silent, expressionless way Archie’s mom is staring at her son is pretty harrowing. Don’t complain about static cling, Arch; you’re lucky she can operate the dryer at all, as she appears to have taken many, many quaaludes.

Family Circus, 9/18/12

“Either that or the house is on fire, and the two of us will soon sizzle and cook like bacon in a pan. We’ll just have to wait and see! Have I mentioned that my home life is so oppressive that I don’t care whether I live or die?”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/18/12

“And then, once the paralytic drugs we’ve laced the wedding cake with kick in, we’ll laminate everybody and hang them on walls all over the house! We’ll never be lonely again!”

Mary Worth, 9/18/12

“Take you, for instance! You’re terribly crippled emotionally. I can tell by the way you dress. Which, admittedly, is visible. All too visible, frankly.”

Mark Trail, 9/18/12

HA HA RUSTY YES CRY BITTER, FLESH-COLORED TEARS

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Funky Winkerbean, 9/12/12

In accordance with Funky Winkerbean’s long tradition of making unbearably big deals out of low-level life problems, Mopey Pete the comics artist is behind deadline on the Superman book he’s working on, which is being portrayed metaphorically by him being bedeviled by a sinister supervillain called “The Lord of Late.” This was easy enough to ignore until today, when it was revealed that Mopey Pete is writing a series about Superman walking across America. Does Mopey Pete not know that Superman can fly?? Then I found out that this was actually a real thing, which just made me madder. Does DC Comics not know that Superman can fly??

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/12/12

Oh my goodness, Rex’s look of weary disgust in panel three is priceless. “Ugh, the worst part of my highly-compensated medical work is that sometimes you repair a dumb meatsack and then it thinks you have some kind of emotional connection to it or something. Looks like it’s time to starting having all patients anesthetized before I come into the room!”

Hi and Lois, 9/12/12

Poor Trixie has been used as an unwilling tool in the seduction of more innocent girls than she can count, with her pre-verbal status leaving her unable to warn Chip’s emotional victims. You can tell by her face in panel two that this is really starting to wear her down.

Family Circus, 9/12/12

Check out Dolly’s smug facial expression! That’s the look of a girl who can find the sex parts of any book.

Herb and Jamaal, 9/12/12

Shorter Jamaal: “I hold my best friend in withering contempt, because I’m a terrible person.”

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Family Circus, 9/8/12

Oh, God, something horrible happened outside, didn’t it? Those aren’t the faces of little kids who were having some fun out in the yard; those expressions are of illness and queasy terror. And then there’s Dolly, standing in the doorway, staring at them, marking their words. “Are they telling Mommy? They were specifically ordered not to tell Mommy. They know the punishment for telling Mommy: More mud pies. More mud pies. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘filling,’ Jeffy.”

Apartment 3-G, 9/8/12

Hey, everyone, the Professor’s back! Back from … I dunno, did he go somewhere? I guess he did, they made a big deal out of his return earlier this week. Anyway, now he and Greg are bonding over their shared heritage, which seems to be causing a stone-faced Margo to vibrate with hostility in the final panel. Is she about to unleash a series of vicious anti-Greek ethnic slurs that will result in her being forever blackballed by the cabal of Hellenes who pull the strings of New York’s PR industry?

Wizard of Id, 9/8/12

The moral of today’s Wizard of Id: Don’t be lured into complacency by the false promise of nonviolent agitation for radical change! Violent expropriation of the rich’s wealth is the only path to successful class war.