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Family Circus, 9/17/09

Grandma knows that she’ll only be given time to tend to her methodical clothes-folding in peace if she manages to say something so confusing to whatever idiot grandchild is jabbering at her that they’ll wander off in despair. Fortunately for her, her grandchildren are very easy to confuse.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/17/09

Ah, yes, why not just have the text push out the boring pictures entirely from here on in, so we can sit back and enjoy panel after panel of self-justification?

Luann, 9/17/09

The inside of Brad’s head is even more troubled than I could have imagined. For one thing, he apparently believes his parents’ marriage to be a loveless sham.

Gil Thorp, 9/17/09

Say what you will about Marty Moon, but you can never doubt his total commitment to his job. Today, for instance, he bravely continues his play-by-play of the Milford football season opener, despite the fact that he’s clearly been abducted and sealed up in a wooden shipping crate.

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Herb and Jamaal, 9/8/09

Perhaps stung by allegations of rampant nonspecificity, Herb and Jamaal has decided to go the political cartoon route and just start labeling the crap out of things. For instance, while Herb’s coffee mug has long been designated as such by a label that reads Herb, Herb’s mother-in-law has traditionally drunk her morning pick-me-up out of a mug decorated with a triangle-ish shape that looks vaguely like the Star Trek logo. However, it seems that, having gotten tired of people asking her if “that’s the logo from the science fiction TV show first broadcast in the ’60s that everyone’s talking about,” Eula has traded her old mug in for one that simply has “STAR TREK” written on the side of it.

Alternately, it could be that her name is actually Star Trek, and Eula is just a nickname, a shortened version of what she said to her parents when she finally got the nerve, which was “You lunatics named me ‘Star Trek’?”

Family Circus, 9/8/09

Boy, Billy and Dolly sure look depressed, don’t they? And the reasons are obvious: they have to dress nicely and troop off to school for the day, but, as we can see from Jeffy’s appearance, if they got to stay home they could just wander around in their underwear, covered with filth.

Mark Trail, 9/8/09

I’m not some kind of big expert on killing and skinning alligators, but I question the utility of that tiny little knife that sideburnsy #1 is brandishing in panel two, unless he’s planning on tickling the great thick-skinned beast.

Mary Worth, 9/8/09

Isn’t this what we all hope for when we pop the question to that special lady? That she recoil from the shock, and cover her mouth so that she doesn’t splatter you when she vomits in terror?

Gil Thorp, 9/8/09

So these are the protagonists of our Gil Thorp football-season adventure: a kid who’s learned that he doesn’t need alcohol to have a good time, and a marginal athlete who likes to come up with nicknames for himself. Pretty thin material to work with, but things should get more exciting upon the arrival of the invasion fleet of spherical alien spacecraft that you can see in the background of panel one. Once Milford’s inhabitants have been rounded up to toil in the Zyrgt mines back on Planet Nebulon VI, there’ll be all sorts of interesting dramatic possibilities.

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Family Circus, 9/7/09

While my self-respect demands that I ignore Billy’s patented brand of ME ME ME LOOK AT ME idiocy, I am a little curious about just what sort of adult-time activity he’s interrupting. It appears that Mommy and some of her grown-up friends are hanging around the house decked out in what appear to be low-key hipster housewife togs from 1978-ish. The two non-Keanes look somewhat discomfited by Billy’s appearance, and really, why wouldn’t they be; still, I’d like to believe that there’s something vaguely disreputable going on here, possibly involving objects hidden away in those clunky purses, or clandestine ingredients added to the big mugs of International Coffee so casually balanced on the furniture.

Also, I’m curious as to what these ladies are doing over here at Billy’s bedtime. Shouldn’t they be at home reading fairy-tale stories to their own sleepy broods? (The idea that the Keane parents would be associating with non-breeders is obviously unthinkable.) Perhaps it’s actually 3 p.m., which has been established as Billy’s bedtime due to some combination of strict parenting ideas and his extreme obnoxiousness.

Marvin, 9/7/09

I feel like I’m getting kind of repetitive when it comes to Marvin, and I promise to stop the moment it stops serving up nightmare visions that turn my stomach. This strip at least demonstrates a sort of interesting visual effect, which is that all the cues that we associate with cute, adorable babies — grossly oversized heads, short, stubby limbs, a proportionally wider torso — become awful and terrifying when the baby in question is blown up to adult size. The vision of the monstrous Marvin-troll, the same height as his mother but at least three times the mass, with a grossly oversized head and eyes the size of baseballs, is so shocking that it allows us to ignore the even more unsettling fact that he’s berating his mother for dressing all slutty.

Spider-Man, 9/7/09

Since Spider-Man has no super-speed abilities, I question how much safer anyplace he could take MJ to within “seconds” might be. “Sorry, Logan. Had to take the lady to safety by putting her on top of that five-foot-tall pile of boxes inside the same building or place where we’re standing now. Is it a warehouse? I forget. Anyway, you can see her right over there. Let’s wave to her from down here, where it’s ever so much more dangerous!”

Jumble, 9/7/09

I originally read the rather compressed dialogue in today’s Jumble cartoon as “Now they can enjoy their food without sweating.” Because the toxic pesticides these pilots have sprayed all over the picnic tables will cause all of the parkgoers’ pores to close up, a few minutes before their nervous systems just shut down altogether.