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Spider-Man, 2/27/15

Hahaha, thank you, Spider-Man, thank you for wrapping up this storyline in the most pointlessly absurd way possible. There’s nothing about this that I don’t adore. I love that the potential dramatic purpose of Mysterio’s double-masking is undercut by the strip revealing the truth after only one panel, and I sincerely hope the reasons behind it are never discussed or even mentioned. I love the fact that the “Dash” Dashell mask is presumably fixed in that glum expression. I love that he’s got glasses perched on top of the mask, and that those glasses apparently have transition lenses. I love the weird grimace Beck is making as the mask comes off, which is actually the sort of face you’d make if you were wearing a fishbowl full of water over a latex mask. I love the fact that all this time we’ve been set up to think that Rory McCormick, the douchey special effects guy, is Mysterio, but it turns out to be some other dude we’ve never even heard of before this point. The only way I could possibly be happier would be if Spidey pulled off the Quentin Beck mask only to discover McCormick’s face underneath.

Gil Thorp, 2/27/15

Basketball manager/secret coaching prodigy Bobby Howley was gently admonished by Gil at the beginning of this storyline for acting more like a coach than a manager, and since then Gil and Coach Kaz and Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp have appeared not at all, while Bobby has dished out basketball and/or pharmaceutical advice to boys and girls alike. Today, however, we see the limits of his keen mind: while he may see the basketball court as an easily solved equation, clearly that triangular shape of a piece of pizza has got him in over his head. “Well, I can easily fit this end of this slice into my mouth, so I can just keep chewing my way all the way to the crust in one go … WAIT NO TOO WIDE ABORT ABORT ABORT”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/27/15

June is having a hard time figuring out how not to pay attention to Sarah, and Rex is happy to help! “You’ve been busy, but I haven’t, but I still have no idea what she’s doing! Say, don’t we have somewhere to be? Somewhere that doesn’t involve Sarah at all?”

Heathcliff, 2/27/15

It’s funny because the fish feels a twinge of terror because Heathcliff is openly declaring his intention to kill and eat him.

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Heathcliff, 1/28/15

I know, I just discussed this a few weeks ago, but for real, what is the deal with Heathcliff’s garbage? The city dump is filled entirely with great mounds of viscous, chunky brown trash-slurry, which no doubt quiver gelatinously and put out a horrifying odor that serves as a cat-aphrodisiac, much to the disgust of our garbage man and his cigar-sucking pal. Presumably this strip takes place only moments after they tossed an old tire and shopping cart up onto the goo-heap, in an attempt to pretend that what was happening on their watch wasn’t nightmarish and potentially human-extinction-causing.

Apartment 3-G, 1/28/15

Whew, Margo and her waitress are now … inside … somewhere … where there’s a bowl of pears and a TV and/or microwave and some coffee cups and hotel-quality art and dresser/cabinets of some sort and shall we call it a cafe? Sure, why not. Plus she’s finally got her breakfast. Eggs over easy, bacon, toast, pancakes, and apple pie, all mashed together into off-white chunks and put in a bowl, just the way she likes it!

Mary Worth, 1/28/15

OH SNAP SEAN JUST BACK-HANDEDLY PROPOSED TO HANNA!!!! This is probably the least romantic comics proposal since Anthony and Elizabeth came to the consensus that their friend-partnership should be upgraded way back in aught-eight. Nothing says “will you marry me” like “I know we haven’t talked about it yet but I’ve already been dreading what a pain in the ass our wedding is going to be”!

Dennis the Menace, 1/28/15

This mysterious woman with glasses and a clipboard, searching through kindergarten recess for signs of nonconformity, is the most menacing figure to appear in this strip in years.

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Heathcliff, 1/22/15

Comics are an incredibly conservative art form — not necessarily in a political or ideological sense, but in that they preserve visual tropes from the comics that current artists grew up with, thus sometimes presenting a world that vanished long ago. Thus, just as Dagwood’s suburban neighborhood is lousy with semi-feral dogs, so does Heathcliff view going to the bathroom as a primarily outside activity. This was the the norm for pet cats for most of their millennia-long period of domestication, but with the invention of clay kitty litter nearly 70 years ago, the idea of a cat doing its business inside the house became … well, significantly less worthy of a joke in a cat-themed comic, let’s just say that.

Funky Winkerbean and Dick Tracy, 1/22/15

The intrusion of Dick Tracy into the Funkyverse is having interesting effects on the Funky-space-time continuum. This reality has already been able to accommodate multiple discontinuous time-tracks, as seen by the apparent coexistence of the Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft timelines 10 years apart, with the one only occasionally bleeding into the other. But now with Dick and Sam in town, the timeline seems to have rapidly bifurcated into two closely linked parallel streams: in one, they crack vaguely wise at one another about comic books; in the other, they growl menacingly about how they totally have the right to just shoot this guy in the gut for “resisting arrest.”