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Mary Worth, 4/30/13

Oh my goodness, you guys, it looks like we are about to get Mary Worth’s version of the immovable object/unstoppable force problem! You see, on the one hand, the thing that Mary likes more than anything else is seeing young people matched up into happily heteronormative couples — particularly couples like Tom and Beth, who she has selected for eternal happiness with her inscrutable Mary Powers. ON THE OTHER HAND, there is nothing Mary Worth hates more than lies and dishonesty. But what if the only way to ensure that Beth and Tom could get to know each other better, in a romantic but wholesome way, would involve Mary lying? What path will she choose? I sure hope she chooses lying, because (a) Mary lying, even in the cause of love, should be delightfully awkward, made even more so by the fact that (b) Mary, Tom, and Beth’s mom Elinor all live in the same condo complex, so there’s a good chance that the lying will take the following form:

MARY answers the door. ELINOR is standing in the hall.

ELINOR: Have you seen my daughter Beth? I’m worried that she’s whoring herself over at that man-slut Tom’s apartment.

MARY: Oh-h-h-h, of course not, Elinor! Beth is here in my apartment tonight.

ELINOR: Oh. Can I come in and see her?

MARY: No.

ELINOR: Why not?

MARY: [Stands silently, smiling, for a long time, like, a really long time, things get uncomfortable real fast but she just keeps standing there silently, forever]

Crock, 4/30/13

Well might Grossie’s Friend Whose Name I Forget (sigh, sadly “Grossie” is a name that will never, ever leave my brain) look dubious in panel three. If Grossie is so good at spotting plastic surgery from so far away, shouldn’t she notice her tablemate’s nose, pointing up at an impossibly taut angle, presumably being held in place by some kind of industrial-strength facelift technology?

Marvin, 4/30/13

This week’s “Marvin does variations on a dumb joke all week” involves the li’l scamp uploading “feet photos” onto Facebook. Can someone confirm or deny to me that this is an actual thing that people do? I tried Googling “feet photos Facebook” and got some extremely traumatizing results so I had to go take a walk and not look at the computer for a while.

(Side note: remember when CrySpace was the baby-themed social network of choice in the Marvinverse, back in 2009? I guess we can’t pretend that MySpace is relevant enough to be spoofed anymore. Not that we could pretend this in 2009 either, but you know.)

Shoe, 4/30/13

Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if they made an Indiana Jones movie in the modern day, with Harrison Ford playing the title role, even though he is an old man? Wait, what? In 2008, you say? Huh.

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Pluggers, 4/5/13

OK, here is the deal with my relationship with Pluggers, basically: Pluggers presents folksy, down-home bits of wisdom from rural and exurban types that have as an unspoken contrast the way that I and my fellow liberal urbanites conduct ourselves (e.g., we have acquaintances from multiple ethnic backgrounds, we have a passing familiarity with popular culture, we own and use paper towels, etc.); I take this contrast as implying that pluggers think they’re better humans (or human-animal hybrids, whatever) than me and everyone else who doesn’t know how to fix a car and likes living somewhere where you can get Indian food delivered, and I resent it and blow whatever implications are there completely out of proportion.

Every once in a while, though, I encounter a Pluggers that isn’t so much “infuriating” as “baffling,” and today’s Pluggers is one such instance. I hesitate to call this a universal experience, but it certainly has no class or cultural significance that I can detect, unless pluggers assume that we fancy city folk only wear space-age velcro sneakers. I do actually enjoy the drawing of the vaguely poindextery cat (always the go-to man-animal for Pluggers cartoons that aren’t quite plugger-y, as near as I can tell) clearly being sent into paroxysms of obsessive-compulsive anxiety as he feels one of his shoes hugging his foot slightly more tightly than the other, and wondering if he should retie the other one now and if so which set of books under which arm he should set down first to do so.

Spider-Man, 4/5/13

Aw, it turns out that the Great Spidey Milk-Drinking Caper wasn’t just a typical Newspaper Spider-Man time-wasting tangent, but is actually related to the main plot! I mean, the idea that you could “mix” Peter Parker’s DNA with a mind-control gas to make it Spider-Man-specific is laughable, but I guess it’ll do. The Kingpin probably just has the science-y aspects all mixed up in his head, anyway. He’s not a micromanager! He just wants results!

Hi and Lois, 4/5/13

For the life of me I cannot figure out why Ditto looks so God-damned smug in the second panel. Surely he’s not that impressed with his own terrible pun. Is he proud that he carries the youthful six-pack of an eight-year-old, unaware or unconcerned about the flab he’ll start to develop when he hits puberty?

Herb and Jamaal, 4/5/13

As Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged, unless we’re talking about someone who won’t cough up money for the collection plate. Go ahead and put that guy on your shit list.”

Marvin, 4/5/13

Marvin is a gross, mean, hateful baby, so I take comfort in the fact that he’s already haunted by the grim spectre of death.

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Hi and Lois, 4/2/13

My feeling is that, as a rule, people bring up the idea of going to a marriage counselor not (obviously) when things are going great and not in the middle of a screaming fight, but in the post-storm lull, the aftermath of a long, draining argument that has left both parties exhausted. That’s what I’m assuming is going on here, with Irma’s expression in the first panel all worn out and heavy lidded. I appreciate the narrative conceit that we’re being dropped down into the midst of some long, dark evening in the Thurston marriage, and that we’ve landed right as things turn: when Irma thinks that now is the time to finally make a last ditch effort to save their marriage, only to discover that Thirsty is ready to go another round. Look at her face in the second panel! This is going to be uglier than you can imagine.

Mark Trail, 4/2/13

Wow, I’m not sure how I missed the fact that these bass fishing contests that Rod Bassy has been rigging had big cash prizes? Like, I honestly thought it was just for fishing glory. I guess the motivation behind Rod’s elaborate cheating schemes is much more obvious now. It does make the whole plot a seem a lot tawdrier to me, though, and Bluegill’s comical, dignity-free glee at winning by default sure isn’t helping.

Dick Tracy, 4/2/13

Dick Tracy is teaming up with Jumble Jeff and David Hoyt to teach kids important information they need to know about the economic and distribution models for modern-day printed syndicated newspaper content. Could nefarious supercriminals have altered your favorite comic or puzzle, for evil purposes? It’s best to handle the Sudoku with tongs, just to be sure!

Marvin, 4/2/13

Nobody in Marvin’s family cares very much whether he lives or dies.

Spider-Man, 4/2/13

Finally, Spider-Man finds a level of superheroics that he can handle. (Just kidding, he’ll try drinking it and then say “Gross, is this skim?” and spit it out all over his costume.)