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The Family Cirus, 1/7/07

I had thought that the whole “childhood obesity epidemic” was something of an overblown moral panic. But that was before I saw the Family Circus clan celebrating their holiday weight gain. Kids! Competitive eating isn’t cool! Just because that freakishly thin Japanese guy can eat 78 hot dogs in an hour or whatever doesn’t mean you should try it at home.

Crock, 1/7/06

At first I thought the saddest thing about this Crock was that “WHUMP THUMP THUMP BUMP” was supposed to be music of some kind, probably rap music. Then I thought it was that the artist might actually believe that a boom box is a featureless grey box with a single button on the side. Then I thought it was that the whole “boom box” thing was a desperate stab at relevance at some kind for the “kids today.” Then I realized that trying to work out the saddest thing about this cartoon was in itself a deeply depressing exercize.

Judge Parker, 1/7/07

Oh man, Abbey’s misguided attempts to be a “cool parent” in Paris are going to be aweseome. She’s already getting Neddy drunk and they haven’t even landed yet. I can’t wait until Ned picks out the cutest boy, and Abbey has to go seal the deal. “My daughter, she is lovely, yes? You would like to make sweet Franco-American love to her, yes? I can make that happen.”

Mark Trail, 1/7/07

For those of you who can’t make out the type in the yellow box at the lower right that I’ve circled for you, it reads as follows:

Thanks to the Smithsonian Magazine, whose articles have been a useful resource for information used in Mark Trail.

Allow me to translate:

“Aw, CRAP! Deadline! CRAP! Uh … Sunday strip. Uh. What do we have lying around here? Hmm … Us Magazine … wow, Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson … NO! FOCUS! Wait, what’s this? Smithsonian? Hmm, polar bears … melting ice caps … oh yeah, they’ll eat that crap up. That’s gold, baby!”

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Dennis the Menace, 12/15/06

I’m not sure why Dennis’ persistent and willfully non-menacing behavior makes me so mad, but it does, it does. Dennis, you had damn well be heading right for the aforementioned closet with the intention of sorting through all the presents, determining that most of them are “lame,” taking them back to the store where Mom bought them and exchanging them for cash, using that cash to buy the most powerful BB gun they’ll sell to a child, and then heading down to the overpass to shoot out the windshields of innocent motorists. That’s being a menace, by God.

By the way, if it’s December, any child with even the most basic concept of how numbers work knows exactly how many days there are left until Christmas. In America, that’s how most of us learn to subtract.

Mark Trail, 12/15/06

So is this it? Is Mark Trail just going to be all lonely, confused animals in the woods all the time now? Is it going to turn into Mutts? Is that it? No punching, just Mutts with a slightly broader species range of adorable creatures?

Rusty is looking more and more hideously deformed every day, and his front teeth are looking buckier and buckier. I’m beginning to think he’s caught beaver.

The Phantom, 12/15/06

Right, so, um, yesterday? When I said it would be awesome to see the president personally beat somebody up? Well, I was pretty much just joking. Turns out it actually makes me kind of uncomfortable. In President Luaga’s defense, though, Denton did take his glasses off in panel two, which totally means that he’s asking for it.

Family Circus, 12/15/06

“And Easter came before Halloween so that Zombie Jesus had a chance to get good and hungry for brains by October 31.”

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Mark Trail, 12/9/06

One of the things that Mark Trail is ostensibly supposed to do is to teach young people about the ways of nature. That’s why we’re lucky that no young people actually read Mark Trail because the last thing you really should do if you encounter an injured animal — particularly an injured animal with enormous, powerful teeth that it’s temperamentally prone to going all bitey bitey with — is to pick it up. Fortunately Mark is like a modern-day St. Francis with his animal-charming powers, although somewhat more enthusiastic about punching hillbillies in the face than the good man from Assisi.

At some level, Mark knows that his reckless beaver-handling isn’t a good example for young people. That’s why Rusty has magically transmogrified into a full-grown adult in panels one and three.

Hagar the Horrible, 12/9/06

I could think of any number of mildly amusing punchlines that might have made incrementally but noticeably funnier use of the setup provided here. What appears to have happened is that someone at Hagar Central remembered that, according to the meticulously maintained and elaborate Hagar the Horrible canon, Hagar is actually illiterate, and reference to that fact had to be added in at the last minute lest all the Hagar nerds (chosen name: “Horribles”) tear this strip to pieces on the many, many Hagar fan sites.

Popeye, 12/9/06

So, yeah, Popeye’s been doing this “Olive Oyl is jealous of Sweet Pea and also just sort of in general” storyline for, like, months and months and months, which has mostly been unworthy of mention, until today when we get Olive contemplating “dating” a gorilla, which I, uh, thought worthy of mention.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/9/06

Niki, I warned you that “bad June” would be back before too long. If “painting the garage” is anything like “cleaning the basement,” a euphemism thought up by Mrs C. and her filthy-minded college friends, Niki had better hope that his jaw is back in top shape.

The Family Circus, 12/9/06

There’s something unspeakably creepy to me about Ma Keane standing in the doorway in the background of this scene, looking on at these crimes against pretend medical science silently and expressionlessly. It’s as if she’s watching another step in an unfathomable and long-running plan of her own design playing out. I’m not sure what that plan is, but it’s a good guess that it involves somebody’s freakishly oversized head being split open.

Spider-Man, 12/9/06

Later, after the drama is resolved: “Yeah, honey, it was reverse psychology! Yeah, that’s the ticket.”