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Mary Worth, 11/4/08

Awwww, hell yeaaaah, kids! You know when your Mary Worth storyline has arrived? When you start seeing some motherfuckin’ thought balloons, that’s when! Presumably we’ll have days and days and days of Lynn’s cryptic, mopey internal monologue to enjoy. Is a doomed love affair responsible for her lackluster performance on ice? Was her heart wounded by her father, and will she join Vera Shields in the Mary Worth Pantheon Of Unsettling Women Who Talk About An Immediate Family Member In Terms That Seem More Appropriate To A Romantic Relationship? Or does Lynn, much like Jeff “Sackodog” “6-9” Ponczak, have a literal cardiac ailment, which could at any time kill her in mid-competition and leave her body to drop to the ice like a rhinestone-encrusted sack of potatoes?

Herb and Jamaal, 11/4/08

So if the jar labelled “sugar” is full of sugar, then the mug labelled “Herb” is full of … oh, dear lord.

Marmaduke, 11/4/08

“Also, there’s such a thing as being too casual about the dozens of human femurs you have mouldering in your terrifying death-shed.”

Psst! Thinking about posting a comment about today’s election? Please do so over here instead.

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Gil Thorp, 10/18/08

You know, I think new Gil Thorp artist Rod Whigham is really starting to find his footing in this strip, creating evocative scenes for our Milford heroes. Yesterday, he served up a sort of film noir pastiche, with tough, wise-cracking heroes and the dames that break their hearts; today we go further back, to the Middle Ages, as miserable peasants pull up their rough-hewn hoods for protection from the pelting rain as they trudge back to their leaky, plague-infested hovels. You can tell how hard it’s raining in panel three: it appears that Gil’s flattop has been so thoroughly soaked that it’s lost structural integrity.

Beetle Bailey, 10/18/08

I was about to say that panel one was kind of edgy for a newspaper comic, as it features two men who are clearly drunk — and not happy, wacky drunk, but bleary-eyed, vaguely depressed and irritated, and surrounded by empties drunk. But then I saw panel two and realized that booze was least of this comic’s problems.

Marmaduke, 10/18/08

Marmaduke is about to kill and eat yet another poor soul who’s come to the front door of his house, but at least in this case you could sort of argue that it’s in self-defense.

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Spider-Man, 10/14/08

I’m one of those people who don’t have cable. I don’t think this makes me morally superior or anything; I’m just cheap, and have an irregular schedule, and a NetFlix subscription. But if it were possible to buy cable channels individually instead of as one big SuperMegaSaverPackage Of Stuff You’ll Never Watch, Turner Classic Movies would definitely be on my list. I love old movies, and I love knowing that there’s a whole channel out there dedicated to showing them. That’s why it makes me a little sad to see that the TCM folks have had to resort to paying third-rate superhero comic strips for product placement, though not half as a sad as their marketing people probably were when they got the strip they’d paid for and saw Maria doing … whatever the hell she’s doing in the first panel.

Herb and Jamaal, 10/14/08

Dear Herb and Jamaal,

To the extent that I can be said to enjoy your strip, I enjoy it for the gentle, good-natured everyday humor that arises from the situations in which your generally cheerful characters find themselves. Please do not have said characters develop a panic about their mortality so overwhelming that even the thought of sleep terrifies them.

Thanks in advance,
The Comics Curmudgeon

P.S. If the aforementioned characters deal with this psychological affliction with a downward spiral of drugs and/or alcohol, I may let it slide.

Marmaduke, 10/14/08

Ha ha, Marmaduke’s owners have lived with him for so long that they no longer have any idea what “innocent” looks like. For the record, that’s less “innocent” and more “feeding frenzy.”