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Apartment 3-G, 5/29/08

Bless you, Margo! Bless your foul mouth and shriveled little heart! Whenever I find myself feeling down, or wishing that my life was different, I can now always cheer myself up by imagining you looking down in stunned disbelief at your naked, ringless fingers, wiggling them in mid-air as if that will magically generate a token that says you’re taken out of the ether. Bless you!

I like the fact that Lu Ann and Tommie are standing around in glum silence while Margo rants. I’m imagining that we’re coming into this diatribe at about hour three. In panel two, note that Tommie is cunningly positioning Lu Ann between Margo and herself so she can slowly back away and sneak off to the bathroom without being disemboweled.

Archie, 5/29/08

I think Archie’s interlocutor is supposed to be … Reggie, maybe? I don’t recall Reggie having any sort of characterization established other than “Reggie is an asshole,” so presumably Jennifer looks so comprehensibly miserable in the first panel because her relationship with Reggie mostly consisted of his unpleasant boasts and grabby hands, and she still feels kind of dirty. Or maybe she’s just depressed because her parents force her to dress like a waitress at all times.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/29/08

I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to what the “joke” is supposed to be in today’s Funky Winkerbean. I’m too busy being traumatized by the look of near-physical ecstasy on Bull’s face in the third panel. It’s like he’s having a chairgasm, with Les just standing right there talking to him.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/29/08

Ah, I see the legacy comics are engaging in a little UNSPEAKABLE FILTH oneupsmanship. In this case, its the addition of the duck to the scenario that really pegs the old squick-o-meter.

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Mary Worth, 4/17/08

Rex Morgan may have his Mass MRSA Hysteria going for him, but Mary Worth has her own groovy new storyline percolating on the stove: the Baddle of the Ugly Middle-Aged Momma’s Boys! (“Baddle” was originally a typo for “battle,” but now I’m keeping it because it looks like “battle” plus “meddle.”) If most of next week is spent in the hospital parking lot, as two doughy dudes huff and puff while they swing ineffectively at each other and Mary shouts “Ronald! Richard! You stop that at once!”, I’ll be a happy guy.

Blondie, 4/17/08

There’s something odd about Dagwood’s lackadaisical pose that I can’t quite put my finger on. Surely the credenza is not a particularly comfortable place to lounge while being electronically snubbed. Perhaps as a world-class layabout he’s become bored with loafing on obvious pieces of furniture, like the couch or recliner, and is trying to step up his game by branching out.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/17/08

You know, sometimes it seems that Helga is profoundly unhappy in her marriage, but it’s days like today when she remembers why she agreed to leave her parents’ hut, get into Hagar’s longboat, and sail down the fjord to his village: because he’s so good at murdering people and stealing their valuable possessions.

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Dick Tracy, 4/5/08

Today we get an all-too-close look at Detective Tracy’s disturbingly unconstitutional M.O. Note that he’s already managed to disable his (unarmed!) opponent with a quick WUNK to the lower back, leaving him UMPing on the floor. Now would be a great time for Dick to leap onto the villain, pinning him to the floor and cuffing him; instead, since the usual next step in his arrest protocol involves pumping his prone, helpless opponent with hot lead, panel three finds him goggle-eyed with panic that he can’t find his gun. The number of Tracy collars who were shot in the back of the head “while trying to escape” must be remarkably high.

Spider-Man, 4/5/08

A handgun is really like the Swiss Army Knife of weapons; not only does it help Dick Tracy eliminate needless arrest paperwork, but gubernatorial candidate Simon Krandis can use one to open jammed car locks! He could, of course, turn it on his antagonist, but that would be exciting, so it won’t happen in this strip.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/5/08

I like the fact that, even though in the first panel Hagar seems to have proved pretty definitively that Snert doesn’t understand Old Norse, he still thought-balloons his dismissive comment in the second panel. You never know, and you don’t want to hurt the dog’s feelings. Any more than they’d already be hurt by forcing him to wear a damn miniature Viking’s helmet, anyway.