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Apartment 3-G, 4/9/09

This, combined with this, makes me think that we should add “outfits that people wear while cleaning” to “drug paraphernalia” and “men who don’t look like the two or three dudes that every dude in Apartment 3-G looks like” on the list of things for which the Apartment 3-G team could use some reference photos. My alarm bells are pinging, of course, as to why Ruby might be in desperate and immediate need of some industrial-grade solvent. “Hey, look at that lady over there in that vacant lot! It sure looks like she’s burying someone in a shallow grave and then using some sort of potent cleanser to accelerate the corpse’s decay, doesn’t it? But that can’t be right — nobody dressed like a Colonial Williamsburg re-enactor could possibly be involved in anything shady!”

Family Circus, 4/9/09

I’m all for Billy rotting his mind with comic books, as he’ll clearly never amount to anything anyway, but can’t we expect him to pay attention to the details? As far as I know, Peter Parker doesn’t even have a mother; he was merely created spontaneously when Aunt May and Uncle Ben came down with nephewism, a common affliction in fictional characters. But maybe I’m being too hard on Billy; his larger point — that it would be amusing to see one of Peter’s loved ones beat him to death with a shoe or a rolled-up newspaper — is one that I can heartily endorse.

Mary Worth, 4/9/09

Oh, look, I guess I was wrong: it seems that Ted really is a scammer, and now we’re going to get to watch the Spanish Prisoner con in action, for certain limited definitions of “action.” Meanwhile, I’d just like to offer this bit of advice to noir-aspirant villains everywhere: though it is important to keep your victim in your sexual thrall in order to prevent her from thinking too much about the details of your fraudulent scheme, creepily drawing her onto your lap in public and gently caressing her cheek, all the while telling her how much she reminds you of your sister, is not the best way to go about doing that.

Shoe, 4/9/09

There is exactly one character in Shoe at whose antics I laugh in a non-ironic fashion, and that is Buzz, the elderly dyspeptic bird. Today, he’s spent hours wandering around aimlessly, angry and confused, because he’s old and losing his mind! Ha ha! Oh, I’m going to hell.

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Family Circus, 4/5/09

This has got to be one of the most heartbreaking Family Circus cartoons I’ve ever seen. After spending all day (and all of her young womanhood) shut in with her litter of squallers, she’s suddenly confronted with the prospect of interacting with another adult — someone who wouldn’t want to spend time in a living room covered with cheap plastic crap and poorly-colored pictures, someone who she might even want to look nice for. Naturally, it turns out to be just another one of the little neighborhood urchins. At least he’s proposing to take Jeffy outside, so she can weep with abandon.

Beetle Bailey, 4/5/09

At long last, Beetle Bailey admits that American soldiers in training might be preparing to do something other than make stale jokes about alcoholism, sexual harassment, and fisticuffs! Still, one has to hope that the final panel — in which it is suggested that Castro’s long-standing paranoia about a U.S. invasion is true, that France’s Pacific possessions will be an invasion target as America gets involved in its first-ever war with a nuclear-armed opponent, and that American soil itself will soon find itself under military occupation and martial law — is as far removed from reality as this strip’s typical content.

Crock, 4/5/09

The throwaway strip that sits atop each Sunday’s Crock always features the strip’s title character’s name carved into a stone monument sitting majestically in the middle of the desert, like some kind of Ayers Rock-like monument to the French colonial empire; generally random characters wander around said Crock-rock making confusing references to the joke to follow. So I suppose I shouldn’t be unsettled by today’s edition, in which the great monolith seems to be muttering obscenities to itself — but I am, OK? I really am.

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Mary Worth, 4/4/09

I suppose this strip is supposed to be interesting because it contains one of Dr. Jeff’s occasional and doomed attempts to become a Man Of Action, but to be honest I’m much more interested in his trademark green jacket. Presumably he bought it years ago from a Masters Tournament winner in desperate need of cash (John Daly?), and now wears it at all formal events to show his contempt for bourgeois notions that clothes should be “attractive to look at” or “match.” Still, look at the way he’s carrying it around Mary’s apartment at arm’s length. It’s almost as if he finds wearing it any longer to be an exhausting prospect, but its totemic power is such that he’s afraid to set it down or turn his back on it. He particularly needs to be wary of laying it on Mary’s mustard-colored sofa, because the resulting color clash could rip a hole in the fabric of space-time itself.

(UPDATE: As faithful reader willethompson pointed out, John Daly never won the Masters; I blame confusingly worded Wikipedia infoboxes. For a non-golf-fan, the appeal of a cheap “drunk and desperate John Daly” joke was too strong to resist.)

Archie, 4/4/09

These three panels of Archie contain all the power of a Greek tragedy. A blind (or, in this case, bespectacled) sage notes the rot that is destroying his culture from the inside out, but is powerless to do anything but comment. Then, like poor doomed Pentheus, he is torn to bits by a mob of crazed women.

Family Circus, 4/4/09

Normally, when the Keane Kids mangle the English language and/or basic common sense to make one of the subpuns or moronic bits of wordplay that are this beloved feature’s stock in trade, they just stare ahead with blank, dumb expressions while doing so, as the gags’ accidental nature is supposedly part of their charm. In this panel, though, Billy and Jeffy seem to be amused by the former’s wisecrack. This could herald a dangerous new phase, in which the melonheads, having somehow become aware of the fact that they are being cut out of the newspaper and hung on the refrigerators of nice old ladies everywhere, ramp up their cloying cuteness to unbearable levels. On the other hand, it’s possible that they’re just amused by the prospect of eating their grandmother’s head.

Curtis, 4/4/09

One of this strip’s most common running gags involves Curtis asking his father for a cell phone, and his father informing him that cell phones are too expensive. Thus, I must conclude that the strip’s creator has no idea what text messages are. Perhaps he thinks they somehow involve a tennis racket.