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Apartment 3-G, 3/2/10

YES YES YES OUR GREATEST MOST AWESOME SUSPICIONS HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED! Margo’s father’s wife, the one she believed was her mother for some unspecified stretch of her childhood and adolescence, the one Margo calls “Roberta,” is, as predicted, none other than our beloved shrink-schtupping manic-depressive Bobbie! Even this initial exchange between the two provides evidence of the fraught family history, as our pill-crazed avenging angel has, in her pharmaceutical haze, mistaken the changeling she raised for the once-young immigrant maid her husband cheated on her with. If only Bobbie knew that Margo was as disgusted by Martin and Gabriella’s gross love for one another as she is! They should be joining forces in their joint battle against all genuine human affection, not fighting amongst themselves!

The only question is: why is Bobbie lurking invisibly in the shadows at the bottom of the staircase? Presumably it’s to build suspense for those who haven’t figured this all out yet. But maybe it’s because there’s something even more horrific in the works — like, maybe she’s wearing the bloody, severed face of her mugger-turned-firearms-supplier as a hat.

Mary Worth, 4/2/10

Meanwhile, Mary, having been unwillingly pushed to the peripheries of the great Wilbur-Kurt-Dawn sandwich/frolic-off, is making sure to cement her place in this new storyline from the get-go. “Oh, your husband’s a terrible lout, is he? If you ever need a sympathetic ear, I’m here for you … listening … nodding thoughtfully … drinking your pain, your darkest emotional pain, like the sweet, sweet divine nectar that it is … oh, God, tell me, tell me, TELL ME…”

I also like the way Mary is somewhat ostentatiously gesturing towards the calendar in the first panel. It’s as if she’s saying, “Look at this, bitches, it’s 2010 and I’m still being published! So long as there are nursing homes that subscribe to newspaper print editions as a courtesy to their residents, I will live on!”

Mark Trail, 4/2/10

Good lord, is there no end to the Parker Brothers’ depravity? Even Ma Parker seems unsettled by whatever “processing” they have in mind for their captured geese; presumably they’ll be using the wood chipper to convert them into goose slurry, which they’ll attempt to pass off as foie gras at Senator Sinister’s restaurant, TGI McPoachers. These foul ruffians are so far beyond the limits of decency that the blue-shirted one (Joe? Moe? Jake? Snake? Who can keep the names straight?) probably began his sentence in the third panel with some kind of terrible curse word, which the upstanding narration box thoughtfully blocked for us with a well-placed “Meanwhile.”

While the goose-netting longhairs are obviously this piece’s villains, I think it’s notable that Mark is just taking pictures of the captured birds rather than attempting to free them. This is because geese are well known to be the meanest birds alive; Mark might be willing to take on an shotgun-toting rustic armed with nothing but a Holga, but even he knows better than to unleash a flock of angry geese.

Garfield, 4/2/10

Speaking of well-placed text, Garfield’s third-panel thought balloon allows today’s strip to neatly sidestep a key problem with the gag: Wouldn’t Garfield need to cross out the apostrophe as well to make the joke work? And if so, how would he do it? Doesn’t a crossed-out apostrophe just look like a messy apostrophe? Kudos to Paws, Inc., for their quick thinking!

Blondie, 4/2/10

On Good Friday, Dagwood makes the risen Christ weep with his horrifying rabbit fursuit. 85 percent of the people in the “furfans” and “Blondie fans” Venn diagram overlap are now writing clarifying letters to King Features, emphasizing that Dagwood was not the character they wanted to see dressed in a sexy bunny outfit.

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Garfield, 1/13/10

I’m near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other, which means that when I was growing up my eyes never really learned to work together properly, which in turn means that my depth perception is quite poor. This has had effects on my life large — I long ago gave up driving for the safety of myself and those around me — and small — 3-D movies generally don’t have the same impact on me as they do on other people. Whether the technology is what they use in Creature From The Black Lagoon or what they use in Avatar, to me it just basically looks like an ordinary movie — except for brief moments when something comes flying terrifyingly right at me.

