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Mary Worth, 6/25/13

Ha, I bet you thought that once Beth and Tom had admitted to Elinor that they were totally in heterosexual love and planned to get married and Elinor miraculously came around to the point of view that Beth shouldn’t live a solitary, unhappy life for the rest of her days, all the conflict in this plot was over and we could move onto something more interesting, with that something to be introduced during a pool party. WELL I GUESS YOU THOUGHT WRONG, DIDN’T YOU?? Here we are and we’re still paying attention to these three mopes! What dramatic conflicts remain for our protagonists? Will Beth’s gratitude for Mary’s intervention transform into adoration and then into obsession? Will she manage to alienate both Elinor and Tom with her incessant Mary-worship? Will Mary’s beatific face appear in a floating picture-thought-bubble in at least one panel of every strip for the remainder of this storyline? Let’s hope!

Spider-Man, 6/25/13

I think we can all agree that “Irony, anyone?” is pretty much the greatest Newspaper Spider-Man narration box ever. It will be harder to come to a consensus as to which panel represents the ultimate Newspaper Spider-Man image: Spidey gazing forlornly into his empty wallet, or Spidey rubbing the back of his head and staring dumbly off into the middle distance.

Mark Trail, 6/25/13

Baker’s been here for two days. Has he seen anything? Stay tuned to find out!

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Momma, 6/23/13

One of my favorite/least unfavorite Momma bits is Momma’s recurring nightmare that she and/or her children in some combination will be reduced to panhandling, due to her children’s shiftlessness and incompetence. I enjoy these installments because they’re about her constant mid-level anxiety that she and her family are trembling at the boundary of middle-class respectability and could be pushed out into the abyss at any moment, but the actual “jokes” of the strips generally take the form of weird passive-aggressive wordplay on signs that the Hobbes-hobos are displaying for the benefit of passers by. Today was actually the first time I noticed that these signs aren’t makeshift cardboard placards propped up in front of them but actually attached to the wall, which implies both a certain resourcefulness and collusion with the building owner. Come to us when can’t even afford thumbtacks, Momma! Then we’ll know you hit rock bottom.

Panel from Mary Worth, 6/23/13

Haha, look how startled Tom looks by this demand. “But that … that’s kind of my thing! It’s my trademark relationship move!”

Mark Trail, 6/23/13

“How are we going to get the kids interesting in birdwatching? Breakdancing? Do the kids still like breakdancing? Should we tell them that birds breakdance?”

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Apartment 3-G, 6/12/13

There are so many things I [love/am horrified by] (this is a single emotion that I trust is familiar to anyone reading this blog) about today’s Apartment 3-G that I can hardly stand it. Let’s start with the idea that Lu Ann lacks the rudimentary linguistic-cultural competencies necessary to parse the concept of a “famous stylist,” which would be pretty embarrassing even if she hadn’t fairly recently been on a reality TV show in the course of which she got a makeover from a famous stylist. Then add in the fact that what had on Monday been an ignorable peach-orange shirt has today suddenly become a peach-orange shirt insanely paired with an all white suit jacket, which, when combined with Lu Ann’s weirdly rubbery-seeming fish-lipped visage, makes her look like a villain from the Adam West Batman. Look, the governor is affectionally patting her mask-face! Haha, this is a [nightmare/delight].

Funky Winkerbean, 6/12/13

Man, Funky Winkerbean is really going there, if by “there” we mean “dragging one of the sad sack characters from Crankshaft ten years through a time-wormhole into the Funkypresent.” Things we’ve learned today: Jeff looks even more beaten down by life and depressed than he does in the Crankpresent; and, Crankshaft still lives, but has been banished to a nursing home, and thus presumably no longer endangers children by driving a bus. What about Jeff’s terrible mother? Has she finally shaken off this mortal coil? I’m legitimately on tenterhooks!

Crankshaft, 6/12/13

Meanwhile, back in the Crankpresent, my shriveled black heart twitched in delight at Crankshaft’s look of genuine panic in the second panel. Is this the moment when the school district decides to let him go from the job that lets him preserve a modicum of independence and dignity? Let’s hope!

Mark Trail, 6/12/13

Oh, man, I’ve been totally neglectful in keeping you up to date with the new storyline in Mark Trail, which involve otter poaching and otter traps and rescuing injured otters, and have been bubbling along on just this side of hilarity. But I think it’s safe to say that the sentence “How are the otters today, Rusty?” crosses that line at a pretty fast clip.

B.C., 6/12/13

The B.C. creative team apparently has only a vague idea of what the “internet” is or how one interacts with it.