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Hey, gang, remember Margo’s vaguely ethnic comical-but-lovable fortune-tellin’ birth mother Gabriella? “Vaya, el espiritu malo!” Gabriella? “Gracias, Santa Maria!” Gabriella? I mean this Gabriella:

Well if you do, I’ve got sad news:

Apartment 3-G, 2/20/13

Yes, the passage of time and renewed romantic attentions of Martin Magee have bleached, rectified, and WASPicated our favorite Roma/Filipina/Chicana firecracker, to the point where things like “Bless you, Mr. Cooper” actually come out of her mouth.

Now I understand that as we approach the End Times, there needs to be a certain amount of convergence among God’s creatures in preparation for our ultimate unification with the One. Heck, the guys in Apartment 3-G have been interchangeable for years! So it’s not that I’m against the End of the World as a concept, or even as a near-term possibility. I’m just not ready for the Omega Point to look quite so much like Mary Worth.

Phantom, 2/20/13

In the fifth month of the daily Phantom game Who’s Got the Lioness?, Evil Miner Logician rudely dismisses his colleague’s naïve “argument from absence of evidence” without considering alternatives:

1. Surely 500 years of the “Man-Who-Cannot-Die” legend provides some evidence of absence, no?
2. Alternative hypothesis: the Phantom may be a vampire or zombie, and therefore dead already. Vampires and zombies are very popular right now — he should at least consider it!
3. All right, a single null result is inconclusive. So why not add more trials and widen the scope a bit: try hanging, burning, shooting, drowning, poisoning, or simply boring him to death. God knows it’s working on us.

Marvin, 2/20/13

For the past several days Marvin’s been having a late-night chat with “his worst nightmare” on the right here. Today we learn that “Marvin nightmare” = “Marvin bowel movement”, i.e., the visitor is in fact Marvin’s own poo come to terrifying life. This being Marvin, such a development was of course inevitable. But we should still be grateful that Disney’s ironclad trademark control over the name “Poo” keeps the newcomer from having his own spinoff strip.

And speaking of poo:

Mary Worth, 2/20/13

John Dill has finally digested his prizewinning cake.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Wizard of Id, 2/15/13

I think when you’re correcting the depiction of a Scrabble game played in a faux-medieval magic world in a daily newspaper comic, you’re officially that guy, and lord knows I don’t want to be that guy, so let me just very briefly point out that if you’re going to say the word you just played in Scrabble aloud, you’re probably going to say the point total rather than the number of letters, that you can only play seven letters at a time, and that the Wiz could conceivably be building off of “ex” or “on” or “ion” but even if he is there doesn’t appear to be a a nine-letter word on the board. Also, I know significantly less about the rules of magic in the Wizard of Id than I do about Scrabble, but I do know a little bit about the rules of comics narrative, and I think that if you have a character complaining about the proximity of a magic wand in panel two, said magic wand should at least be visible in panel one.

Crankshaft, 2/15/13

Most of the time when people ask for crossword puzzle help they do give a letter count for what they’re looking for, but the rules of Crankshaft narrative involve everyone talking at cross-purposes and getting irritated at each other, so I’m willing to let this pass.

Mary Worth, 2/15/13

Obviously the coming drama here will revolve around Mary not wanting to leave her comfy Santa Royale home to go to New York and learn how to be a pastry chef, because why would she, but I would certainly enjoy a retooled Mary Worth that focuses on Mary and John trying to make it in the big city. The first episode would revolve around their discovery that $10,000 doesn’t come close to covering eight months of rent in a two-bedroom New York apartment.

Marvin, 2/15/13

Marvin: not just a comic about a baby who soils himself constantly! It’s also about racist dogs.

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Herb and Jamaal, 2/3/13

Boy, this Herb and Jamaal sure was an emotional roller coaster! See, we’re expected to believe that Jamaal is a desperate drug addict who keeps going back to his filthy hippie drug dealer to buy dope. But, haha, don’t worry, it appears that he just enjoys video entertainment and would prefer to go to one of America’s few remaining video stores rather than figuring out how to set up one of these new-fangled internet streaming services! Anyway, since the strip spent seven panels setting up this commercial transaction as surreptitious and shameful, obviously the first thing the reader thinks of in terms of “video titles” is pornography, which makes a reference to the “kiddie section” all the more traumatizing.

Momma, 2/3/13

The thing about the Funkyverse’s endless cavalcade of sadness porn is that the strip is at least self-aware about how grim it is. Momma, by contrast, completely fails to notice the air of desperation that surrounds its characters at all times. Which is to say that the use of “betrays” here creeps me out. Momma is betrayed by her children routinely, of course … but now her own failing body joins the party.

Marvin, 2/3/13

Marvin does this thing where it teases you with the prospect of the title character wandering off in the snow and freezing to death, but, sadly, never really follows through with it.