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I know I said I’d be back on Monday, but … but … I can’t keep away from the weekend’s comics! It’s a sickness.

Marvin, 11/27/10 and a panel from the Lockhorns, 11/28/10

For instance, had I skipped the weekend I would have missed the moment when Marvin and the Lockhorns stopped pussyfooting around and just owned up to their respective central premises. Marvin threw in a half-assed (see what I did there? I know I’ll be punished for it) pun to try to keep within the conventions of the comic strip form; that Lockhorns, true to the comic’s uncompromising commitment to authenticity, went someplace much, much darker.

Panel from Dick Tracy, 11/28/10

Meanwhile, only two weeks into my Sunday Dick Tracy reading, I’m already quickly falling in love with the Crimestoppers Notebook. Look at this diminutive balding Cubs fan, brazenly proclaiming to all and sundry that he’s planning on being home alone! Even the mysterious trench-coated bad guy has been reduced to open-mouthed shock at his openness on this subject.

Apartment 3-G, 11/28/10

Over in Apartment 3-G, Paul Linski prepares to bust his move. You can tell he has less than honorable intentions towards our Lu Ann because he uses crass abbreviations like “’cuz”. Ha ha, I can’t wait to learn what depraved sex act he’ll think Lu Ann’s request to “move her piano” represents!

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Slylock Fox, 11/23/10

The duck on the left is a duly sworn officer of the law, representing a distant government in whatever isolated community he rules over at his whim with an iron fist, his tin star serving as all the excuse he needs to do and take what he wants. The duck on the right is a ruthless vigilante, answering to nobody and following only his own ethical code — and his own appetites. Can you tell the difference between the two? Are the appalling acts of violence the duck-dictator on the left perpetrates in his dusty border town justified by his government commission — or are they even less defensible as a result? By setting up on his own account, is the duck on the right arrogating power to himself that doesn’t belong to him — or is he merely replicating the process by which all governments have formed, and is perhaps prepared to do a better job than the authority he’s displacing? Also, what kind of vermin is hiding under the television set, seriously, it’s creeping me out.

Marvin, 11/23/10

I’m not sure what the point of this strip is supposed to be, but since it features the entire loathsome Marvin cast staring out at the reader in gobsmacked terror, presumably looking straight into the face of total economic catastrophe, I’m just going to go ahead and declare it the greatest Marvin of all time.

The Jumble, 11/23/10

Don’t let them tell you that clowns are the heir of a long and honorable tradition of performance, or that they live only to hear the laughter of children, or any kind of bullcrap like that. They’re just in it for the money. All clowns are interested in is money.

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Marvin, 11/1/10

Here is today’s Marvin! It is about how the title character, who is the world’s worst baby, takes pride in the fact that he sits around in his own mess, and thinks that anyone who takes the effort to control their various lower sphincters until they can dispose of their bodily wastes in a sanitary fashion is a sucker. Marvin disgusts me, if you can’t tell!

Shoe, 11/1/10

And yet my immediate thought when reading today’s Shoe was “Ha ha, that momma bird is exhausted because she spent the night barfing whatever greasy food she eats at Roz’s diner into her baby’s mouth! Yet the strip would never dare mention such a thing, despite its ostensible bird-based premise.” These contrasting reactions prove that I am hard to please, and also gross.

Marmaduke, 11/1/10

OH GOD HE HAS THE POWER OF FLIGHT NOW NONE OF US ARE SAFE