Post Content

Family Circus, 7/30/10

Rarely have I been more disgusted with a smile plastered all over Jeffy’s grotesque and unnaturally horizontal face. One can’t fault a child for hurling a rock at the ocean, but surely the vandalistic joy and apparent sense of achievement he feels as a result of this act are worthy of censure? I censure him. FEEL MY WRATH, JEFFY!

Mary Worth, 7/30/10

OK, so maybe Mary isn’t a “licensed therapist” per se, but you have to admit she’s making great progress with Dr. Mike. Just yesterday he was punching himself in the head; now he’s more healthily directing that anger outwards, engaging in fisticuffs with his invisible absent father.

Marmaduke, 7/30/10

“And sometimes he barks out demonic incantations so as to raise an nightmare army of walking corpses that will do his awful bidding!”

Post Content

Funky Winkerbean, 7/25/10

It seems my earlier suspicions — that this strip’s implacable torment has shifted from Les to Funky — has now been confirmed. Thus Les’s sheepish smirk in the final panel: he knows that every car accident or cancer diagnosis Funky is involved in means one less pregnant daughter or dead spouse for him. Holly is grinning like a maniac mostly because she knows Funky will be dead soon, and then she’ll be free, free.

Family Circus, 7/25/10

I think my favorite of the “Ma Keane is irritated by her children” panels here is the one at the lower right. In most of the other ones, she’s just intervening in momentary crises so as to prevent her arrest for child neglect and/or public nudity ordinances. But it’s when she’s forced to play some stupid ball-toss game with her feeble little daughter that the rage lines really begin to radiate from her head. “Damn it,” she thinks, “Does she never get bored with this inanity? I’ve been trying to work my way through this damn novel for the last eight years!”

Slylock Fox, 7/25/10

I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen Slylock mediate in a human vs. human dispute. It goes to show how low the status of H. sapiens has fallen in this nightmare world of bipedal talking animals that the Josh family would be willing to turn to a canid law enforcement. If I were Slick Smitty, my defense would be that I was trying to protect the boy’s delicate mental health, as waking up every morning to find that piggy bank grinning at you like that is a guarantee of nightmares and insanity.

Meanwhile, in the six differences, a little boy has extorted some free cake out of the local diner by bashing one of the counter’s stools with a baseball bat. “Hand over the cake or this clown in the hat is next,” he growls.

Beetle Bailey, 7/25/10

As part of its atonement for years of making light of sexual harassment, Beetle Bailey has begun putting out a series of PSA pamphlets on social and relationship issues. This one is called “How to tell when you’re in an abusive relationship.”

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 7/20/10

Oh, look, it’s two kids named after gated housing developments who are bratty and so notorious that Gil’s heard of them both! This addition of irritating, privileged WASP teens is probably Gil Thorp’s misguided attempt to cash in on Gossip Girl fever, several months after it faded.

Apartment 3-G, 7/20/10

Oh, man, this A3G storyline is determined to keep bringing us new delights, isn’t it? The best part about today is how quickly Tommie has switched allegiances to the latest mean girl to come on the scene and tell her what to do. Forget you, Margo, it’s all about Kat now! Oh, God, we can’t keep Kat waiting! I’ve put on my robin’s-egg-blue sweatshirt, do you think it’s ugly enough? Will Kat think it’s ugly enough?

Crock, 7/20/10

I know the kids like their comics “dark” and “edgy” these days, but I’m not sure I’m ready for Crock to devolve into Eli Roth-style torture porn.

Mary Worth, 7/20/10

That’s right, ladies: when a man doesn’t call you after a date, it’s probably because he can’t deal with how intense his feelings for you are. It’s all detailed in my new dating advice book, He’s Just Into You So Very, Very Much That He Doesn’t Know How To Express It. These sorts of plot developments explain why Mary Worth isn’t more widely read: it’s too raw, too real.

Family Circus, 7/20/10

Billy, you don’t have to do what that man says! He’s obviously no police officer: He’s a stripper-cop, and he’s just a little lost as he looks for that oceanside bachelorette party he was hired to entertain.

Rex Morgan, M.D. 7/20/10

“Or if he hears it from my wife, or one of the twelve other people I shot my mouth off to about it on my way into work today.”