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Mary Worth, 6/14/10

Well, thank goodness: the new Mary Worth plot is being heralded by a Charterstone Pool Party, so the world does in fact still make some kind of sense. Kudos to Jenna for spicing things up by shouting potentially sensitive information across a courtyard full of her clients’ friends and neighbors. “I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR REFERRING THE JOHNSONS TO ME AS CLIENTS! BONNIE’S COMPULSIVE SPENDING ON HIDEOUS CLOTHES IN UNDER CONTROL FOR NOW, AND HER HUSBAND HAS GRUDGINGLY AGREED NOT TO LEAVE HER! I STILL DON’T THINK THEIR SEX LIFE HAS REALLY RECOVERED, THOUGH!”

Say, check out Wilbur in the background of panel two! Presumably he’s recovered from the pain of being abandoned by his lying not-son. No longer hiding in his apartment, shoving sandwich after sandwich into his mouth, he’s decided to come out into the daylight, mingle with his fellow condo dwellers, and chow down on a raw potato instead.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/14/10

You know, any comic can show you a character telling another an awkward, unfunny joke; in fact, one might argue that this is one of the things the American newspaper comics pages do best! But only high-quality strips like Funky Winkerbean have the craftsmanship to show you the uncomfortable aftermath of those failed zingers: the confusion, the sheepish smiles, the half-hearted apologies on both sides. Tomorrow’s strip should just be three panels of these two silently brooding over their continued failure to forge an interpersonal bond, despite their game efforts.

Mark Trail, 6/14/10

Panel three’s closeup reveals that “Sally” is clearly just character actor Ernest Borgnine in a not terribly convincing wig — which bodes ill for our mustachioed dog-hating villain. Don’t let Borgnine’s “lovable loser” persona from his Oscar-winning turn in Marty fool you; he’s a decorated World War II naval gunner, so that nosey neighbor and his politician friend may find themselves under attack by ship-based artillery in the near future.

Dick Tracy 6/14/10

Oh, right, Dick Tracy: it still exists, and is still insane, etc. One particularly odd and hitherto unexplained aspect of this storyline is that the play-gone-haywire at the heart of it is being staged at the Science Museum, which is not the sort of place one usually imagines as a theatrical venue. But now we’ve learned the narrative motivation behind this: with the action established at the Science Museum, we’ve been set up for a dramatic conclusion within a restored submarine! Because when you think “Science Museum,” you generally think “historic naval vessels.” Anyway, long story short, that submarine’s deck and walls are about to be decorated with blood, as Dick guns down his antagonist at point-blank range.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/19/10

Oh, Funky Winkerbean, I’m glad you’ve finally decided to give in and just embrace emotional devastation as the engine for all your drama. Today’s strip, both in form and in content, could be the basis for some bleak avant-garde art film that would play tiny, pretentious cinemas in New York and LA for two weeks before being released in a Criterion Collection DVD. For those of you not familiar with all the ins and outs of the strip’s depressing backstory: the brown-haired lady who is attempting to bust in on Les’s budding sexless romance with Cayla is Susan, who, pre-time-jump, was one of Les’s students who developed a crush on him for some incomprehensible reason, and who tried to kill herself (the incident depicted in the second panel) when her advances were spurned. Thus, what we have here is pretty much “mild low-level flirting mild low-level flirting INTRUSIVE SHARED BUT UNSPOKEN MEMORIES OF HORROR mild low-level flirting,” which is pretty hardcore. The kicker, for me, is the panel two’s “sepia-toned photo in an old-timey album” motif, which serves as a visual cue for flashbacks in the Funkyverse. In this case, it colors a grim, painful moment with a sort of ghastly nostalgia, as if Susan and Les will be laughing about it in retrospect after the consummate their mopey love.

Also, I know that the time jump wasn’t supposed to move us a decade forward in absolute time, but I’m not sure which prospect I find more unsettling: that big shoulder pads will be back in style for ladies by 2020, or that they’re coming back into style now.

Dennis the Menace, 5/19/10

Since I basically just egged Funky Winkerbean on to whatever Grand Guignol emotional excesses it might dare to achieve, I guess it’s OK for me to express my disappointment that we’ve missed Mr. Wilson’s loving descriptions of all the tortures Dennis the Menace’s damned soul will be experiencing, in hell.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/16/10

Oh, look, it appears that this actively offensive love triangle is moving forward, to be helped along by a healthy dose of hilarious misunderstanding. It will all end in anguish, of course, like an episode of Three’s Company where everyone dies horribly.

Panel from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/10

Elviney’s expression of simmering rage here — the narrowed eyes, the waggling finger — is probably the most harrowing thing I’ve seen in the comics in weeks. You do not want to promise this woman gossip that you cannot deliver. She will cut you.

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/16/10

“Just remember, if you don’t need it, it’s unnecessary, and if it’s unnecessary, you don’t need it! I hope this circular logic will be a comfort to you as you lie in bed alone, listening to the credit cards’ eager whispering.”