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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/29/07

Ha ha! Awww, Rex doesn’t like mean ol’ Hugh! Rex thinks Hugh’s a bad son! Plus Hugh was not nice to Rex! So Rex has busted out the angry face! It’s OK, Rex, it’s OK, Heather’s got the situation in hand now. Put down the celery before you hurt somebody with it.

Archie, 5/29/07

That Archie! You can totally tell why all the girls are always fighting over him. He’s thrown into a state of naked panic and despair whenever he has to make the simple kinds of choices necessary to function as a human being in society! Speaking of which…

For Better Or For Worse, 5/29/07

For whatever reason — residual affection for a strip I liked in my youth, some vague desire to keep a hold of my dignity — I always feel like I need to step back from full-throated Foob hate, so I’ll try to keep this as rational as possible. It is, in fact, true that buying a house a huge leap, a stressful responsibility. It’s natural to worry that, if your financial situation changes, you might not only lose the house, but all the money you’ve invested in it to that point — a worry that might be all the keener if a big part of your income comes from freelancing and is thus not predictable. And then there are the little costs, like maintenance, that would normally be your landlord’s responsibility that suddenly you have to cover. It’s a Big Deal.

And yet exactly none of this has actually been discussed in the strip. We don’t know why Mikey is so freaked out about buying the house; as far as I can tell, he’s just sitting under some kind of smoldering cloud of existential dread about it. It’s not like he even really had to decide to do it — with the fire and his parents’ machinations, it’s like the choice was made for him! (In real life, this could of course be the very cause of his unease, but again if that’s the case, nothing has been said to that effect.) Today we learn that Mike is in such a state about the prospect of property ownership that he wants to punish his body until his mind shuts down. The turn to booze and drugs is inevitable. If Mike spends all his days in the coming frozen-in-time version of the strip in some sort of dreamy opium haze, every Foob outrage we have suffered to this point will have been worth it.

Judge Parker, 5/29/07

If you’re sympathizing with Sam’s hair-pulling panic in panel three (“The ladies, they’ll just go out with that credit card and come back with three new dresses they don’t need! And an apartment in Paris! Am I right, fellas?”), I must remind you that all of the fabulous wealth that keeps this motley family in the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed at stately Spencer Farms is Abbey’s (inherited, I believe). Perhaps he’s worried that any pinch on the family finances will reveal that his claims to be contributing with his big-shot lawyer’s salary have been nothing but lies. I’ve been reading this strip for two and a half years and I haven’t witnessed anything from him that might qualify as a billable hour.

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Slylock Fox, 5/20/07

All of Slylock’s fancy brain-thinkin’ seems to have gone to waste here: it’s pretty obvious that the sadly un-alliteratively-named turtle is the only one gripped by guilt for what he’s done. Perhaps he never imagined himself embarking on a life of crime; maybe he just needed to pay his gambling debts, or score some tiny turtle smack; maybe now he’s thinking about how tough life’s going to be for a turtle in the big house, or at least wishing he was able to run away from the cops a little faster. At any rate, he’s just about the only Slylock Fox villain I’ve ever seen look remorseful; usually Shady Shrew or Slick Smitty or Count Weirdly react to being snagged by the long paw of the law with a smug, shit-eating grin, knowing that they’ll be out on the street committing more petty crimes in a pointlessly convoluted fashion soon enough.

Also, I think there may be Fourth Amendment issues involved in this police station’s “check all suspects for ear mites” policy.

I’m too lazy to figure any of the differences in the “six differences” puzzle, but I’m pretty sure the dude on the bed is dead in both versions of the cartoon. At least he appears to have died happy. The cat seems pleased about this situation, but presumably it will change its mind when there isn’t anything left of the corpse to eat.

Judge Parker, 5/20/07

This is clear illustration that more than $2.5 million in the checking account + a total lack of impulse control = big, big trouble. For a while, many have believed that Roger has misrepresented Rachel’s dementia and his right to dispose of her property; today, I’m beginning to suspect that this isn’t even Roger at all, as he’s clearly peeled off his fake mustache as he heads out the door (and somehow managed to become even more unattractively simian-looking in the process).

Crock, 5/20/07

It’s a sad day indeed when God Almighty’s awesome power of omniscience falls out of favor in the popular mind and must thus be rebranded as “heavencams.” Of course, since He created all of time and space, He really only has Himself to blame.

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Beetle Bailey, 5/16/07

I’m pretty sure I don’t get this. Is it supposed to be funny that General Halftrack is all excited about his “fan club,” only to find to his disappointment that it consists of a single person? But really, wouldn’t having someone form a fan club composed only of himself still be kind of flattering? It would have at least made sense in the context of the Beetle Bailey milieu if the “General Halftrack fan club” had been founded by Lt. Fuzz as another outlet for his loathsome sycophancy, but adding a third panel in which the towheaded kissup actually appeared would have apparently required too much additional painstaking detail work on the background to make it worthwhile.

Kudzu, 5/16/07

Ha ha! Man, Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson only broke up, what, six months ago? How do these guys come up with zingers like these so quickly?

Judge Parker, 5/16/07

Wait, I knew that the Cabots were rich, but … Cabot Island? “Oh, it’s just a little place … they used to call it ‘Sicily’ before we bought it.”

By the way, Roger, I don’t care if you do you own your own island, no man with a mullet as stringy as yours should wipe his mouth with a napkin that daintily. It’s just against the natural order of things.

Mark Trail, 5/16/07

Man, I sure hope panel two gives us a hint about the Wicked Commissioners’ secret airport bird-attraction scheme: they’re going to regurgitate worms and grubs all over the runway in a bid to woo their feathered friends and disrupt air traffic! That’s why the dude’s taking his jacket off in the final panel. You don’t want to get half-digested larvae all over your nice suit.

Phantom, 5/16/07

Oh, by the way, the Phantom has started a new storyline that involves bickering wealthy white people on a huge yacht. And thank goodness for that, really, because the other serial comics have been terribly neglectful of the dramatic possibilities that could be built around money and the dilettantes who squabble over it.

Gil Thorp, 5/16/07

I had some kind of juvenile “pitcher/catcher” joke ready to go here, but then I realized that nothing I could say about this strip could possibly top Dean Booth’s take on it.

Ziggy, 5/16/07

THIS COMIC HURTS MY SOUL.