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For Better Or For Worse, 3/31/08

My wife asked me to pass on this message to Ellie, Connie, and Lynn Johnston: IF YOUR ONLY CHILD IS A SON, YOU WILL NEVER GET TO BE A MOTHER OF THE BRIDE. IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW GAY HE IS.

I have no idea what exactly this strip’s patented Foob Pun is supposed to mean. Unless it involves owning your children like barnyard animals. Then you can mate them to suit your purposes and dress them up exactly the way you always fantasized about, and you don’t have to care about what they want or think! OK, it’s beginning to make sense.

Dick Tracy, 3/31/08

The current Dick Tracy storyline, in which a sinister villain is holding a batch of prominent citizens hostage in his mansion and Dick has snuck inside the compound inside an “antique Chinese kwanxoi” (a nonsense phrase we’ve heard repeated about six dozen times at this point) is pointless and dumb. Still, I admit that I’m not immune to the charms of today’s final panel, in which Detective Tracy is slithering out of the belly of this horse like some heavily armed intestinal parasite.

Mary Worth, 3/31/08

N … no! No Toby flashback! No! In the name of all that is good and holy, NO!

It may already be too late to stop it. Still, I’m hoping that Toby’s glassy-eyed stare in panel two is not meant to indicate that she’s casting her mind back to her pre-trophy-wife childhood days, but merely that she’s all Xanax’d to the gills, as usual.

Garfield, 3/31/08

Jon is about start peeing on everything. Garfield is right to leave.

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Marvin, 3/27/08

Yesterday, several commentors noted that Marvin and Bitsy (yes, Marvin’s dumb dog is named “Bitsy”) were conversing not with their usual thought-balloon-based psychic powers, but in ordinary word balloons denoting normal audible speech — or as normal as any such speech can be when being uttered by a baby and a dog. Naturally, because this is Marvin, I assumed that it was a result of the strip’s general slapdash halfassery, rather than than some momentous change in the inner universe of the characters. But today, we see that Marvin can in fact speak aloud to adults in complete (and rather pompously phrased) sentences. Why? Who knows? Who cares? It’s Marvin. At least they’ve quietly dropped the stupid text speak.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/27/08

Gosh, Liz, I wonder why it doesn’t feel quite right? Maybe because this whole process has involved you letting go of your own hopes, dreams, ambitions, wants, and personality, and now are just being buffeted along by everyone else’s opinions? Or maybe you’re talking about the dress itself, with its built-in whalebone corset, which feels very much not right as it jabs into your ribs.

Gil Thorp, 3/27/08

Hey, everyone, would you like to get ready for taco casserole at home? It’s easy! Here’s how:

• Dump a dozen hard-shelled tacos, with your choice of cheese, ground beef, salsa, and vegetables, into a saucepan.
• Pour in four cans of cream of mushroom soup.
• Stir over medium heat until mixture becomes a more or less undifferentiated, vomit-like mass.
• Pour into possibly leaky brown paper bag; hold sideways.
• Never, ever eat again, because the process has been made forever repellent to you by your experience with “taco casserole.”

Sally Forth and Pearls Before Swine, 3/27/08

Hey everyone, it’s a Sally Forth-Pearls Before Swine crossover! There’s very little I can say that would be funnier than Sally Forth writer Ces Marciuliano’s original blog post on the subject, so you should just go check that out now.

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Apartment 3-G, 3/21/08

Ha ha, Margo fleeing in panic from human affection will always be hilarious to me. Lu Ann is really making a go of it, though — it looks like this is less an attempted hug and more a running tackle. Margo has her deadly pointing finger deployed in defense, ready to take out an eye if that’s what it takes.

For Better Or For Worse, 3/21/08

What’s the best reason to pledge a lifetime commitment to someone, and to have a big, expensive wedding with several attendants? A desire to share your love with your family and friends? Ha ha, no, silly, it’s revenge.

Gil Thorp, 3/21/08

That’s supposed to by Tyler Jay? Say what you will about the previous artist, but he was at least able to conceive of two spit-curled characters in the same strip. On the other hand, maybe Tyler’s new ’do, which appears to be heavily shellacked, is meant to serve as a final defense measure if the urge to club himself again became overwhelming.

Marmaduke, 3/21/08

Marmaduke has recently killed and eaten a leather daddy, a go-go dancer, and an aerobics instructor, and is wearing a few items of their clothing as grisly trophies.