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Cleats, 1/22/10

On those occasions when I think of Cleats, I think of “gentle (to the point of blandness) humor punctuated by bouts of unspeakable horror.’ This week’s installment, focusing on the whimsical subject of “Bigfoot football,” has mostly been on the gentle-to-the-point-of-blandness side, but only today did I notice that the Sasquatches are using the withered corpse of a beaver as their ball. So that’s something, I guess.

Family Circus, 1/22/10

Dolly, you panderer! The snowman and snowlady should not be left alone in the yard together until they’re married. This is exactly the sort of ideas you get from public schooling.

Hi and Lois, 1/22/10

Chip’s friend is wearing a little hat secured to his head with some sort of elastic chin strap, so, yeah, it’s probably a good idea that he’s reading Style magazine in the second panel.

The poster on the wall indicates that the boys are fans of Paul Butterfield Blues Band keyboardist Mark Naftalin, which is a little disappointing to me because at first glance I just thought they were proponents of free trade.

Mary Worth, 1/22/10

You’ve gotta feel bad for Dawn as she angrily swoops and dances around the nervous Mary. Not long ago her boyfriend cheated on her with another woman, and now she finds out that her father’s sperm cheated with another egg, before she was even born! I have to say that her withering “something” in the second panel is the piece of Mary Worth dialogue most loaded down with contempt since Mary threw “Capisce?” in Aldo’s face.

Spider-Man, 1/22/10

“He thinks I can point him to Wolverine! And he’ll keep attacking me until I do! Unless — I run away, like a coward! Yes, that’s it! Ha ha, can’t catch me, I have the proportional pusillanimity of a spider!”

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Family Circus, 1/17/10

Jeffy still exists in that blissful childhood state where everything centers around him. Thus, to him the most noteworthy aspect of his outing was when all the other kids shouted out his name and he had to jump out of their way. The fact that the three of them are currently lying in a wailing heap of shattered limbs and sled-blade-slashed flesh, begging for someone to come help them but too terribly injured to move, is uninteresting to him, and will not be relayed to any adults until next spring, when the bodies are found.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/17/10

Yes, Sarah; mommy’s almost finished feeling actual human emotions. Then she’s going to go and relentlessly destroy her cousin because of something her aunt did. Then we’ll get around to walking the dog!

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Family Circus, 1/15/10

Yes, Dolly, a lot of cute pictures — which all appear to be thrown pell-mell into a cardboard box. You’d think that, what with her walls being a seemingly endless expanse of white, she might find room for a photo or two of your grotesquely swollen heads, or at least of your parents. But it looks as if she prefers emptiness, infinite emptiness, to any visual reminder that you exist. That little smile is her thinking about the moment you leave, when she’ll get to shove that box back under the bed and stop thinking about you for days and days.

Apartment 3-G, 1/15/10

Here in Baltimore, “The Block” is the name for the section of downtown where all the strip clubs are clustered together, so the narration box in panel one gave me brief hope that today’s strip would have content more interesting than tales of irritating wedding planning and not marrying guys named “Lyle.” I think matching redheads Tommie and Ruby could work up quite a little burlesque act together, slowly and suggestively unwinding their matching scarves until they finally reveal their necks to a hooting audience.