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Hi and Lois, 11/22/12

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! What are you thankful for? Are you thankful that your Thanksgiving dinner isn’t some awful liberal nightmare where the lady womyn of the house forces you to sully this most American of holidays by speaking non-American languages? Such heresy! (Also, we would suggest that if we’re going down this road maybe adding Wampanoag to the list might be appropriate, but, sure, Japanese and French, whatever.)

Crankshaft, 11/22/12

Or maybe you’re thankful for the antics of your elderly relatives, who are muttering inappropriate prayers to open the holiday meal. Worried that they’re slipping into dementia? Ha ha, no, they just had to get drunk, in order to deal with all of you!

Mary Worth, 11/22/12

Personally, I’m thankful that Mary Worth hasn’t taken time off from its edge-of-your-seat plot just to bring us boring Thanksgiving messages. After all, we wouldn’t want to miss even a single day of Mary’s horribly misguided passive-aggressive meddling, would we? “Gee, Dawn, I’m sorry to hear that you don’t want to ‘help’ Jim with his sexual urges! The boy has already lost his sister and his arm, so your rejection of his advances is just one more horrible wound to his fragile psyche that he’ll just have to learn to deal with, somehow!”

Apartment 3-G, 11/22/12

While others may chose to measure Greg by the pound, Greg thinks of his own worth in terms of inches. Interpret this as you will! (I’ll be interpreting it as being about his penis.)

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Mark Trail, 11/20/12

Mark’s remarkably non-traumatizing kidnap idyl is still continuing apace, as the good people of Not Guerilla Island prepare to make a scurmptious feast from the fish Mark and Pop caught, and … say, what’s the story with that little guy in the white shirt in the second panel?

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHAT’S GOING ON WITH HIS TONGUE? It’s not … human. Sure, you could try to claim that it’s just a weird little semi-circle crudely drawn onto a pre-existing clip art face, but I think the safe bet is that this child is an alien lizard-man wearing a meat-sack disguise, just like everyone else on the island, and once they get enough ransom money to repair their spacecraft, they’ll swarm all over Mark and Andy, their razor-sharp teeth tearing away all their flesh in minutes, leaving bleached skeletons behind.

Hi and Lois, 11/20/12

I’m not sure how we’re supposed to parse the politics here — are we intended to be patriotically enraged by cheap Chinese labor, or are the industrious low-wage workers of Shenzhen’s factories supposed to compare favorably to the smug American repairman? I do know that this is a strip that has never exactly focused on little visual details, which makes the lovingly rendered stitching on the repairman’s visible underpants all the more unsettling.

Heathcliff, 11/20/12

I’m certainly not opposed to Heathcliff being called to account for his many crimes in a court of law, but I do have some questions about the fish that the guy next to him is holding. Specifically: what’s the deal with the fish? Is it evidence in one of the many cases about to be tried simultaneously? Is it bait? Was Heathcliff, the master criminal, lured into the Man’s courtroom by some guy waving a delicious, pungent dead fish around? Because that would be kind of disappointing.

Gasoline Alley, 11/20/12

Here are some characters in Gasoline Alley! I guess you’re supposed to like them, even though their black, beady, inhuman eyes are the stuff of your most terrifying nightmares.

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Mary Worth, 11/2/12

It’s disturbing to see Mary sprinkling down weird amoeba-blobs out of her hand onto whatever’s in that tray in the first panel. It’s disturbing to see Dawn struggle to hold up a bowl with two hands, as if it were filled with liquid lead. It’s disturbing to trace back the forearm visible at the right in panel two and realize that there’s no way it connects to Dawn’s elbow, which means that someone has broken into the house and has grabbed Dawn by the back of the head and is shaking her for unknown reasons. But Dawn’s new love interest being desperate to keep her away from water because she reminds him of his dead sister? The idea of him thinking, the first time they have sex, about how his beloved sister will never be out of his life again? That’s not disturbing at all! It’s human nature. We humans are an odd lot, if by odd you mean “capable of unspeakable perversions and psychic pain.”

Apartment 3-G, 11/2/12

I have fallen down on the Reading The Comics So You Don’t Have To front, because I have forgotten to mention that, sometime after their inappropriate workplace massage session was interrupted, Margo and Evan made out. There’s been no indication of what progress if any their relationship has made since then, and I’m going to guess that, based on today’s strip and a certain amount of personal experience, they’ve never really discussed anything and Evan just keeps trying to set up the same sequence of events that have led to smooching in the past. Don’t talk about it Margo, you’re just going to ruin everything!

Hi and Lois, 11/2/12

“And retro’s cool, right? Like this vest I’ve got on? Your dad is pretty cool? Please say that I’m cool.”