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Family Circus, 9/7/09

While my self-respect demands that I ignore Billy’s patented brand of ME ME ME LOOK AT ME idiocy, I am a little curious about just what sort of adult-time activity he’s interrupting. It appears that Mommy and some of her grown-up friends are hanging around the house decked out in what appear to be low-key hipster housewife togs from 1978-ish. The two non-Keanes look somewhat discomfited by Billy’s appearance, and really, why wouldn’t they be; still, I’d like to believe that there’s something vaguely disreputable going on here, possibly involving objects hidden away in those clunky purses, or clandestine ingredients added to the big mugs of International Coffee so casually balanced on the furniture.

Also, I’m curious as to what these ladies are doing over here at Billy’s bedtime. Shouldn’t they be at home reading fairy-tale stories to their own sleepy broods? (The idea that the Keane parents would be associating with non-breeders is obviously unthinkable.) Perhaps it’s actually 3 p.m., which has been established as Billy’s bedtime due to some combination of strict parenting ideas and his extreme obnoxiousness.

Marvin, 9/7/09

I feel like I’m getting kind of repetitive when it comes to Marvin, and I promise to stop the moment it stops serving up nightmare visions that turn my stomach. This strip at least demonstrates a sort of interesting visual effect, which is that all the cues that we associate with cute, adorable babies — grossly oversized heads, short, stubby limbs, a proportionally wider torso — become awful and terrifying when the baby in question is blown up to adult size. The vision of the monstrous Marvin-troll, the same height as his mother but at least three times the mass, with a grossly oversized head and eyes the size of baseballs, is so shocking that it allows us to ignore the even more unsettling fact that he’s berating his mother for dressing all slutty.

Spider-Man, 9/7/09

Since Spider-Man has no super-speed abilities, I question how much safer anyplace he could take MJ to within “seconds” might be. “Sorry, Logan. Had to take the lady to safety by putting her on top of that five-foot-tall pile of boxes inside the same building or place where we’re standing now. Is it a warehouse? I forget. Anyway, you can see her right over there. Let’s wave to her from down here, where it’s ever so much more dangerous!”

Jumble, 9/7/09

I originally read the rather compressed dialogue in today’s Jumble cartoon as “Now they can enjoy their food without sweating.” Because the toxic pesticides these pilots have sprayed all over the picnic tables will cause all of the parkgoers’ pores to close up, a few minutes before their nervous systems just shut down altogether.

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Marvin, 9/6/09

You know, I’m pretty much a prematurely jaded cynic, but sometimes the comics can still surprise me. Marvin in particular always manages to surprise me with the new depths of horror it reaches every week. Let’s review today’s trauma:

• This strip introduces entirely new characters, two bees drawn with the enormous noses that defile the faces of most of the human males populating this feature.
• The bees believe that their purpose in life is to sting people for no good reason by the end of the summer; if these are ordinary honeybees, this is of course a suicide mission.
• The bees are intensely focused on stinging a human on the buttocks, which they refer to as a “rear assault.”
• The bees attempt to sting Marvin on the buttocks, but are prevented by his “padded armor,” which, this being Marvin, presumably includes a layer of feces.
• The bees are crushed to death by Marvin’s ass.

And then, the ultimate insult: the Stars and Stripes, dragged unwilling into the opening panels as some kind of attempt to justify this atrocity. Why does Marvin hate America?

Apartment 3-G, 9/6/09

As is its wont, Sunday’s Apartment 3-G provides us with relatively little new information, but I do think that it throws a couple of important facts into stark relief:

• The Professor is prescribing powerful sleeping pills to Ms. Merrill after she mentions that another doctor gave her some years ago, and is thus violating professional ethics and several laws, because he wants to bone her.
• Margo is almost insanely insensitive. “Yes, I haven’t been to the gallery that Eric owns since he died. So many bad memories there! Not like you, who only associate this place with good thoughts about your dead boyfriend.”

Pluggers, 9/6/09

OH SNAP SINISTER ALLIGATOR/VULTURE MAN-BEASTS! You don’t lay off someone with a nationally syndicated comic unless you want to suffer nationally syndicated comics wrath five months later! I am charmed enough by the righteous burn that I will pass over the laughable notion that any plugger would work in a cubicle job. HEY AFGHAN LADY I BET YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE SUCH A SNOB ABOUT FREE SAMPLES FOR DINNER ANYMORE, ARE YOU?

Funky Winkerbean, 9/6/09

“Which makes sense, when you consider that it’s not really funny, at all.”

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Mary Worth, 8/30/09

Could there be anything more delightful than the third panel of Sunday’s Mary Worth? My guess is no! Mary and Tobey are clearly bombed out of their minds after spending three hours drinking their lunch as usual; Tobey attempts a sloppy high-five in celebration of terrible couples bound more tightly together in dysfunction’s death grip, while Mary leaves her hanging and stares glassily into the middle distance. Things go downhill a bit as she ruminates on all the societal ills that her meddling has somehow failed to rectify, but I love the transition between the penultimate and final panels. Could love help overcome these important problems? As panel three demonstrates, clearly not, because if this is love, then love is repugnant beyond description.

Crock, 8/30/09

Ha ha, the heat is killing him! It’s funny because a prisoner locked in a hotbox and left out to broil in the desert sun would literally die, from the heat.

Marvin, 8/30/09

August 30, 2009, will forever be remembered as “the day Marvin showed us his ass-crack, and nobody stopped him.”

Spider-Man, 8/30/09

Now that family-friendly Disney has purchased Marvel, I’m afraid our saucy NEXT! box will have to stop hinting at hot mutant-on-cyborg-on-spider-bite-enhanced-dude action.

Slylock Fox, 8/30/09

Solution — The chain may be too strong for the saw, but Slylock’s leg isn’t. Slylock will plead for his sidekick to reconsider, but Max will just think back to years of condescension and abuse, and smile.