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Heathcliff, 7/15/13

Last week’s Heathcliff fish joke, while well within the expected whimsy-parameters of an inoffensive long-running legacy comic, still adhered to a basic logic, that logic being “cats like stealing fish, to eat.” Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh? Or … maybe, as I imagined last week, we’re meant to interpret the fish’s open eyes as meaning that it is still alive, which makes its bemused facial expression all the more hilarious. “Oh, now the cat’s using me as a baseball bat. That’s fantastic, just fantaaaastic.”

Archie, 7/15/13

The current run of Newspaper Archie Reruns From The Late ’90s Or Maybe The Early ’00s has actually involved a continuing plot that’s running over multiple weeks, which is kind of a new one, though not new in the sense of these strips actually being new, obviously. Anyway, Ronnie’s cruel father made her get a job! Obviously this job just became another venue for her long-running battle with Betty over Archie’s dubious charms. Which I guess is bumming him out? Look at how miserable Archie looks in panel two! I’ve never seen him sadder! And this is before he finds out that Veronica is stalking him with potentially malicious intent. Maybe he’s just sad that she gets access to all that delicious ice cream and he doesn’t?

Beetle Bailey, 7/15/13

As we already know, Camp Swampy exists in an pocket universe in which a single, awful day keeps on happening, forever. Dimly aware of the nightmarish nature of his reality, Beetle is attempting, through this conceptual artwork, to convey the horror of his damned existence.

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Spider-Man, 7/8/13

Good news, guys! Spider-Man’s ill-thought-out scheme to avoid having to make up some semi-believable explanation to a bored TSA agent about why he has a Spider-Man costume in luggage by wearing his Spider-Man costume and then making a dick of himself by climbing all over the walls has succeeded! Not because of any real heroics, or because he had a plan of any sort in place, obviously, but because somebody in the layer of Homeland Security bureaucracy that a TSA agent can reach via walky-talky told said TSA agent to “make this stop happening in such a way that I don’t have to ever hear about it again.” Still, Spidey is right to celebrate! Any conflict that doesn’t end with him accidentally knocking himself unconscious is a triumph!

Heathcliff, 7/8/13

OK, so I know fish don’t have eyelids and so their eyes appear to be staring at you in unblinking horror long after they’re dead, and that Heathcliff has stolen this dead fish and put a helmet it on it for joke/whimsy purposes as he razor-scooters off. But still, I choose to interpret the scene thusly: that fish is still alive, and is aware that he’s being carted for eating. His expression indicates not so much horror as a bemused resignation. “Oh, so I’m on a razor scooter now, with a cat. Greeeeaat.”

Mary Worth, 7/8/13

“I sure am enjoying this copy of Person magazine! It’s a great resource for finding out what sort of behavior patterns persons find normal. Plus, it’s a magazine that only persons read! Says so right in the name! Why, it certainly wouldn’t be purchased and read ostentatiously by some sort of space-lizard wearing a human meatsuit disguise! Ha ha!”

Six Chix, 7/8/13

Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that the Six Chix were competing amongst themselves to see who could create a cartoon with the most horribly mangled corpse in it. Explains a lot!

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Hi and Lois, 7/3/13

Oh my goodness, look at Trixie’s facial expressions in this strip. Congrats, Hi and Lois, for not backing away from the full psychological horror of her sudden and entirely incorrect epiphany! “Oh God, those things … at the end of my feet … they’re alive. They’re alive. And they hunger. I’ve got to feed them! Eat, piggies!” She shoves her feet deeper into the moist, yielding paste in Dawg’s dinner bowl. “Eat!” She’s desperate that they find something to eat. Because she knows that if they don’t, they’ll start eating their way up her foot, and won’t stop until she is entirely consumed.

Heathcliff, 7/3/13

You ever see a cat playing with a toy — batting it around with her paws, swatting it up into the air, maybe holding onto it with her mouth while kicking at it with her feet — and suddenly realize that you’re watching what it looks like when a predator methodically batters its prey to death? Heathcliff and his dad are tossing a dead squirrel around, is what I’m saying.

Six Chix, 7/3/11

There is of course a long comedic history of slapstick violence being meted out to characters, and of anthropomorphic animals mixing the experiences of sentient beings and their real-world counterparts. How can you tell that you’ve pushed these tropes too far to be really successful? When you end up drawing a mangled corpse lying in a pool of human-looking blood and viscera, I would argue.

Dick Tracy, 7/3/11

Welp, I officially don’t understand what’s going on in this Dick Tracy storyline, but at least it’s still dishing out the quotables. “Dr. Sail made me an accessory to fraud! I’ll never get back to the moon!” Ha ha, that’s a tough spot that we can all relate to, amiright?

Speaking of things that are awful: Are you guys aware of FunkyWatch, from the indefatigable Chris Sims? Each month he selects and recaps the most depressing Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean strips from the past 30 days. It’s always worth your time if you’re a Funkyverse obsessee, but this month was particularly grim, and FunkyWatch correspondingly hilarious. Go forth and read it!