Anyway, I don’t know about anyone else, but Odie’s tongue in panel two is providing me with just a nightmarish 3-D moment, with the leading edge of it appearing to be freakishly out of proportion to its apparent distance from the slobbering beast’s mouth. There are few things I want less when reading the comics in the morning than to even briefly worry that I’m about to be licked by some cartoon dog, and I resent the flash of panic that this induced in me.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/13/10

As you probably learned in your introductory English class, narrative is total snoresville if it doesn’t include conflict of some kind; but the inhabitants of Westview are generally far too morose to actually have competing goals or desires, so the only conflict comes when the doomed characters must do battle with their own cruel universe. Thus, I’m vaguely intrigued by the rivalry being implied here between the town’s only two vaguely ethnic downscale restaurants. I hope the Toxic Taco is a mirror image of Montoni’s, with the original Tacoteer having long since retired to Arizona, leaving the restaurant and its cast of regulars (including the zany UPS delivery guy and a single mom who overparents her only son) in charge of the manager, a bitter, burned-out recovering cocaine addict.

I’m not entirely sure what Mopey Pete’s sentence in the first panel is supposed to mean, actually. Is he saying that, since he’s not working on anything, he’ll have time to really focus on his favorite hobby, taco eating? Is he short of cash because of the lull in his work, and thus the only food he can afford is the Toxic Taco’s meat-style food substance topped with cheese byproducts? Or are the Toxic Taco’s wares literally poisonous, and his career failure is driving him to commit suicide in the most grotesque fashion he can imagine?

Mary Worth, 1/13/10

I love the look of mounting panic on Wilbur’s face as all his idle daydreams of what life with Abby would have been like are shattered by Kurt’s terrifying talk. Like all characters in Mary Worth, Wilbur values stability above all else, and if that means a life where the only “moving from place to place” happens when you move from the computer to the counter where you make your sandwiches, then so be it. Thank God he and his erstwhile lover broke it off when they did, or he might have been forced to grow as a person or experience joy.

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Mary Worth, 1/8/10

I’m pretty sure that panel two of today’s Mary Worth is what happens when you have MC Escher draw your family reunion. Note that Kurt and Wilbur are ostensibly sitting on the same piece of furniture, but Kurt’s waist is somehow level with Wilbur’s knees. That may have something do with the fact that Kurt is turned 90 degrees towards Wilbur, but his legs are still magically able to bend! Meanwhile, Dawn appears to be drawing away from Wilbur and her probably-not-actually-half-brother in disgust, tucking her right arm awkwardly behind her back so that Wilbur can’t touch it, and somehow moving closer to the viewer than the actual length of the couch would seem to allow. Just as Kurt has disrupted the Westons’ lives with his story about his illicit parentage, so too has his presence disrupted the actual fabric of time and space in their condo unit.

Also, I like their plan of finally setting some time aside to get to know each other better next week! It should make the next few days of sitting around the house awkwardly super-fun.

Apartment 3-G, 1/8/10

Wow, it looks like dating a foul-mouthed married pill addict isn’t a bed of roses — who could have guessed? I’d have more sympathy for the outrage being perpetrated against Ari’s professionalism if not for the fact that he actually appears to be not so much “with a client” as “wandering around the foyer of his office while his client presumably drones on and on about his emotional problems in the next room, seriously, that guy never shuts up, he probably won’t notice if I take a break for a few minutes.” Also weighing against Ari’s right to be self-righteous: the fact that he prescribed sleeping pills to one of his clients almost immediately upon meeting her, then started sleeping with her. What I’m trying to say is that Ari can, in fact, go to @#*%!!

Family Circus, 1/8/10

My favorite thing about today’s Family Circus is the look of disappointment on Big Daddy Keane’s face. It’s like he always had dreams of having kids so he could read stories to them, only discover that actual children ruin everything by thinking for themselves and being bored and irritated by the things you like. At least Dolly is staying engaged enough to know what’s happening in the story, even if she’s going to pick it to bits with her dumb questions; PJ looks as if he’s fantasizing that something more interesting is happening — that’s he watching television, or instance, or staring at the wall.

Garfield, 1/8/10

Ha ha! Garfield and Odie are voyeuristic perverts!