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Let’s start today by taking a step into the past — specifically, yesterday.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 5/17/09

Margo is about to jet off to China to single-handedly rescue her fiance and force the People’s Bank of China to revalue the yuan in the process, but first she’s stopping off at her mother’s for a free meal. What could possibly be the cause of the girlish glee occurring inside Gabriella’s apartment?

Apartment 3-G, 5/18/09

OH MY GOD, IT’S HER PARENTS! And they’re being all … nice to each other. Surely the last thing any of us want to see is our parents flirting like they’re on a third date and have consumed exactly the right amount of wine for magic to happen twenty to forty minutes in the future; this is especially true for Margo, whose very self-image requires her to imagine the act of her creation as a moment of pure mutual loathing and contempt, so you can imagine her disgust at seeing this happy little tableau here.

(Margo’s creation story is actually pretty sordid, which gives this whole scene a vibe of genuine ick that I’m not sure is intended.)

Blondie, 5/18/09

As panel three indicates, Blondie is under the suffocating, restrictive gaze of her husband at all times, so she’s learned to choose her words carefully so as to avoid his wrath while still speaking the truth. “I thought he was all those things, but boy howdy was I wrong. Look, Cookie, the results of my carefree flapper days should make it pretty clear that bathtub gin dulls both your eyesight and your judgment.”

Family Circus, 5/18/09

Oh, look, the Keanes have apparently acquired a crazed neighborhood enemy! This can only escalate; tomorrow, they’ll presumably wake up to find the words “HUMAN GARBAGE” spray-painted across the front of their house. The real question, of course, why it took so long for this to happen.

Mark Trail, 5/18/09

You’re probably laughing at this because you’re imagining Rusty, dressed in his best khaki paramilitary uniform and his brightest blue kerchief, earnestly showing a college admissions officer his “transcripts,” which consist entirely of poorly lit and composed pictures of those forest animals dumb or ill enough to be lured into the pen behind the Trail cabin. But that scenario, of course, assumes that Rusty has any idea what “college” actually is. Once he’s saved up enough, Mark and Cherry will probably find a glove factory or third-world rebel army willing to accept some cash in return for taking the mutant freak-child off their hands; then they’ll tell him he’s going to Bowdoin or something and send him on his way, never to be seen again.

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Marvin, 5/15/09

One of Marvin’s favorite time-padding techniques/crimes against humanity involves taking a joke that, at first, seems to be not particularly funny, and then repeating it every day for a week until you literally want to tear your own eyes out of your head just so you can be sure that you’ll never see Marvin again. The current running joke (which at least features less recycled art than Belly Laffs did) is that Marvin is in some kind of dream sequence in which all of his family members appear as stick figures, and utter stilted sentences that contain the word “stick” as the punchline-like conclusion. This was bad enough — in fact, my description doesn’t even do how bad enough it was justice — except that the stick figures Marvin encountered became less and less stick figure-esque over the course of the week until we got to Friday’s strip, in which his grandfather, though more poorly drawn than usual, exhibits exactly zero stick figure-like characteristics. At least he still says the word “stick,” though! ‘Cause that’s the payoff. See how they put it in italics there? Ha ha! Stick!

Crankshaft, 5/15/09

So Pam was terribly anxious that her daughter might be streaking at her graduation, until she remembered that she was in the buff at her own graduation, back in the day, which has caused a sudden onset of smugness, presumably at her own daring and/or hotness. Her husband is profoundly aroused by the thought, if by “profoundly aroused” we mean “gripped by panic and bordering on a major cardiac event,” and since this is the Funky Winkerbean universe, that is exactly what we mean by “profoundly aroused.”

Mark Trail, 5/15/09

Yesterday, Andy categorically refused to do anything NOW on Mark’s cue, so it appears that today Mark has simply hurled the enormous St. Bernard at his enemy. The real question, though, is what exactly went on between Andy and the non-bald baddie between the two panels that left both evil-doers looking so shaken and depressed.

Judge Parker, 5/15/09

“We’re also delighted that you’re holding your head at that angle so our readers can get a good look at your fabulous mullet! Market research has shown that mullets are one of the most popular things to appear in this strip, right behind tits.”

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Mark Trail, 5/14/09

SURPRISE, everyone! It’s Mark Trail Plotline Payoff Day! Of course, the latest outbreak of violence in Mark Trail comes as a SURPRISE! to no one, as it’s how every single Mark Trail plot is resolved. But it is noteworthy that Mark is leading not with a fist to the jaw, but with with a shoulder to the groin. Is it possible that he’s actually become bored with punching people? Does he need to mix it up by causing pain to sideburned ne’er-do-wells with different parts of his body? Is that the only way he can keep himself interested in his work, and keep that magical feeling of how SURPRISingly wonderful life can be?

Something doesn’t seem quite right as Mark comes in low on Blueshirt McMoron. You’ll notice that, from the viewer’s perspective, Mark’s head is on our side of the baddie’s torso, but his elbows are between the dude’s various limbs, and he doesn’t seem to be leaning forward enough for that to be the case. It’s like some sort of optical illusion. Or, I guess, it’s like Mark is actually a pre-existing 2-D drawing that was dropped into the space and cropped somewhat inexpertly.

Also of note in this ruckus is the fact that Mark is shouting “NOW, ANDY!” after which Andy appears to do exactly nothing. Maybe he’s busy off-panel dragging Rusty away to safety, or taking the opportunity to take care of annoying pup Sassy by eating him.

Spider-Man, 5/14/09

I know that “continuity strips” (as they’re called in the biz) have to keep hammering even the basic elements of their plotlines home because even their most dedicated fans skip two days out of every five, but I think Peter’s last-panel thought balloon is a little much. “Hi, newspaper readers! Just wanted to let you know, in case you weren’t clued in by the title of the strip, that this feature isn’t just about some self-satisfied douchebag visiting his aunt in the hospital! It also showcases guys in tight spandex battling each other in dramatic lighting!”

I also think that the thought-balloon is a little self-serving. I don’t recall anything that exciting happening during their battle; I mostly remember the sandwich-eating.

Mary Worth, 5/14/09

Oh my God, the message of this Mary Worth plot really is going to be “Ladies are incapable of rational judgement and should have their potential romantic partners screened for them by their father, even when said ladies are medical professionals in their thirties, and even when said fathers think that Mary Worth makes a good romantic partner.”