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Mary Worth, 12/17/12

Oh boy oh boy pool party pool party POOL PARTY, everybody! This is great because (a) it means that the long, eternal slog of Dawn’s Quest For Meaning And Love (But Not Love Like That, Just Friendship-Love) is finally over (I mean, it will only really end with Dawn’s mopey death, but at least we won’t have to look at it for a while) and (b) we get to see a pool party, and those are always awesome. In today’s strip, Mary doesn’t even bother coming up with a specific reason for why she skipped her neighbor’s wife’s funeral. “I had a … thing, you understand, it was more important than your grief. Why don’t you cheer yourself up by gawking at that weird cake over there with everyone else?”

Funky Winkerbean, 12/17/12

To give those of you who don’t subject yourself to Funky Winkerbean daily a vaguely succinct summary of what led to this: Crazy got laid off from the Post Office, and in a desperate attempt to not starve to death decided to sell off his beloved collection of comic books and sci-fi novels to Comic Book Store John, and then Comic Book Store John decided to hire Crazy, to sell his own stuff. Thus “It wasn’t about greed, it was about need,” makes sense if we read it as “He needs an income to live on,” but I think we’re supposed to understand it as “It’s really the emotional satisfaction he’ll get out of seeing his beautiful collection dismembered, that’s why I hired him.” Although maybe it’s more about John’s need to see the citizens of this hell-town that’s always hated him debase themselves for minimum wage, for his amusement.

Apartment 3-G, 12/17/12

Oh man, the story of Evan the Sexual Spy is just getting weirder and weirder! Remember, Evan got Margo to summarily reject Skyler by making her believe that the young starlet was a rival for his affections. So he’s going to send Greg over to Aunt Cathy … how? “No, it isn’t above my skill level! I can do the bisexual jealousy grift! I’m ready for this!”

Hagar the Horrible, 12/17/12

Hagar and his Viking band seem to engage in no productive economic activity of any kind, and instead subsist entirely on the violent looting of a hapless late-Carolingian Europe. Will the fact that this castle is inhabited only by children and an old woman stop their awful depredations? Enh, probably not. Enjoy being sold into slavery to some monstrous Norse chieftain, kids!

Mark Trail, 12/17/12

Mark generally verbalizes literally every thought that passes through his square, immaculately Brylcreemed head, which makes his silent stare in the second panel here all the more hilarious. “Huh, so, cruel leader of a pirate band, kidnapping the innocent and holding them for ransom, ruling this tiny island by fear, tried to feed me to sharks … and ‘strange man,’ that’s all you got? Huh.”

Herb and Jamaal, 12/17/12

You probably think that today’s Herb and Jamaal is ripping off a joke from zany church signs everywhere, but in fact it’s just ripping off a joke from a Herb and Jamaal strip from 2007.

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Hagar the Horrible, 11/28/12

Is “boiling in oil” one of those phrases that only survives in occasional use because it rhymes? I mean, if you’ve heated up some form of oil to the boiling point, and put any variety of organic matter into it, you’d call what you’re really doing “frying,” right? Even if that organic matter is, you know, a dismembered human corpse. Ha ha, these knights are threatening Hagar and his men with a gruesome fate out of the most violent and depraved slasher flick, right here on the funny pages, in front of the children! Yet neither I nor anyone else can take the threat particularly seriously. Look, the colorists have even given everyone wooden swords. Nobody’s getting hurt in this battle!

Beetle Bailey, 11/28/12

And yet I find this Beetle Bailey grim beyond description, despite Beetle’s shaky reassurance that his mangled body will be restored to health tomorrow by narrative artifice. Still, imagine Miss Buxley gasping out “Oh, Beetle! You’re all broken!” in an exaggeratedly childlike Marilyn Monroe-type voice and try to tell me you don’t get the creeps. David Lynch directs!

Dennis the Menace, 11/28/12

Dennis is using an awesome book about bad-ass pirates to illustrate safety lessons for his younger friend. Menace levels: Undetectable by even the most powerful instruments.

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Hagar the Horrible, 10/15/12

“Maybe I shouldn’t have spent the night before I led my men into a brutal, hand-to-hand combat, during which they must either kill or be killed, filling their heads with tales of damned souls, wandering the earth as dim spectres, mere shadows of their former selves. Which thought do you think is more likely to jump into their heads unbidden it the midst of this violent melee: that they themselves will be felled in battle and their shade will live on, with the wounds and terror they feel now continuing for eternity? Or that, for the rest of their lives, every time they feel a prickling on the back of their neck or an unseasonably icy wind across their face, they’ll suspect that it’s the vengeful spirit of a man they cut down, haunting them until they succumb to madness and terror?”

Hi and Lois, 10/15/12

Ha, and if Hi’s face is any indication, he sure has earned the right to use the word “boring”! If Hi’s face is any indication, today was the day when his capacity to feel joy or pain or anything at all really was finally snuffed out by the intense ennui of mindless, soulless corporate dronery. Get used to that face, kids, it’s the only one he can make now!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/12

In order for the Slylockian world anthropomorphic animals to exist, there must be some kind of apocalyptic event in our future and their past, during which the lower beasts achieved sentience and most of the human population was wiped out, presumably violently. Normally I don’t take this personally, but something about today’s strip, in which we learn that these horror-monsters are riding our subway to our Brooklyn, makes me angry. You didn’t build that, hippo-thing! Neither did you, shirt-wearing cat! The thought of the Museum of Natural History, presumably now retooled and dedicated to the animals’ triumph over the now exterminated human race, particularly sickens me.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/12

Oh my goodness, I sure hope that “the party business” is the euphemism for prostitution that the writer of Rex Morgan and King Features Syndicate agreed on after several tortuous weeks of negotiations! Junior knows, and so does that cheery looking couple sitting on the bench. “That Junior, he runs the best brothel in San Diego County, doesn’t he, Martha?” “You can say that again, dear!”

B.C., 10/15/12

Hey! I just flew Southwest yesterday, and as usual the flight and service were excellent, and not once did anyone attempt to feed me something that they barfed and/or shat out (sorry, I’ve already grossed myself out enough just thinking about this, not going to look up how gizzards actually work, I’m afraid there’ll be pictures).

Spider-Man, 10/15/12

You know, the modern, Internet-savvy newsroom is a high-pressure, 24/7 operation, so it’s nice to see that J. Jonah Jameson still takes time to humiliate his employees with elaborate, improvised, and extremely sarcastic little skits.