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Mary Worth, 5/18/10

I have yet to read any of the comments you fine people have put up about today’s comics, but I look forward to any number of angry diatribes from mental health professionals about how Mary’s crockpot 30-second visualization exercises are in fact not an adequate treatment regimen for hoarding and other obsessive-compulsive disorders, and that she should instead seek help from a trained therapist who specializes in these issues. Or, who knows? Maybe there’ll be comments from people who say that, yes, this is exactly the way to break out of addictive behavior, hooray for Mary! I kind of doubt it, though.

One thing I’m not looking forward to is the inevitable crass suggestion that Mary is attempting to force Bonnie to her knees in panel two so that our poor shopping addict might sexually service her. Please! Mary simply wants Bonnie to prostrate herself and offer her the worship that she deserves, for her heroic meddling efforts. The feelings of pleasure Mary will derive from this go far beyond the sordid enjoyments of the flesh.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/18/10

Wow, this went very quickly, and with a lot of leaps of linguistic logic, from “You will rest your head on a needlessly uncomfortable object” to “God, my domestic life is SUFFOCATING ME.” But, hey, I’m not in a position to argue with whatever these two guys need to do to lay the groundwork for a camping trip full of on-the-down-low gay sex, I guess.

Six Chix, 5/18/10

This comic would have worked a lot better if the waitress had a pair of cooked human babies on her plate.

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/8/10

This strip, which consists entirely of Herb sitting around silently ruminating about his own inadequacies, would have been depressing enough if it had run, as you might expect from its set-up, on Monday. Had it appeared at the week’s beginning, we could at least console ourselves with the thought that perhaps Herb was being too hard on himself, and that he might find to his own surprise that this week would see some triumphs, large or small. But as it instead appears on Saturday, there’s really no other interpretation other than that he’s spending his weekend obsessively going over the wreckage of another failed week in his mind. The fact that all of this is in thought balloon form indicates that he feels that he can’t share these dark thoughts even with his closest friend; the next time we see our two title characters engaged in light-hearted banter or wacky antics, I for one will assume that Herb is putting on a brave face and secretly contemplating suicide.

Mary Worth, 5/8/10

“Easy for me to come here and criticize you? Bonnie, let me put it this way. When you’re tired, do you find it easy to fall asleep? When you’re thirsty, do you find it easy to drink? Do you find it easy to breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide?”

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Gil Thorp, 3/31/10

Oh, look, it’s another Milford team failing to win a title! Yes, there’s been a championship basketball game going on while the red-hot fisticuffs happen elsewhere. The Mudlarks losing again is of course utterly unremarkable at this point — presumably the whole loss exists just to set up the drama of faithless Cassie being shunned by her teammates for abandoning them — but today’s strip manages to offer an intriguing counterpoint to the concept of the uncanny valley — the slopes of the uncanny mountain, perhaps? Panel one disturbs and unsettles with the absence of details on the crowd in the background, as it appears that a tribe of identically black-garbed faceless, hairless automata have shown up to cheer on either Milford or Tilden; but panel three shows us that more detail isn’t necessarily any better, as we are confronted with more of Marty Moon than we ever wanted — the shine of his greasy goatee, the hollowness of his cheekbones, his glassy eyes, each and every one of his molars. We can practically smell his breath (Mr. Boston gin mingled with coffee from the AM/PM, not quite masked by the cloud of Axe Body Spray that hovers around him at all times).

Family Circus, 3/31/10

Ha ha, yes, this is a cartoon about how having four kids and a husband who doesn’t know how to iron would lead any woman to murder, but the thing I find most interesting is the fact that Billy is apparently dressed in a nice shirt and tie, for some reason. Perhaps Mommy can fashion Big Daddy Keane’s mushy, vaguely bunny-fur-like shirt into a makeshift rabbit costume and send him to school in it, and neatly dressed Billy can go into the office. Both problems solved, and we can move on to the question of why Dolly is attempting to brush her hair into the soup.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/31/10

It appears that Jamaal hasn’t quite gotten this “cruising for anonymous gay sex” thing down yet.