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Mary Worth, 8/21/14

Boy, I’ve really been dropping the ball on this Mary Worth storyline for the past few weeks, haven’t I? The short version is that Olive’s medical procedure went well and that pesky cyst was successfully removed from her torso! Today, we learn that she’s been carrying it around in a little purse ever since.

Dennis the Menace, 8/21/14

“Dad’s inability or unwillingness to really be present for me during these fleeting, precious moments is kinda ruining my childhood for me. Hope you don’t stay up all night despairing over what a terrible job you guys are doing as parents!” Menacing factor: strong.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/21/14

Les is super excited about the fact that the movie adaptation of his book (for which he’s already been paid handsomely) has now completely unravelled. The failure of the project will almost certainly damage the careers and finances of any number of people and companies who believed in it. Les is excited about this because he’s an asshole.

Judge Parker, 8/21/14

Hmm, in addition having her work as legal secretary at what he thought was a thriving practice, Sam also tasked Gloria with managing his daughter’s finances! NOPE NO IDEA WHY SHE’D WANT TO QUIT THIS JOB, NONE AT ALL

Wizard of Id, 8/21/14

You know, considering how often the Wizard of Id uses actual torture as a punchline, I’m kind of surprised that it would be the strip that really manages to boil Orwell’s ideas about how dictatorships control thought through control of language into a single, effective panel.

Spider-Man, 8/21/14

Spider-Man is going to use his superpowers to more effectively photograph one of his main antagonists successfully fighting crime, so he can sell those photographs at poverty-level freelance print journalist prices! I know there’s no TV watching involved, but we may have hit Peak Newspaper Spider-Man, guys.

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Gil Thorp, 8/13/14

It’s mid-August and the summer Gil Thorp storyline finally comes into focus! It’s about how True Standish doesn’t want to go to some football factory in gross south Florida; he wants to go to one of the public Ivies, which looks like a college from an old movie! One of my cousins and her husband both went to Miami of Ohio, and they loved it; from my visits, I can confirm that it does have a classic look, largely as a result of rigorously enforced building codes that require that all buildings aesthetically match the original early 19th century structures. This uniformity has does have some weird results, particularly in huge new buildings that couldn’t actually be built from brick and mortar construction despite the appearance of their facades. At Cornell, where I went to college, buildings are supposed to look very contemporary to when they’re built, which results in an interesting aesthetic mishmosh that gives you something of an architectural historical tour as you walk around campus, even though some of the individual buildings from questionable periods end up kind of hideous (lookin’ at you, Uris Hall). Nevertheless, Miami of Ohio’s regime of strict architectural nostalgia-kitsch has managed to impress a star prospect for their 75th-ranked football program, so who am I to judge?

Judge Parker, 8/13/14

NOOOO … THE LEGAL PRACTICE THAT SAM SPENT HIS LIFE BUILDING … with the legal secretary … and the lawyer he hired, like, I’m not even going to bother looking up when but it was definitely in the last five years of real life so like three months ago strip-time … disintegrating … all he has to console him is his extremely active job of running legal interference for Judge Parker Senior and also his millions and millions of dollars … MY GOD MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN SAM

Momma, 8/13/14

Haha, highlighting the tinges of pseudo(?)-sexual jealousy in Momma and Francis’s relationship really adds to the laff factor in this strip, doesn’t it! This is a joke that’s appeared in the strip before, and I’m glad to see that, if Momma really is transitioning into some kind of greatest hits mode, the definition of “greatest hits” is “most perverse and unpleasant.”

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Slylock Fox, 8/11/14

One of the many questions I have about the post-animapocalypse world of Slylock Fox involves biodiversity: have the newly sapient animals remained restricted to their original ranges, or, like the early members of genus Homo, are they using their smarts to conquer new environments? Today we learn that Australia, at least, is still largely the domain of its unique native fauna, who have in their brief period of ascendency already established an iron-clad hierarchy: the marsupials wear fancy clothes and sell expensive baubles to each other, while the monotremes live on the margins of society and are forced to steal to survive. Unfortunately, the marsupials aren’t equipped to maintain the oppressive social structure they’ve created and have been forced to call in placental mammals from outside to help. If human history is any guide, this is a terrible, terrible mistake.

Judge Parker, 8/11/14

Haha, looks like we’ve reached the real talk phase of Gloria’s exit interview! Anyway, everybody in Judge Parker is doing no work and getting paid for it and now people are getting grumpy about it for some reason.

Dennis the Menace, 8/11/14

I think this is the most I’ve ever seen Mr. Wilson enjoying himself! He’s just going to town on some snacks and then he’s going to pass out on the couch covered in crumbs. Dennis is being a total scold about it, which I deem to be unusually unpleasantly menacing.