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Judge Parker, 11/10/14

Oh no! Could our super-rich heroes be encountering ill fortune? Actual mild inconvenience? This is insane! Why, they might have to stay in this RV park for literally hours until AAA can come out and fix the engine! After reading the first panel, I was hoping that the Spencer-Drivers were victims of class warfare — that the muttonchopped/combovered RV salesman who unloaded this thing on them knew that he was selling the rich swells a lemon and didn’t care because he was going bankrupt anyway and screw those guys, you know? But it turns out it’s squirrels, which is even funnier. Just a bunch of squirrels, frolicking around the vast Spencer-Driver estate and then chewing through important parts of their machinery with their razor-sharp ever-growing incisors. Even the adorable wildlife is revolting against these insufferable people.

Momma, 11/10/14

Even for a comic that repeatedly dwells on the Oedipal relationship between the title character and her sons, this strip is pretty dark. “Well, Francis, I can’t change your diapers anymore, thanks to the court order, but I still demand satisfaction! What was the most shameful thing that’s happened to you since last we spoke? Spare no details, no matter how disgusting or humiliating!”

Heathcliff, 11/10/14

Hello Kitty is 40 this year! What better way to celebrate than by implying that Heathcliff is fucking Hello Kitty?

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Crock, 11/3/14

Hey all, remember when Crock creator Bill Rechin died in 2011, and then a year later his son Kevin, who had taken over the strip in accordance with the Legacy Comics Law, declared that working on his dad’s creation made him too sad and he declared that he’d be quitting and shutting the strip down? And there was a note in passing that King Features would make “classic” Crock strips available to “foreign” newspapers for three years, and yet Crock continued to appear in American newspapers, or at least on the King Features site? And the strips that appeared didn’t seem to be particularly “classic”, but looked pretty much exactly like the strips from the decade or so leading up to Rechin’s death? ANYWAY, if you’re like me, you were probably hoping to watch Crock fade away into semi-fond and very vague memories without ever having introduced a black character possibly named “Three” who cheerfully asks people if they “ever do the ‘hip-hop.'” Today’s strip reminds us all that hoping for things only leads to disappointment.

Heathcliff, 11/3/14

I guess as purveyors of cultural/musical stereotypes go, today’s Heathcliff is significantly less problematic than today’s Crock. “These rock and rollers today, they’re all tall skinny white fellas with that ‘mop-top’ haircut, right? Like those Beatles that the girls are all screaming at? Let’s have Heathcliff sit in one of their guitar cases while he begs for change on the subway, that’ll show them. Heh heh, Heathcliff, you truly are the comics pages’ bad boy.”

Apartment 3-G, 11/3/14

Fun fact: Martin did purchase a table! For his apartment. Which is where he and Margo quite obviously are now. Definitely not in a restaurant. Real easy to get a table in your dad’s apartment, Margo. Just saying.

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Mary Worth, 11/1/14

Oh snap, looks like Hanna’s going to be convinced to move into an old folks’ home not because it’s “what’s best for her” or anything, but because it’ll be the fastest way to get her hands on this hot widowed hunk of vest-clad man meat. Just to add to his cred, Sean is still capable of operating a car, so it looks like Hanna won’t have to take the shuttle with all the other losers after all! It would be a truly delicious act of revenge if Hanna’s move to an assisted living facility not only lands her a man, but denies her daughter the free babysitting services she needs to do the same.

Heathcliff, 11/1/14

Sure, lots of aggressively whimsical cartoon cats might make a point of dressing up like Saturn every Saturday, but only Heathcliff would build a huge Saturn-suit, with most of its bulk above his head, in order to really do justice to our solar system’s second largest planet. This is the kind of commitment to a corny shtick that has truly made Heathcliff America’s second-most-beloved feline in the daily comics.