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Lockhorns, 3/1/11

Wow, if you had asked me, “Which comics couple has a whole secret life in which they run pharming parties and ingest massive amounts of bootleg prescription drugs?”, the Lockhorns would not have been my answer. (Connie and Walt from Zits would have been my number one choice, for the record.) I’m pretty sure this is the first Lockhorns panel I’ve seen where both halves of the titular hell-couple are smiling at the same time, even though Leroy’s got the squiggly-smile that is this comic’s shorthand for intoxication of one sort or another. I’m not sure who the anonymous foreground lady is supposed to be, but Loretta is clearly very excited about introducing her to the mind-altering bounty in that box of wonderful pharmaceutical treats from our neighbors to the north.

Mary Worth, 3/1/11

“Let me tell you something, Wilbur. Your daughter’s lived with you her whole life, so I have to imagine that she’s been forced to watch what I just saw — you inhaling a hamburger right out of your hands, barely pausing to chew — over and over again. So you can’t blame her for developing defensive strategies. I sure wish I had been facing a computer screen instead of facing you when that happened. I kind of wish there were a computer screen between the two of us right now, or maybe just a thick concrete or metal barrier of some kind.”

Wizard of Id, 3/1/11

Aw, isn’t that nice! Remember, whether you’re a prisoner of your job and the low social status associated with it, or just an actual, literal prisoner, you can still escape your bonds and drudgery with the power of your imagination. In this case, the imaginary journey involves macking on sexy ladies, I guess? Seriously, I have no idea what the hell is supposed to be going on here.

Dick Tracy, 3/1/11

The reason we put up with month after month of aimless insanity in Dick Tracy is that, eventually, any given plot will suddenly resolve itself into a brief episode of visceral, nightmarish horror, which remains incomprehensible on any kind of intellectual level but will still be seared into your consciousness, forever. Anyway, as today’s strip features a mass murderer in a gimp mask squirming in terror at the arrival of hundreds of bloodthirsty rats, I think it’s safe to say that this stage of the narrative has arrived.

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Dick Tracy, 2/20/11

Wow, do you realize that I haven’t talked about Dick Tracy’s plot in more than 10 weeks? Here’s the sum total of what’s happened in that time: it rained, Dick and his prisoner ended up in abandoned granary, and his prisoner wormed his way out of his chains. That’s it! Of course, this is Dick Tracy, so this action consisted of the same semi-comprehensible catchphrases repeated over and over again and herky-jerky chronology. I assumed, naturally, that all this action took place over about 20 minutes, but apparently it’s been going on for more than a day. It’s possible that all this crazy madness is a hallucination brought on by Dick’s sleep deprivation, but that doesn’t explain the last 40 years or so of what’s gone on in this strip.

The Lockhorns, 2/20/11

Ha ha, so yes, it seems that you can get away with “shitting oneself in fear” jokes in a family newspaper so long as the terrified being is a bird and they poop out eggs instead of poop. I pass over this quickly, pausing only to pray that the people at Shoe don’t get wind of this, because I’m much more interested in why Loretta is out on this hunting expedition with Leroy despite not toting any firearm of her own. Presumably she’s not actually interested in shooting at birds and mostly wanted to wait for Leroy to fail so she could sigh out some heavy-lidded sarcastic rejoinder. So don’t put too much stock in her glum expression; she’s been waiting for this moment, squatting in a duck blind all the while, for hours.

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Spider-Man, 2/7/11

Whoah, big surprise in Spider-Man today! No, it’s not the fact that newspaper Spider-Man has finally decided to cash in on Twilight mania; that was more or less inevitable. Nor should we be startled by the title character’s braggadocio over his epic sleeping prowess, since we’re all well aware that the sheer magnitude of his laziness is his only distinguishing feature. No, the shocker is that J. Jonah Jameson has decided to transform the Daily Bugle into a British-style tabloid, as we can see in panel two. Unfortunately, on day one the copy desk already used the only Britishisms they knew — “cheers” and “Yanks” and were forced to just slip a placeholding “something” in as the headline’s final word, hoping to cram in some BBC watching in time for tomorrow morning’s edition.

Shoe, 2/7/11

Speaking of the mass media, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve ever seen ostensible news-bird Cosmo actually perpetrating journalism in this strip. I’m not really sure why he’s filing his story from the Roz’s diner rather than the newsroom, unless the gruesome crime scene he’s describing is actually just off panel, and the characters’ favorite lunchtime spot has become a scene of unimaginable carnage, with corpses everywhere. Gory as the thought is, the strip at least deserves kudos for actually making its bird-world setting integral to the joke, for once.

Mark Trail, 2/7/11

Barely a year after managing to keep an inarticulate interrogative to himself, Mark Trail has apparently learned how to think exclamations without saying them. Soon he’ll be able to construct a sentence complete with nouns and verbs silently, entirely within his own mind — and then there will be nothing he can’t do.

Lockhorns, 2/7/11

Loretta doesn’t want Leroy passing out like last year, so she hid all the booze! Which is frankly pretty cruel. The only thing worse than a birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate is a sober birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate.