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Spider-Man, 3/10/12

A typical superhero comic trope is the ironic yet true thing said unknowingly about a superhero’s secret identity, right? I’m assuming that’s what the all-too-true “’Tis useless to call for her husband!” is all about. Not that Thor’s next sentence is any less hilarious. Honestly, if someone says “None but Spider-Man can save her now” about you, you should probably start making your peace with death.

Hi and Lois, 3/10/12

I suppose if you’re on DJ duty at a retro-disco party you have to entertain yourself the best you can, but I think it’s needlessly cruel to use the spotlight to focus everyone’s attention on the first middle-aged person of the evening to injure himself dancing.

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Crankshaft, 3/6/12

Despite my (too many) years of reading Crankshaft, I’ve only just at this moment realized that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft is constantly destroying due to his dangerous inability to operate a schoolbus, is also one of the guys who meets Crankshaft and some other old dudes at a sad chain diner where they drink coffee and pun sullenly and probably leave stingy tips. The endless mailbox-annihilation incidents might explain why Keesterman has finally snapped, looking in panel three like he’s going to react to Crankshaft’s mild ribbing with a punch to the face, something I dearly hope we get to see over the remainder of the week, from several different angles.

Hi and Lois, 3/6/12

We’ve seen some intermittent attempts to make Hi and Lois’ marriage interesting, but frankly I think there’s much more drama to be wrung from the lives of the Flagstons’ next-door neighbors. Check out Irma’s disgruntled look in the final panel: not only is her family mired in debt, but that means that she can’t even have a nice party without it devolving into recriminations and violence, which to her is the worst indignity.

Beetle Bailey, 3/6/12

There are occasional Beetle Baileys in which our heroes (?) are fighting something called the “Red Army,” and while it’s usually clear from context that these are training exercises, it would be fun to believe that today’s strip takes place in an alternate universe where the men of Camp Swampy have been deployed into combat against the Soviet Union, and that, as you’d expect, their division has been quickly defeated and its few survivors are now being rounded up. Given the creepy fact that we see no people attached to these massive gun barrels, it’s also possible that the Red Army is a band of out-of-control military death-bots, who are making short work of their hapless biological adversaries, not least thanks to the humans’ inability to function without technology that’s controlled by the cyber-enemy.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/6/12

Lucky Eddie has blatantly stolen this joke from Groucho Marx, but I’m not going to get too upset about it because in a minute he’s going to be mauled to death by bears for his crimes.

Marvin, 3/6/12

Yesterday I praised Marvin for grappling with interesting themes and avoiding scatological content. Naturally, today’s strip features the smug hell-infant boasting that he can just shit in his pants whenever he wants.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/6/12

If you’ve enjoyed this Herb and Jamaal strip about burping, why not enjoy the four paragraphs I somehow managed to write about it, back when it first ran in 2004?

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Hi and Lois and Beetle Bailey, 3/3/12

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hi is flirting with some other lady right in front of his wife, and General Halftrack is reacting to his wife’s attempt to initiate intimacy with undisguised horror! I mean, we get it, entire staff of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, you find the prospect of having sex with your wives repulsive, no need to harp on it. (I was originally going to write “sex with your spouses” to cover the possibility that someone working there might be a lady or gay, but then I was thought about the last 30+ years of Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois and Hagar the Horrible and decided, nope, “wives” it is.)

Apartment 3-G, 3/3/12

Now here’s a couple with a healthy sex life! I almost wrote “a healthy relationship,” but then I remembered their widely divergent attitudes about the child they’re about to have together. At least they still like to get it on! Seriously, I assume that whoever hacked into the servers of the market research company that’s asking newspaper readers about what they want to see in Apartment 3-G and replaced all the survey responses with “PREGO PORN” is one of my readers, and I just want you to know that you’re my hero.