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Mary Worth, 8/3/08

Have any of the poor saps trapped in the bleak hell that is Mary Worth ever been set up for a fall as transparently as poor Toby has been over the past few days? I might feel a little pity for whatever identity theft drama that’s going to befall her as a result of handing out her credit card to whatever sort of greaseballs request it, if she weren’t so damn smug in her thought balloons. “Oooh, look at me, I understand that cash values in the modern economy can be treated as abstractions rather than amounts of actual, physical currency! I know how to look up things on Ian’s Enormoushop.com wish list! I’m the greatest wife — and greatest human being — in history!”

Speaking of smug, whatever ludicrous fraud-based hijinks go down over the next few weeks or months will at least feature Toby’s husband, which gets a big thumbs up from me. It’s been far, far too long since we’ve gotten to enjoy his bloviating chinbearded antics.

Family Circus, 8/3/08

Well, Billy, if the car “broke down” near the mall, your parents would have a harder time convincing the police that all of you were “accidentally” “eaten by coyotes.”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/3/08

Looks like another perpetually morose character is unable to stop thinking about his body’s early decay and eventual death, and is spreading the obsessive gloom to his still emotionally healthy daughter! Or, as we call it in Funky Winkerbean, “Sunday.”

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Family Circus, 8/2/08

OK, congratulations Bil, or Jeff, or Jeffy, or Billy age 7, or Glen, or whatever combination of blurred notional and actual people, past and present, I’m supposed to accept as the perpetrator of this comic: you have officially baffled me. After long contemplation, I finally realized what this damn thing is supposed to mean: Pastor Brown is rehearsing his sermon just before he goes out to start the service, ha ha. But my mind took some terrible turns to get there. Did his vision of Christ-like meekness and humility involve hiding from his congregation lest his position of leadership at the pulpit give rise to the sin of pride? Had he attempted to revive the ascetic practices of the early Christians, causing his legs to wither from the years he spent sitting atop a pillar? In the end, I was forced to spend valuable brain energy on this pointless play on words. Pastor Brown may offer you forgiveness, but I won’t.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/2/08

“Ha ha, another underfunded government agency’s going to be on the receiving end of a frivolous lawsuit! Luckily, neither of us work for them, and you won’t catch my daughter going to some hellhole of a public school, so we don’t have to care! Good luck with that, losers! I sure hope one of your employees has enough copious free time to stalk your way out of the predicament.”

Marmaduke, 8/2/08

This would be a good opportunity for one of my usual cheap “Marmaduke eats humans” gags, but in fact it seems more likely that Marmaduke is bringing a human home for his owners to eat.

Dennis the Menace, 8/2/08

“So that’s why we’re practicin’ how to hide a body.”

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Family Circus, 7/24/08

They say that smell is strongly associated with memories, and when she got just the faintest whiff of mimeographic fluid from the papers she kept in the chest, suddenly she was twenty-one years old again, and working as an assistant in that downtown office. There weren’t many women in business jobs in those days, but her boss, Mr. Franklin, seemed to take her opinions about things seriously. They spent a lot of time in his office, talking about sales strategies and advertising, and somehow she barely even noticed it when it became something more — something much more — than just a business relationship.

He told her he’d make her part owner of the company, told her that they’d travel around the world together, to London and Buenos Aires and China — but in the end, she couldn’t see herself living that life. Despite so badly wanting to say yes, she turned in her resignation, and Mr. Franklin accepted it, looking like a broken man. She married that boring but reliable boy from her high school class, the one that she knew would be a good provider, and would help her raise children, and grandchildren … grandchildren … moronic, melonheaded grandchildren … Jesus, what were they rambling on about over there? If she heard one more basic piece of English vocabulary mangled by one of those little genetic rejects, she swore she’d take a belt to them … anyway, the mimeograph sheets were nothing important. Some reports, about what she couldn’t even remember — they were just what she happened to be holding when she walked away from Mr. Franklin for the last time. She put them back in the box, carefully, knowing that she would inevitably come back to them again.

“Whatever they are”? Christ, usually the oldest one at least could muster something close to a pun at least. She imagined that nobody in Buenos Aires had even heard of “Ida Know” or, God help her, “Not Me.”

Crankshaft, 7/24/08

“Josh,” people ask me, “what keeps you reading comics that you obviously don’t like, day after day, for your entire life?” Well, sometimes you have to seize on to small bits of hope, no matter how unlikely they seem. For instance, I know that every day when I turn to Crankshaft, I’m probably going to see pettiness and anger and mean-spiritedness and quiet despair. But now I can say to myself, “Hey, maybe today’s the day when Crankshaft’s horrible yuppie neighbor is finally going to go on that killing spree with his hedge clipper.”

Momma, 7/24/08

This is Momma. The title character’s interaction with her children will make you profoundly uncomfortable. It’s a real comic strip, that runs in the newspaper, where everyone can see it!