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Mary Worth, 10/11/15

I stand by my earlier claims that this Toby-and-Ian-spat storyline was for a while a beautiful thing to behold, but it appears to be about to fizzle out in an even more disappointing fashion than most Mary Worths. Barring some surprise last-minute twist, like Toby trudging across the hall to find Ian embracing one of his undergraduate students and whining that they were “on a break,” it looks like Toby has used her time alone to decide that her relationship with Ian is great, even though they sometimes yell at or belittle each other. Today’s Sunday strip can’t even be bothered to barf up some poorly-sourced quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay or Douglas MacArthur for the first panel, and who can blame it?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/11/15

Look at how happy old Charlie is! That’s because he’s been summoned out of the narrative ether for one purpose and one purpose only: to sell his fishing cabin to the Morgans for a ridiculously low price. He grins ever wider as he offers his cabin for sale ever more cheaply, reveling that in this moment, he exists, has flesh and blood, breathes air, smells flowers, lives. As soon as the transaction is concluded, he’ll dissolve again to nothingness, just another tenuous shade in the outer darkness. But right now, let’s let him enjoy himself.

Marvin, 10/11/15

Remember how in the first few seasons of the Wire the drug-dealing Barksdale Organization is set up as the primary antagonists, but eventually we get to know and even sympathize with them as characters, and so towards the end of the show’s run they’re displaced by Marlo Stanfield and his crew, who are colder, less sympathetic, more implacable and violent? In unrelated news, here’s a cartoon in which a baby enumerates his urination and defecation sessions with such glee that he disgusts even Marvin.

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Funky Winkerbean, 10/6/15

Welp, I guess we’re done with Lisa smugging from beyond the grave and have moved on to … Cindy’s love life! Did you know that Cindy was supposed to be significantly (?) older than her new hunky Hollywood boyfriend, Mason Jarr? I sure didn’t! I mean, I guess her whole shtick is complaining about getting old, but the narrative time jumps haven’t transformed her into a stooped, balding potato-person like her fellow main cast members, and honestly I have no read on how old Mason is supposed to be anyway, so I sort of figured they were roughly in the same ballpark. Anyway, I kind of enjoy how Cindy starts off in panel two making a dumb Funkyverse-typical metaphor about, like, tires, I guess, but immediately gives up and just starts talking about how pretty soon nobody’s going to consider her attractive anymore, haha, the patriarchy, amiright people? Mason’s last-panel smirk is pretty great too. “That’s right, babe! The inevitable passage of time brings death to us all, and we think we’re ready for that, but first it takes away the good looks on which we’ve founded our entire self-image.”

Family Circus, 10/6/15

The “Billy, age 7” panels of the Family Circus definitely present some of the most complex layers of narrative and metanarrative in the comics today. You have the strip being drawn by the real-life Jeffy, but deliberately done all crappy so that it can be credited to a seven-year-old version of his real-life older brother who in this fiction is filling in so his real-life deceased father can watch baseball. The look on Billy’s face really says it all here. “Please,” he seems to be thinking, “release me from this convoluted web of puns and artifice. It’s exhausting.”

Apartment 3-G, 10/6/15

“You know, I’m one of Margo’s best friends and know her parents pretty well and also am part of the team responsible for her care, so they’re definitely not going to want to hear this from me. Why don’t you, a total stranger, go over to their place in the middle of the night and tell them about it? I’m not going to tell you anything about their weird family backstory or dynamic, but you should definitely fill them in about how you used to be Margo’s boyfriend but then let everyone think you were dead for five years while you hung out with some Tibetan nuns, they’ll love that.”

Marvin, 10/6/15

This is 100% the facial expression of a woman whose grandchild has stolen her credit card and gone on a spending spree at a toy store.

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Marvin, 10/1/15

I definitely would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall for the comics syndicate editorial meeting that settled on the phrasing “Increase your poopy diaper output.” I mean, come on, Marvin, we know what you want to say. Increase your poop output. INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF POOP YOU OUTPUT FROM YOUR BUTTHOLE. HAVE THE COURAGE OF YOUR CONVICTIONS AND SAY IT, YOU MONSTER.

Hi and Lois, 10/1/15

I genuinely love the huge frown on Dawg’s face in this strip. Normally he just frolics with Trixie and her innocent little delusions. He doesn’t have the heart to be drawn into Ditto’s awful web of lies.

Pluggers, 10/1/15

Like he-pluggers, she-pluggers have memories good enough that they can recognize price inflation, but not so good that they can recognize improved buying power for average wages.