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Mary Worth, 4/22/17

I feel like I’m kind of harping on this, but this Mary Worth plot is definitely what you’d get if, in Mary Shelly’s classic novel Frankenstein, the titular scientist decided to create a ghastly simulacrum of life using not pieces of dead bodies as his raw material, but rather a bunch of brochures for cruise lines. And speaking of things stitched together from severed chunks of other things, I’m sure the Hoosiers will have a blast watching this “Broadway-quality” variety show, which will be like a Broadway show except that it’s a bunch of scenes from different plays or maybe not even a play at all, just whatever monologue the bursar or the pool cleaner or whoever used as their go-to at auditions before they gave up on showbiz and decided to commit themselves to a more steady career at sea.

Marvin, 4/22/17

Haha, remember on Tuesday when Marvin’s dad was worried about what would happen if he got caught using Marvin’s car seat to commit carpool lane fraud? Welp, he used Marvin’s car seat to commit carpool lane fraud, and now he got caught! This is definitely just part of his plan to get sent to the one place where he won’t ever have to deal with Marvin again: prison. He’ll punch that cop if that’s what it takes to make that happen.

Blondie, 4/22/17

In case you’re wondering what kind of “steward of the Earth” Dagwood Bumstead is: he dreams of the day when forbidden science creates plant-animal hybrids that will literally grow slabs of flesh on nightmarish trees, the better to feed his appetites.

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Mary Worth, 4/19/17

I know that eventually we’re going to get around to the Hoosiers and their smoking-related marital strife and that will be the “real” part of this storyline, and it’ll be fine, I’m sure, but for the life of me I’d be happy with like six to eight more weeks of Mary and Toby just enjoying the cruise industry’s more pedestrian pleasures and describing them to each other in excruciating detail. Today, Mary is excited about the formal dinner they’re about to enjoy, but wants everyone to know that come tomorrow for lunch she’ll be wearing sweatpants at the buffet, shoveling as much lukewarm chicken down her gullet as she can handle under the harsh fluorescent lights. She isn’t some kind of snob or anything. (She still paid the extra fee for sheets changed daily and “premium access” to the lifeboats, of course.)

Funky Winkerbean, 4/19/17

Generally speaking, I don’t try to write things about teenagers that much, which is good because they terrify and confuse me and I don’t know much about them. But one thing I do know better than this strip, which ostensibly has a teen cast, is that teens do not care for Facebook anymore. I learned yesterday that a cutting thing teenagers call Facebook is “Mombook,” in case you want to feel a kajillion years old!

Mark Trail, 4/19/17

Mark’s kidnapper is in that special intermediary zone of cleverness, where he’s smart enough that he can’t be tricked into saying his name, but not so smart that he realizes that he’s the one with the gun and the sinister agenda so he’s supposed to be telling Mark where they’re going, not the other way around.

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Blondie, 4/18/17

You know, whenever I see a strip with a gag like this, I sincerely hope it’s the end product of a long meeting between representatives of the Fitbit marketing department and the Cayman Islands-based LLC that owns the rights to the Blondie characters and trademarks, at the end of which they agreed on a plan to mutually leverage their brands across platforms, using Dagwood’s well-known humorous “ownership” of the sleeping space to promote awareness of Fitbit’s functionality that promotes good sleep health. Because the other option is that Blondie decided to give some other company free advertising space in the comics, and that’s honestly pretty sad.

Mary Worth, 4/18/17

Haha, Toby, defensive much??? It’s pretty telling that her immediate response to any mention of humans who have experienced a normal emotional pair-bond is to blurt out “My marriage to Ian is not a sham!! People look at a more-or-less beautiful, moderately vibrant young-ish woman married to a rotund chin-bearded early-late-middle-aged academic and immediately think ‘Oh, he’s her sugar daddy,’ and that’s hurtful. For one thing, Ian’s not even rich! Have you seen where we live?’”

Marvin, 4/18/17

Oh, whoops, I guess yesterday’s carpool shenanigans were just the launching point for a whole storyline about various members of Marvin’s family who use him as a tiny, warm body to take advantage of traffic laws that are meant to cut traffic by providing incentives to multiple adults to who would otherwise drive their own cars to share a ride instead. Anyway, I particularly enjoy the way Jeff’s expression shifts from “emotionally numb” to “crushing despair” as his hunky co-worker suggests that the he drive to work with a diaper full of Marvin shit in the car to keep away pesky and presumably squeamish law enforcement officers.

Spider-Man, 4/18/17

“Ha ha, yes, Starlord and his pop tunes! Perhaps you remember the smash hit film Guardians of the Galaxy, whose trailer used Starlord’s walkman playing Blue Swede’s version of ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ to great effect? Well, the sequel’s coming out in just a few weeks, and its trailer features [checks YouTube] Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain!’ Sounds enticing, eh? I certainly hope this giant robot hasn’t ripped Spider-Man’s arms out of their sockets yet!” The sad thing is this is literally the best Newspaper Spider-Man has ever been at promoting a Marvel Cinematic Universe property.

Six Chix, 4/18/17

This woman some years ago went on a “fantasy weekend” to Yosemite, because her fantasy was to fuck a bigfoot. And she achieved her goal! Never give up on your dreams, everybody!