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Family Circus, 4/6/07

I’m not a Christian, but even I know how theologically troubling this Good Friday installment of the supposedly Jesus-friendly Family Circus is. Hey Dolly, they don’t say “Jesus was an adorable baby wrapped in swaddling clothes surrounded by cute animals for your sins,” you know what I’m saying?

Several commentors have suggested that Ma Keane is attempting to exorcize the demons out of Dolly, but I think it’s instructive to compare this panel with Tuesday’s installment. The visual echoes imply that Dolly is about to get smacked with that crucifix; we might assume that its religious meaning is incidental, and that it was merely the closest heavy object to hand.

Gil Thorp, 4/6/07

The first panel of today’s Gil Thorp is just evidence of how far this strip (and by extension America) has slipped from the good old days, as “the doc” is some touch-feely psychotherapist who’s helping Tyler get in touch with his emotions and discover the reasons why he felt a need to hit himself in the back of the head with a stick until he bled; obviously his coach should be telling him to man up, push all those troubling “feelings” deep down inside, and hit other people with sticks instead. The third panel is completely incomprehensible to me. But I like panel two. I like the fact that Assistant Coach Kaz spends his spare time lifting free weights in … well, I don’t know where he’s supposed to be, exactly; it looks like he’s in the exercise yard in prison. I also like the fact that it’s totally obvious that Kaz has had some eye work done.

Apartment 3-G, 4/6/07

The “Lu Ann is being possessed or dying or something and nobody cares or even remembers she exists” bit is now becoming actively hilarious to me. And do we need any more proof that the Professor’s years of “paternal” attentions to the girls in 3G were basically driven by a desire to get into the pants of one or all of them? Now that he’s managed to somehow snag a babe even younger than them, his interest in their sordid paint-huffing adventures has vanished.

The Lockhorns, 4/6/07

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. But it is true that, thanks to Leroy’s listlessness and inattention, Loretta is like El Niño in that she comes once every three to eight years.

Slylock Fox, 4/6/07

Wow, for someone who in the next few minutes is going to die either from suffocation or from a trip through a walrus digestive system, that fish sure is looking pretty darn cheery.

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Family Circus, 4/3/07

Uh oh, Big Daddy Keane, you’ve made a crucial tactical error: The time to extract that sort of promise from Jeffy would have been before you handed the bludgeoning instrument to him, not after he’s gotten his grubby little paws on it and certainly not while he’s lunging at your face, all dead-eyed and zombie-like.

Apartment 3-G, 4/3/07

Today I want to remark not on Margo’s icy callousness, which isn’t really remarkable at all, but on her appalling fashion choices. Seriously, a black turtleneck under some kind of pink button-up … jumper … thing? GIRL, HAS LOVE REGULAR SEXUAL ACTIVITY DESTROYED YOUR BRAIN? She ought to know that she’s made a terrible mistake because she actually looks more Amish than Tommie, who is showing an alluring hint of collarbone today.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/3/07

Thank God this strip keeps June’s priorities in order. “Damn it, Heather, Milton may have gone down to his icy North Atlantic grave, but my awesome rack and ass are still very much alive! Also, Pete’s pants weren’t going to unzip themselves.”

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Spider-Man, 3/31/07

You may have missed Friday’s thrilling Spider-Man, in which the fake Mrs. Spider-Man attempted to escape from the back seat of her captor’s car! So, thrill to this installment in which … she … is … put back into the car by her captor. This, combined with my rage earlier this week at similar non-developments, has brought about an epiphany: just about everything that happens in Spider-Man happens only to slow down the action of the strip. It’s all an endless delaying action, making the big payoff we’re going to get that much more exciting. I’ve been reading this feature daily for something like three years now, so I can tell you that said payoff had better be really good.

Panel three: Spidey, you got clocked by a brick and you’re just now wondering if this whole “spider-sense” thing isn’t a load of bunk?

Pluggers, 3/31/07

Just when you think that the whole “anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic animals uneasily sharing narrative space” scenario can’t get any more unsettling, you get today’s paean to involuntary sterilization. For obvious reasons, I try not to pay too close attention to the various family relationships among the horrifying bipedal beasts of Pluggers, so I can’t say for sure if the dog and the Chicken-Lady are kin or just acquaintances, but I think what really makes this panel disturbing is the look of mortal terror on the face of the li’l pup contrasted with heavy-lidded indifference of his feathered captor.

Would it make me an evil chardonnay-swilling elitist if I suggested that actual plugger litter control is a crude, hand-scrawled sign that reads “FREE PUPPIES,” which you put on a pole in the middle of your dog-feces-laden yard? What, it would? Oh, OK then, I won’t … what, I already said it? Damn it.

Beetle Bailey, 3/31/07

Wow, who knew that painting your own porch furniture was something that somehow lowered one’s prestige, and that, more generally, the elite of our military’s officer corps lives in a fishbowl in which every action that they and their spouses take is judged by neighbors and passersby? Who should be painting a general’s chairs? A crew of enemy combatants, on loan from Gitmo?

Family Circus, 3/31/07

“I’m helping her too, Jeffy! I’m masturbating to Internet pornography because I know that cleaning leaves her too tired to perform her marital duties. Oh, and let me borrow one of those shirts, while you’re handing them out.”