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Herb and Jamaal, 4/7/15

I’m not sure who Herb is talking to on the phone here, as his only friend as far as we can tell from the strip is Jamaal, who is both unmarried and probably close enough to the family to know a little something about Sarah’s wardrobe. Thus, I have to assume that Herb, desperate to trade vaguely derogatory wife-anecdotes with a bro, has called some kind of pay service who will provide the simulacrum of male camaraderie. “Yeah, women, they sure like shopping!” says “Jeff,” Herb’s new pal, sitting in an muggy call center in the Philippines, following the script on his screen. I worked so hard in my English classes in college, he thinks to himself, and for what? For this?

Judge Parker, 4/7/15

Hey guys, remember when Abbey was pretty blasé about the prospect of Sophie buying a boy? Well, here’s some important historical background on that!

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Apartment 3-G, 3/10/15

Oh, snap, remember Sam, Margo’s harried and possibly love-struck assistant, whom she summoned out of the narrative ether nearly eight years after his last appearance to cater to her mother’s every insane whim? Well, turns out he’s treating that more as a personal favor and not as part of his no doubt ill-paying job. Frankly, it makes Margo sick, violently ill, hopefully with emphasis on the violent.

Family Circus, 3/10/15

Billy’s pig-nose is making the front of his big melony head look even more flat and squished than usual! I certainly hope that the weight of his backpack caused him to pitch face-first onto the sidewalk, where he lay for several minutes, struggling to right himself.

Crankshaft, 3/10/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because when a woman wants to spend time with a man instead of leaving him to stew in isolation and aimless, thrashing loathing, it’s a trap!

Herb and Jamaal, 3/10/15

This last panel is really great: it’s perfectly capturing the facial expression for “Wait, is he having a stroke or am I?”

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Slylock Fox, 1/26/15

One of my favorite things about Slylock Fox is the fact that the planet isn’t entirely populated by anthropomorphic animals; although the vast majority of the human race was apparently exterminated as the beasts took control, a few representatives of our species remain, presumably enough to preserve a breeding stock, and need to deal with the unimaginable trauma the best they can. It’s impossible to tell whether these men were professional clowns in the Before Time, or if dressing as such is the only way they can deal with the madness of the world they inhabit. As clowns number two and three demonstrate, traditional clown makeup long ago ceased being manufactured, leaving them to do the best they could with material that actually matched their skintone. Basically if you can visualize a faux-hobo clown wearing flesh-colored makeup stealing candy from a bipedal, dress-wearing pig’s porch, desperately holding up his pants as he runs away, and not break down weeping, you have a heart of stone.

Apartment 3-G, 1/26/16

OK, this thing where the art in Apartment 3-G has little or nothing to do with the writing is just getting sad and alarming, guys. Like, when Margo and her dad were having lunch at a “Tribeca Grill” that looked suspiciously like the inside of somebody’s dowdy apartment, there was at least one word in that description that worked, and that word was “inside.” But now Margo is just straight-up ordering breakfast at a “cafe” that is literally just her and some other woman standing out on the sidewalk. “Now that’s what I call a healthy appetite!” her interlocutor says, as she stares directly into the face of madness.

Gil Thorp, 1/26/15

Speaking of the face of madness, how about panel two of Gil Thorp, eh? Against Gil’s advice, Maxwell has decided to forge an alliance with Marty Moon and establish a memorable #brand! And that brand is MAX BACON™. Because when it comes to bacon … who doesn’t want the max? Other than people keen on not dying of heart disease, that is!

Herb and Jamaal, 1/26/15

Let me tell you lucky kids today: if you grew up before the Internet provided an on-demand stream of smut into every household, you spent a not-insignificant part of your junior high years parsing movie descriptions in the paper for exactly terms like this, just in case there was a chance you could see these so-called “adult situations” on HBO after your parents were likely to be in bed. Jamaal, a jaded inhabitant of our modern porn-world, just sips his iced tea and regards the on-screen simulated humping with disinterest and vague distaste.

Mark Trail, 1/26/15

Do you think Mark is quickly changing the subject in panel two because he’s thinking “Hmm, this swamp-king is awful blase about having seen a mangled corpse and left it behind to be devoured by bog-creatures, better tread lightly,” or because he’s thinking “Well, that problem is solved! I’ll never have to deal with that ponytail man again!” It’s so hard to tell with him.