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Hi and Lois, 9/10/12

I am confused and terrified by the inky blackness out of which the Flagstons’ angry, violent word balloons emerge in panel one. I imagine that, as each meal commences, a designated family member turns off the light, so that the savage battle for conversational supremacy takes place in darkness, which increases the degree of difficulty and bitterness. Or is it meant to represent spiritual darkness? As the family turns on each other for the most petty and pointless of reasons, are to understand that their hatred is so toxic that it has literally blotted out the sun?

Mark Trail, 9/10/12

“Whoa whoa whoa, kid, I didn’t hear anyone say anything like ‘We can take him with us, or shoot him and the adorable puppy now.’ Did you hear anyone saying anything about shooting the dog? What I’m trying to say is that it’s time to hitch the Sassy wagon to a new star. Good luck with that whole getting shot thing!”

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Marvin, 9/7/12

Yes, Jeff, don’t you find your wife as sexually appealing as she was when she was 12? Be very careful about how you answer this question! Today’s Marvin has been cleverly designed to elicit sighs of relief when the strip moves back to its usual jokes about soiled diapers.

Hi and Lois, 9/7/12

Look, Chip, don’t expect coherent answers from your dad when he’s lounging theatrically in his man-cave and listening to his old records and smoking tons of weed, OK?

Momma, 9/7/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Momma knows Francis doesn’t have any friends!

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Family Circus, 8/16/12

There’s something I find incredibly creepy about the two twin droplets of fluid in this panel — one of them dribbling from Barfy’s tongue, the other running down the side of Jeffy’s face. The similarity between the two seems to hold some hidden meaning, beyond just “This is what a drop of liquid looks like in a cartoon.” Perhaps the key is the unsettlingly knowing look that Barfy is giving Jeffy. The dog seems to be staring straight into the child’s eyes, and assuring him that the two of them are very much alike, that everything that Jeffy has feared and hoped his whole life is true: they may look different and one sweats while the other pants and they walk on different sets of limbs, but the two of them are a genuine pack. “Jeffy, I am your true brother,” Barfy says, in Jeffy’s mind. “These humans, they will never understand you, never love you, like I can. Come, let us run away together, off into the distance. Let’s go poop on somebody’s else’s lawn. You will know true freedom.”

Dick Tracy, 8/16/12

I know I don’t cover Dick Tracy like I used to, but that’s because the new creative team has jettisoned the combination of head-scratching insanity and brutal violence that always drew me to it. Still, I do feel a need to point that they still know how to keep it real! Like, “nurse Dick back to health and then slowly drain his blood” real.

Ziggy, 8/16/12

Haha, someone at Ziggy central sure has some kind of beef with the global financial system! Call me a tool of capitalism if you will, but can’t we all agree that Ziggy is clearly incompetent to run any aspects of his life and maybe his bank should be running his finances for him?

Hi and Lois, 8/16/12

Never has so much entirely justified contempt for two whiny, hapless children been written so eloquently on a noseless, expressionless face.