Apartment 3-G, 1/11/08
Lu Ann’s parents are remarkably clear-sighted about their daughter.
Mary Worth, 1/11/08
Picking up dog shit turned out be significantly more distasteful than Mary had imagined it would be.
For Better Or For Worse, 1/11/08
John plans to kill his wife and feast on the delicious organ meats within her body.
Family Circus, 1/11/08
At that moment, any doubts Big Daddy Keane had about his plan to drown the children disappeared.
Apartment 3-G, 1/9/08
Say what you will about Cousin Blaze’s ludicrous yet omnipresent cowboy outfits, but at least they make it possible to differentiate him from every other same-general-age-as-the-A3G-girls-whatever-that’s-supposed-to-be-exactly dude in the strip. Despite the fact that Blaze is identified in the first panel narration box, the comic is so dependent on the western wear to mark him out out that here we get his casual indoor cowboy look — no hat or jacket, but still the shirt and bolo tie, plus hair that looks like he was wearing a cowboy hat mere moments ago. I love the little arrow things on his shirt; I know it’s a feeble attempt to represent cowboy stylings, but in panel three in particular it looks like it’s just pointing at his bolo tie, as if to say, “Can you believe he’s wearing this thing? I know!”
Archie, 1/9/08
I suppose I should be bothered by the entire headache-inducing ill-drawn cubist nightmare in the third panel of this strip, but it’s Archie, so I can’t get too worked up. For some reason I can’t really stop thinking about the guitar, though. Why is it there? Is it Archie’s? Did he bring it over to serenade Veronica, to accompany the presentation of his tiny and oddly nonspecified gift, and then just lose interest when he was distracted by the Car Channel? And what’s all that stuff around the guitar neck — broken and tangled guitar strings, or a plant of some sort growing directly out of the wall of stately Lodge Manor?
Mark Trail, 1/9/08
[Cue the sitcom-style mute horn]: Wanh wanh waaaaaannnnnnhhhh
I mean, I’m glad and all that wacky radiology lab mixups are saving people’s lives rather than cruelly snuffing them out as in Funky Winkerbean, but come the hell on. It would be one thing if Luke Wilson’s X-rays had been mixed up with those of, say, Hollywood actor Luke Wilson, but do doctors really take a casual look at X-rays and say, “Whoops, looks like he isn’t terminal after all. Ha ha! I guess I was looking at it upside down! I don’t even think that’s a tumor — it’s probably his hypothalamus or some other whatsit. Maybe I should call him, right after I get back from golf.”
Family Circus, 1/9/08
Notice that in mom’s little fantasy, Billy is the only one praying. Is it because she believes that the Keane Kompound is the last bastion of piety in a fallen world of secular humanism? Or does she just know that Billy’s the dumbest kid in his class?
Dick Tracy, 12/22/07
I’ve managed to go several weeks without mentioning Dick Tracy, and that’s because it’s been stupid and incomprehensible and insane. The meandering, pointless storyline has involved a maniac holding the governor hostage in an old haunted mansion at the end of a tunnel behind a painting; meanwhile, a wrecking crew has shown up to demolish the house the same day that a high-profile charity haunted house sleepover event involving local politicians is ostensibly in progress inside, and they refuse to obey the orders of the police. Today’s comic is worthy of mention, though, because it features the bad guy (or maybe the governor — I’m not entirely clear on this point) falling to his death, a mighty SPLATT ringing out as his organs are pulped inside his body cavity; then his corpse is mangled by a bulldozer, which the operator of said machine barely notices. I would bet money that this strip runs in at least one newspaper that pulled Zits last month because it used the word “sucks.”
Family Circus, 12/22/07
This sort of blasphemous sass that should definitely not bring a wry little smile to the lips of the mother of any ostensibly Christian household. Mommy needs to get out the crucifix and use it to bludgeon the devil out of her sinful son.
Judge Parker, 12/22/07
Hmm, pot brownies should really leave Abbey “inspired” to do little more than sit in the office and giggle about all the clashing color schemes she keeps coming up with. New theory: meth brownies.
Slylock Fox, 12/22/07
You know what America needs more of? Superheroes that pick up criminals by the scruff of the neck and then punch them in the face.