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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/8/09

Must I take on the burden of keeping comics within the bounds of their self-constructed universes? Look, the chances of Loweezy’s Gossipy Friend Whose Name I Neither Know Nor Care About being acquainted with the still-popular-but-no-longer-red-hot-enough-to-merit-pop-culture-namechecks TV program Gray’s Anatomy are pretty low, seeing as her community’s only contact with the outside world comes from the town’s few lovingly maintained Hoover-era radios. I suppose its a possible that a few of Hootin’ Holler’s more successful moonshiners acquired fancy tee-vee sets back in the day to tune into the Dumont Network; fortunately, after the switchover to digital broadcasting next month, we will be spared any more attempts on the part of Snuffy Smith to engage with modern television programming.

Frankly, I’m more concerned at the sight of a doctor cramming with a basic anatomy textbook just before an appointment. “OK, the hip bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connect to the … to the … damn it! I knew I shouldn’t have prescribed myself so many drugs during med school!”

Judge Parker, 1/8/09

Ah, so Sexy Heidi the Sexy Detective is turning to Sam not for sexy sex, but for emotional comfort. “Sam, I admire the way you just stood by bored and disinterested while we pumped that woman full of bullets. You’ve obviously learned to look death in the eye and not be touched by it, just as you’ve managed to remain detached from all other aspects of the human experience other than your own smug self-satisfaction. Can … can you teach me how not to feel?”

Mark Trail, 1/8/09

[INSERT PREDICTABLE AND DISTASTEFUL BUT COMPLETELY MANDATORY BESTIALITY JOKE HERE]

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/7/09

I have absolutely no idea why Becky the One-Armed Band Director looks so horrified in panel two when she thinks that Band Director Emeritus Harry Dinkle is about to launch into an impromptu lesson on preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. If one of my high school band practices had been interrupted by an old man rambling away on the subject (“Let me tell you the most important thing my CO told me before we hit the beach at Normandy: For God’s sake, put a rubber on it! That’s how I managed to screw my way through every French cathouse in every town we liberated without my pecker falling off!”), it would have been the best band practice ever; certainly it would have been a more useful and relevant use of our time than attempting to master yet another Andrew Lloyd Weber medley. I can only assume that, as a Funky Winkerbean authority figure, Becky is required to supervise a certain amount of misery in her charges; she’s afraid that Harry is going to head off that chlamydia epidemic that’s raging nicely through the woodwinds, along with a couple of unplanned pregnancies that she’s counting on in percussion.

Judge Parker, 1/7/09

It appears that Heidi the sexy, trigger-happy cop is going to make a final attempt on Sam’s bemused, detached charms, possibly in one of Phoenix Sky Harbor’s parking garages. You know, I’ve finally figured out what Judge Parker’s ladies-love-Sam plots remind me of: the classic Billy Wilder film The Seven Year Itch, in which the protagonist, left alone in his sweltering Manhattan apartment as his wife and son head to the country on vacation, entertains all manner of sexual fantasies about his comely neighbor Marilyn Monroe and other women — almost all of which involve him coldly rejecting them as they fling themselves at him. I remember thinking when I saw it that it was unspeakably perverse, but Sam is so dull that he sucks all the thrill out of it.

Slylock Fox, 1/7/09

4) If you see a supposed surgeon advancing on you in full clown makeup, I don’t care how sick you are, get the hell out of that hospital now. Answer: True, true, for the love of God, kid, run!

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Blondie, 1/3/09

Ah yes, “this” — by which we are surely meant to understand the first week of January — truly is everyone’s very favorite time of year! What with the lingering resentment towards one’s family after too many hours spent in close quarters with them, the need to box up all the Christmas decorations and figure out how on earth to dispose of the tree, the grim prospect of returning to work or school after an extended absence, the arrival of the first round of credit card bills with holiday gift purchases on them, the radical diets undertaken after the horrifying results from the first venture onto the scale in weeks … why, there’s just nothing not to like about it! That the Bumsteads have time for parties and get-togethers in the midst of all this is a tribute to their sandwich and/or meth-fueled stamina.

You know, it’s almost as if this strip, published on the first day of the NFL playoffs, were originally written when pro football’s regular season was shorter and the playoffs really did coincide with the holiday season. The last year that was the case was 1982, when the strip was a mere 52 years old. But the thought that Blondie might just be repackaging strips written years ago is obviously laughable.

Curtis, 1/3/09

Curtis Kwanzaa stories will now forever be judged against 2007’s glowing telepathic otter, and while the Three Unpleasant Maidens Who Are Jealous Of Some Other Maiden’s Magic Water Jug has been dullsville so far, things have undeniably picked up today, as they vomit out increasingly horrifying nightmare visions after drinking out of said magic jug. If the three-eyed frogs and baseball-sized spiders (side note: would these ancient Africans even know how big a baseball is?) rise up to devour our nosey trio, who, after all, only wanted in on an apparently unlimited fresh water supply in a society that doesn’t have indoor plumbing, this will certainly be the most gruesome Kwanzaa yet. Perhaps “mind-numbing terror” should be added as the holiday’s eighth guiding principle.

Judge Parker, 1/3/09

Ah, check out stone-faced Sam in today’s final panel. Just another crazed, murderous stripper shouting “I was dead a long time ago!” as she commits suicide by cop, charging knife first into a hail of automatic weapons fire. If you’re Sam Driver, it’s just another thing to drop a few ironic, detached witticisms about before heading off to the next adventure. The man is such a joy.

9 Chickweed Lane, 1/3/08

9 Chickweed Lane readers, when opening their papers and/or Web browsers Monday and discovering a strip that does not revolve around this endless Belgian cello competition and/or fucking, will come to the logical conclusion that the story has in fact ended with a triumphant Edda killing and devouring Amos right there on stage. To those pleased by such a development, I must temper your satisfaction by pointing you to this.