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Slylock Fox, 4/8/13

What must it be like to be Slick Smitty, one of the last few remaining humans in a world of anthropomorphic, mostly bipedal sentient animals? Give him credit for this: he hasn’t retreated into a gadget-crazy fantasy world like fellow survivor Count Weirdly. (Do you think Count Weirdly was ever really a member of the peerage? Does anyone have anything better than a hazy memory of what the social hierarchy was like, in the Before Time?) No, Smitty has decided to integrate himself the best he can into this multispecies world’s economy. Today, his skills have drawn him into the realm of real estate, and we should give him credit for actually trying to sell a house to some lions who are probably just going to tear up the furniture with their razor-sharp claws and then shit everywhere. And yeah, so what if it won’t have a decent view of the lake no matter what time of year it is? Does Slylock really think that a clear view of an icy lake three months a year is some kind of selling point that’s going to add thousands of dollars of value to this cottage and whatever Smitty’s commission is? Let the human have his fun. He’s been through some stuff.

Mark Trail, 4/8/13

Meanwhile, in Mark Trail, a new adventure is underway! Starring Shelly and Wes, two members of the upper crust who couldn’t be less like Mark, what with Shelley’s ambivalence about the outdoors and their propensity to just jump right into the whole physical intimacy business without much provocation, even though Shelly finds Wes’s presence in their bedroom “surprising” for some reason. What happened to that breakfast tray between panels two and three? “Oh no!” Mark would say if he were there. “There’s juice spilled all over the floor! Wait, what are you doing to her face with your face?”

Apartment 3-G, 4/8/13

Normally I’d go on about Margo’s lilac typical A3G shirt-maybe-it’s-part-of-a-dress-who-can-tell being described as “stunning,” but I’m way too amused by the cursory acknowledgement that there is in fact a third roommate in this strip, who can’t be bothered to go to this party because she’s already fallen asleep, probably because she’s so dull that she’s bored herself into unconsciousness.

Herb and Jamaal, 4/8/13

So it turns out that Jamaal has come to see the time he spends with his best friend and business partner as some kind of divine punishment for any number of terrible sins he committed over many, many lifetimes.

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Pluggers, 4/5/13

OK, here is the deal with my relationship with Pluggers, basically: Pluggers presents folksy, down-home bits of wisdom from rural and exurban types that have as an unspoken contrast the way that I and my fellow liberal urbanites conduct ourselves (e.g., we have acquaintances from multiple ethnic backgrounds, we have a passing familiarity with popular culture, we own and use paper towels, etc.); I take this contrast as implying that pluggers think they’re better humans (or human-animal hybrids, whatever) than me and everyone else who doesn’t know how to fix a car and likes living somewhere where you can get Indian food delivered, and I resent it and blow whatever implications are there completely out of proportion.

Every once in a while, though, I encounter a Pluggers that isn’t so much “infuriating” as “baffling,” and today’s Pluggers is one such instance. I hesitate to call this a universal experience, but it certainly has no class or cultural significance that I can detect, unless pluggers assume that we fancy city folk only wear space-age velcro sneakers. I do actually enjoy the drawing of the vaguely poindextery cat (always the go-to man-animal for Pluggers cartoons that aren’t quite plugger-y, as near as I can tell) clearly being sent into paroxysms of obsessive-compulsive anxiety as he feels one of his shoes hugging his foot slightly more tightly than the other, and wondering if he should retie the other one now and if so which set of books under which arm he should set down first to do so.

Spider-Man, 4/5/13

Aw, it turns out that the Great Spidey Milk-Drinking Caper wasn’t just a typical Newspaper Spider-Man time-wasting tangent, but is actually related to the main plot! I mean, the idea that you could “mix” Peter Parker’s DNA with a mind-control gas to make it Spider-Man-specific is laughable, but I guess it’ll do. The Kingpin probably just has the science-y aspects all mixed up in his head, anyway. He’s not a micromanager! He just wants results!

Hi and Lois, 4/5/13

For the life of me I cannot figure out why Ditto looks so God-damned smug in the second panel. Surely he’s not that impressed with his own terrible pun. Is he proud that he carries the youthful six-pack of an eight-year-old, unaware or unconcerned about the flab he’ll start to develop when he hits puberty?

Herb and Jamaal, 4/5/13

As Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged, unless we’re talking about someone who won’t cough up money for the collection plate. Go ahead and put that guy on your shit list.”

Marvin, 4/5/13

Marvin is a gross, mean, hateful baby, so I take comfort in the fact that he’s already haunted by the grim spectre of death.

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Better Half, 3/25/13

Hello, and welcome to this journey I’m on, which is called “Josh learns that the Better Half is so, so much more harrowing than the Lockhorns will ever be.” Remember: Leroy doesn’t mind when Loretta criticizes him because he’s a loveless shell of a man who can’t feel emotions anymore. Stanley doesn’t mind when Harriet criticizes him because he desperately craves her attention, and he may not know how to fix the sad dysfunction that his marriage has become, but he at least knows that if he screws up Harriet will acknowledge his existence, and maybe even make eye contact with him and oh my God I’m crying right now pretty much.

Mark Trail, 3/25/13

There was a minute where I thought this was one of those things where the antagonist and protagonist have a stand-off and they both know a secret and they each know the other knows, but everyone pretends not to know, to heighten dramatic tension. Then I remembered that Mark and Rod Bassy were both extremely dumb and also Mark Trail doesn’t really do dramatic tension, so I guess Rod thinks he’s being pretty slick here. Remember, Rod thinks that blurting out “Are you saying that I’m doing something illegal” with no provocation is “slick,” so it makes sense that his instinct is to totally downplay a child being missing for … hours? days? Who even knows at this point. You know, kids today, so lazy that they just wander off away from their families, just going somewhere to be lazy and also have no way of acquiring food and shelter, amiright?

Herb and Jamaal, 3/25/13

By the way, Kopi Luwak is so expensive and famous because it’s been pooped out by civets. So I guess kudos to Herb and Jamaal for not going for the poop joke, though also I guess this joke isn’t very funny, so, I dunno, maybe we should’ve tried out a poop joke and seen how it went.

Spider-Man, 3/25/13

“I mean, how could a lawyer help defeat a villain with no superpowers who runs a large criminal organization? It makes no sense!”

Crankshaft, 3/25/13

Haha, that Crankshaft, he sure literally sucks the joy out of the life of everyone he knows!