Post Content

Blondie, 7/16/10

Now that they’ve finally mastered texting technology, Blondie and the mailman will have a much easier time conducting their affair.

Spider-Man, 7/16/10

“I mean, fleeing like a coward the moment things get difficult is really much more my shtick.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/16/10

This is actually news that Mr. Wilson will enjoy hearing, considering the Post Office’s policy of only putting people on stamps after they’ve died.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/16/10

HA HA HA HERB’S DAUGHTER YOUR GOD HAS FAILED YOU — NOW IT IS TIME TO TURN TO SATAN

Post Content

Dick Tracy, 7/6/10

Two men have already died by gunfire in this Dick Tracy storyline, but any hardcore fan of the strip will tell you that such mundane deaths are totally inadequate. Today the villainous Anja Nu meets her end in a fashion that, if not grimly ironic (unless it turns out that she’s unhinged because she was raised by her grandfather, a Nazi fighter pilot/war criminal), is at least gruesome. One might have hoped that Dick would have found some reason to start the plane’s motor so that Nu’s body would be ground to hamburger by the spinning propeller, rather than just crushed to pulp, but I think we’ve achieved the acceptable bare minimum for Dick Tracy carnage.

Apartment 3-G, 7/6/10

Ha ha, Tommie’s pit of embarrassment just keeps getting deeper and deeper. Who are the mysterious Ted and Lucy? Well, they were the “perfect couple” who started the Margo finger-quoting craze four years ago. Then Tommie caught Lucy making out with some dude from her poetry group (with “poetry group” obviously meaning “a Craigslist casual encounters ad”), and Tommie and Ted decided to try out this adultery thing to see what all the fuss was about, with hilariously awkward results. Last we heard they had reconciled, and now we see that they’re still together; apparently they’ve come to this makeover ambush to reinforce the mutual contempt for Tommie that now keeps their marriage together.

Tommie doesn’t have a choice; her answer has to be yes. Tommie never chooses anything. Tommie just lets what happens to her happen.

Herb and Jamaal, 7/6/10

Rev. Croom’s congregation, which all the Herb and Jamaal characters seem to attend, is always thinking obsessively about the afterlife, all the time. We know that the Reverend has told Herb in confidence that his unredeemably sinful soul is destined for eternal and fiery torment, and today we see that the cycle of theological cruelty is perpetuated through the family. (Herb probably doesn’t realize that his mother-in-law already knows she is damned, though that just makes his jibe all the crueler.)

Post Content

Herb and Jamaal, 6/28/10

Naïve idealist that I am, when I saw this cartoon I thought that Herb and Jamaal had finally returned to the “Herb’s barber is wracked with anxiety” plotline it had launched a year and half ago. But upon consulting my archives, I discovered that it “returned” to the plot only in the sense of just rerunning the strip. I suppose that certain avant-garde critics might consider a sort of eternal narrative repetition to be advancing a plotline in a sense, if the core message of that plotline is that all human existence is a series of sorrows that will recur over and over again.

Mary Worth, 6/28/10

A blind date in which one of the parties locks a death-grip onto the upper arm of the other immediately upon the first in-person meeting is either an awesome blind date or a terrifying blind date, depending on your predilections. Also, the way Jenna and Mike are pointing their heads in random not-at-each-other directions in panel two might seem to indicate that the phrase “blind date” should in this case be taken literally.

Judge Parker, 6/28/10

“Thank God you’re back in the good old US of A, Ned, home of the best burgers in the world! Excuse me a moment while I drench this one with enough tomato-flavored corn syrup to make it edible.”

Shoe, 6/28/10

Ha ha, it’s funny because his wife’s soul is being tormented with fire, in hell, because of her sins!