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Panel from The Lockhorns, 1/10/16

I love the way Leroy is delicately leaning up against the bookcase, but why do you suppose he’s idly thumbing through the thesaurus? Is this meant to indicate that he’s been waiting so long that he’s resorted to reading reference books for entertainment? Or maybe we’re meant to realize that his marital hell has so scarred him that he no longer has the vocabulary to describe it, and he’s desperate for new words that will truly convey the depths of his emotional torment.

Marvin, 1/10/16

Sure, I have a whole blog about comic strips, and sure, I complain about Marvin and his poop jokes about once a week on average, but there are still limits to how much space I allow the comics to occupy in my skull. For instance, I can’t remember whether Marvin’s grandparents who had to move into chez Marvin when they lost all their retirement savings are supposed to be Jeff’s parents or Jenny’s. And I refuse to look it up! You can’t make me! Even though knowing the answer would probably better help me get the family dynamics that establish the nuances of this strip, in which Grandpa opens his heart with Jeff and is cruelly mocked in return!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/10/16

Haha, of course Welton Green is part of Dolly Pierpoint’s sprawling mafia empire! Of course this guy knows all about Sarah and is probably under strict orders to let admit her! “The test is happening right now! Are you ready? Here it comes!” [winks exaggeratedly and hands Sarah a check]

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Gil Thorp, 12/4/15

I know I’ve been neglectful in keeping you up to date on the reality show antics in Gil Thorp, but suffice it to say that Holly and the reality show team are Bad, and the Thorps and their noble student-athletes are Good, except when those student-athletes fall under the siren spell of reality show stardom, at which point they become Bad. Mostly I wanted to point out today’s strip because it encapsulates the sad reality of being Marty Moon: not only does he get turned down for sex, but his getting turned down for sex doesn’t even merit a panel with him in it.

Lockhorns, 12/4/15

It seems kind of weird that the Lockhorns’ mail consists entirely of 4 x 6 pieces of paper, so I’m going to assume that these are actually cue cards with prompts written on them. Bored with their usual range of passive-aggressive interactions, they’re now mixing things up a little bit in an attempt to keep their hell-marriage hell-fresh. “Is this gonna be an ‘I loathe you’ card? Ooh, no, this one is ‘I loathe myself.’”

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Blondie, 11/19/15

OK, here’s one of the difficulties in making jokes about aging in an extremely long-running and iconic legacy comic strip. Typically you’d assume that a mother of two teenagers would be somewhere around the 35-50 age range, born in the ’60s at the earliest, and so you can get away with jokes about how ha ha kids today think their parents are so ancient and the parents resent them for it. This extremely doesn’t work in Blondie, though, given that the strip began in 1930 with its title character already a young adult, right around the time the first experimental televisions were being demonstrated. So, like, does Blondie remember when the first TV was invented? “What did you study in French today?” she asks, desperately trying to deflect attention away from her terrifying unaging nature.

The Lockhorns, 11/19/15

As Apartment 3-G lurches towards its demise so blandly that I can’t even bring myself to cover it here, I gotta give kudos to the Lockhorns for shutting down with a shocking, unexpected twist. Loretta kicked Leroy out and will have his mail forwarded to his new address and now the strip is over! Fans everywhere can take heart that this long-suffering couple can finally move on with their lives, emotionally.

Momma, 11/19/15

Momma, too, has unexpectedly decided to end its decades-long run today. This conclusion is a little derivative of the final episode of St. Elsewhere; but still, the revelation that Momma’s “children” are just tiny figurines that she manipulates at her whim explains a lot about the tone of the strip. Anyway, kudos for Momma and the Lockhorns for going out on top! Looking forward to whatever will be taking their place in newspapers nationwide tomorrow, probably a tire ad or something.