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Funky Winkerbean, 11/15/13

I don’t know why, but I was under the impression that Lisa’s Forbidden Diary, the one that will help Les get inside his late wife’s head and unlock her cinematic secrets, was from, like, a time in her life when she and Les weren’t married and spending all their time together. Turns out nope! It’s just a record of all the stuff that Les probably would’ve known if he’d been paying attention at the time. Anyway, the very first passage Les reads consists of Lisa making a clunky joke and then noting smugly that the people she made it at didn’t seem to get it, probably because they weren’t smart enough. “That’s my girl,” Les thinks, smirking in her memory, smirking because she cannot. “That’s my girl.”

Heathcliff, 11/15/13

So it took me a while to figure out exactly what’s going on here, mostly because Heathcliff’s jeans have been colored the exact same shade of orange as his fur, and I was going to berate the syndicate colorist for doing this, but really, has Heathcliff ever worn pants before? Wouldn’t his sudden decision to do so cast an unflattering and frankly disturbing light on the years of pantslessness that led up to this point? Anyway, what’s going on here is that Heathcliff, who is wearing jeans that are the exact same shade of orange as his fur (and, side note, imagine leaving the house wearing only garments that precisely matched your own skin tone, imagine how everyone would look at you in mingled fascination and horror), is no-hands eating a turkey leg, and gorged himself to the point of bursting his pants button at exactly the right time for said pants button to hit a dog in the face. It seems like an awful lot would have had to go exactly right here for this plan to work out, but I guess Heathcliff is bored with his usual dog-harassment and wanted to take on a real challenge, you know? “He gets them with girth” says a nearby child, to give an example of another thing I’d rather not think too much about.

Dick Tracy, 11/15/13

I’m sorry, did you think Dick Tracy was an anachronistic square-jawed fascist wholly unfamiliar with American pop culture? Dick Tracy wants you to know that he’s cool, or at least was cool, back in the late ’70s and early ’80s. You know, back when he was young, taking in the post-punk and early new wave scenes in New York, hanging out with all those guys before they were famous, doing coke in the bathroom at CBGB with Patti Smith, what have you. Later he had them all arrested, of course.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/15/13

You guys, there is literally nothing Rex Morgan likes hearing better than “it’s going to cost them triple,” especially when the person reaping those tripled costs is a member of the Morgan family whose finances Rex is responsible for. Look at how pleased he is in that third panel, to hear about all the money his lawyer will be extracting from a local nonprofit arts organization! I’ve literally never seen him so happy. Just for comparison, this is the face he makes when a patient thanks him profusely for saving his life:

Mark Trail, 11/15/13

I take back what I said yesterday about the Mark Trail bug talk being boring — at least, boring in some conventional sense. Now I think it’s boring in a fascinating sense, like a five-hour Central European art house film where a village is increasingly infested with flies that represent the legacy of Communism or maybe just man’s own inherent corruption, and the inhabitants endure the plague with grim stoicism. There’s a shot of several flies on an old man’s face that goes on in silence for nearly two minutes. “Is he ever going to brush them off?” you wonder. He does, eventually. But they come back again a moment later, and he realizes that swatting them away was futile. The moose may seek shelter, but humanity has the self-awareness to know that it’s all hopeless.

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Apartment 3-G, 11/4/13

Oddball misfit Marty sure is learning some stuff about how to be a bad girl from her bad girl friend Tori! For instance, she’s learning how to make the jerk-off gesture when talking (or, in this case, thinking) about jerk-offs like her dad. She hasn’t quite gotten all the nuances down yet — for instance, you should do it sort off to the side while sneering, rather than right in front of your face while you look like you’re about to cry — but it’s nice to see her trying new things!

Slylock Fox, 11/4/13

I originally thought the solution to this puzzle was going to involve the boxer shorts that Count Weirdly hadn’t taken off yet, thanks to his last shred of human decency. But no, it’s based on the fact that your hair and nails are already dead! I’m not sure what’s more unsettling, the image of a man invisible except for his hair and nails, or the thought that we’re all covered with corpse-bits that spout out of our very flesh.

Spider-Man, 11/4/13

You’d think that Peter Parker’s own extremely non-lucrative journalism career would give him a little more sympathy for the sad souls who pissed their editors off enough to be exiled to the Spider-Man beat for their various publications. But nope, being Spider-Man means you can just be a stone-cold dick to whoever you want!

Heathcliff, 11/4/13

I love how unimpressed and aggravated Heathcliff’s owner is here. What good is it even to have a cat that uses his terrifying control over the forces of darkness to manipulate matter and cancel out gravity if you still have mice?

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Marvin, 11/2/13

None of us ever asked for any kind of psychological depth to the awful title character of this terrible strip, but here we have it anyway: Marvin compulsively poops constantly because he’s a desperate baby wipe huffer and is too dumb to realize he can just pull the wipes out and breathe in their sweet, addictive fumes directly. Look at how smug he is announcing his chemical dependency and its effect on his gastrointestinal life! The first step is admitting you have a problem, Marvin.

Momma, 11/2/13

Considering that Momma is sitting less than three feet away from MaryLou, I think we have to assume that she’s so angry and agitated all the time because she’s can’t hear anything but is too proud to admit she needs hearing aids. Just imagine that everything she ever says isn’t in response to what people are saying to her (which she can’t hear) but what she imagines they’re saying to her, which is of course something terribly negative. It explains a lot!

Heathcliff, 11/2/13

I originally read that sign as “Beware of Dying,” and I think we can all agree that this would be a lot funnier if that was what it actually said.