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Apartment 3-G, 5/8/11

As near as I’ve been able to tell, Trey has big plans to remake the Mills Gallery in a retro-Art Deco style, and has managed to convince his firm to underwrite the project rather than actually be paid by the client who will benefit from the makeover. Now, I’m as bored with both enormous, inhuman sheets of glass and exhaustingly whimsical Gehry-esque postmodernism as the next guy, but I’m not sure the solution is just to gin up some kind of throwback visual language and turn a perfectly nice art gallery into a slightly more upscale Johnny Rockets. And I’m definitely certain that anyone whose big idea for architecture revolves around nostalgia shouldn’t be displaying the sudden and unsettling delusions of grandeur that Trey is throwing off in the last two panels. Only one person in Apartment 3-G is allowed to indulge in that kind of unjustified megalomania, Trey, and you’d better ratchet back if you ever want to sleep with her again.

Spider-Man, 5/8/11

Ha ha, any day where Spider-Man gets bonked in the back of the head with a club-like object is a good one! But Martine shouldn’t be so proud of whatever vampire power she believes defeated our hero’s spider-sense, since the exact same attack has in the past been successfully executed by some random criminal henchman and a snooty butler, neither of which were undead bloodsuckers, as near as anyone could tell.

Family Circus, 5/8/11

Ha ha, Mommy! Your worry-wart fantasy shows that you’re starting from a false premise: You apparently believe that your family is taking you to a nice restaurant for Mother’s Day. There’s no need to dress the kids in nice shirts — or indeed in any shirts at all — if you’re just ordering at the drive-through window!

Panels from Hagar the Horrible, 5/8/11

In other news, Hagar’s wife Helga appears to have completely lost it.

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Mark Trail, 4/14/11

Ha ha, the extent to which Cherry continues to not get Mark will never cease to be funny to me. “Was she pretty?” she asks, and at this point in their long, sexless life together one assumes that she actually wants a “yes” answer, if only because it would indicate that Mark knows what “pretty” means — which he doesn’t, as this exchange makes clear. Notice that Mark doesn’t even try to answer the question. If we could read the thought balloons in panel one as seen from Mark’s perspective they would go like this: “Who is this woman named Lonnie who you said may have saved your life? [loud white noise, like static from a television]”

Hagar the Horrible, 4/14/11

Meanwhile, Hagar appears to have killed his dog! That … that’s not cool.

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Beetle Bailey, 4/10/11

Good lord, can you believe that Beetle Bailey of all strips deployed the hip, cutting-edge slang phrase “bust a move”? Note that the creators put this bit of street lingo into the mouth of the strip’s sole black character, as they obviously felt it would be unrealistic otherwise.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/10/11

Hooray for continuity! This strip references the fact that Hagar, as established by occasional references over the years, is illiterate. It also references the fact that he’s a drunkard who hates and fears his wife.