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Lockhorns, 12/12/12

A line from the movie Alien often pops into my head when I read the Lockhorns: “I admire its purity.” A lot of comics would engage in marital misanthropy laffs about leftovers being served once too often; only the Lockhorns has the nerve to portray those leftovers as a plate-sized, undifferentiated shit-colored mound. Leroy’s not just cracking wise about the vultures; this is rotting organic matter that can literally only be eaten by creatures with very specialized digestive systems.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/12/12

Man, things sure were better in the good old days, right? Athletes of an earlier, better time never got involved in gambling or cheating or drugs or any of that business. What could be the cause of all the young sports people doing bad things? Is it the rap music? Probably the rap music.

Luann, 12/12/12

“Talk about yourself!” Probably the best dating advice for teens ever? Sure!

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Crock, 12/9/12

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Crock is being portrayed as too cartoonishly evil here. I mean, obviously it’s well established that he’s a villainous, petty dictator, but surely he’s enough of a realist to know that the local religious authorities aren’t going to be actively preaching sin and filth like they’re the Church of Satan or something. Shouldn’t he be pleased that the local priest is going old school and promising to use his money to punish and degrade the church’s enemies, instead of going in for some kind of touchy-feely love-thy-neighbor crap like feeding the poor or something?

B.C., 12/9/12

Plans for a lucrative B.C. Babies franchise where abruptly scuttled when the terrifying character designs were revealed. “So, if we make their arms and legs even stubbier, and glom them onto impossibly squat torsos, and remove their necks, that’s cute, right? Kids will want those dolls?”

Garfield, 12/9/12

You know, Garfield gets a bad rap among comics snobs, but anything that teaches kids that Santa is really a terrifying demon-thing waiting to grab you from behind and drag you down into a terrifying hell-dimension is all right in my book.

Luann, 12/9/12

Left to their own devices, Brad and TJ have turned their backs on God and started worshipping Mammon full-time.

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Heathcliff, 12/2/12

Ha, what’s this? Something has gone terribly wrong with the Heathcliff coloring process — and by “terribly wrong” I mean “delightfully right,” obviously. Someone who knows more about this than me should chime in, but I’m guessing what we’re looking at is an image file that only contains some of the Photoshop layers that went into the strip. It’s totally incomprehensible and actually amazingly beautiful, as far as I’m concerned, with the pastel-y vibe and the large, unsettling white spaces on the cat’s faces. This should be hanging up in some little avant garde artspace downtown, but instead it will have probably been “corrected” online to the usual Heathcliff banality by the time you read this.

Mary Worth, 12/2/12

Gosh, whaddya know! Jim’s down at the pier and he’s not panicking or freaking out at all! I guess he managed to cure himself of being a trauma-haunted, semi-delusional control freak with years of therapy with a trained professional by just sucking it up and going down to the pier and realizing it’s not so bad. Problem solved! Now he’s going to point at a bunch of people, just to prove that, despite his missing arm, he can point with the best of them, just like any two-armed man would.

Marmaduke, 12/12/12

Marmaduke didn’t like playing cowboy so much. His task was to send humans down the infinitely deep pit to the hell-dimension that was his awful kingdom, not other dogs. Why did the dogs provoke him? Never again, he thought, as he watched the hat fall downward, ever downward, to the chamber of eternal agony. Never again.

Luann, 12/12/12

Yes, Mr. DeGroot! Burn it. Burn it all! Burn everything down.