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Gasoline Alley, 11/18/15

One of the things I really respect about 115-year-old Gasoline Alley patriarch Walt Wallet is that he has no more interest in remembering anything about the minor characters in this strip’s sprawling cast than I do. Also, as corny as the dialogue on-stage that we’re getting a glimpse of is, at least it’s more like the sort of thing a child would find funny than, say, rambling shaggy dog stories about ancient statues and alien weapons depots.

Mary Worth, 11/18/15

Thank goodness Mary is taking Olive out to have snacks at various New York tourist attractions! At last, her parents can have a little alone time. In panel two, her dad has already put on his Flesh Glasses to prepare for whatever unspeakable acts they have planned.

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Mary Worth, 11/17/15

At last, the crossover distraction is over with and we can get down to the hot Mary Worth action we’ve all waited for: Mary’s weird and off-putting relationship with a psychic child she flew all the way across the country to hang out with. Olive’s parents, always polite, want Mary to come with them to the many after-hours nightspots in the neighborhood of their tastefully appointed apartment. All the hottest clubs are just up the street! Perfect for when you’re rolling on molly and don’t want to drive and are afraid you’ll start freaking out on the subway!

Apartment 3-G, 11/17/15

The countdown to the death of Apartment 3-G is ticking away and … we’re still talking about Diane the fake psychic, I guess? Haha, isn’t it funny when a person claiming to be psychic can’t actually predict the future? This is definitely a clever joke that people haven’t heard before.

Hi and Lois, 11/17/15

I was going to make some joke about “the newspaper, are you kidding me,” but this is exactly the sort of lesson an out-of-touch high school civics or history teacher would give, taking the students’ moans of dissent as just more evidence that kids today are terrible, rather than evidence that kids today literally all have mobile computing devices that they can use to get the latest news at any time. Anyway, I think the way Chip is carrying that paper — with just his fingertips, away from his body, as if it were something mildly disgusting — is a pretty accurate depiction of the relationship between teens and legacy media.

Herb and Jamaal, 11/17/15

Most people giving thanks to God for the day usually frame it in terms of nothing bad happening to them, rather than the other way around. Herb, though, is particularly aware of the indelible stain of sin that marks all of humankind, and marks him in particular. Someday, he knows, he’s going to do something awful. Today is not that day, or at least not yet.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/15/15

Call me a speciesist if you will, but it seems to me that the animals who rose up and took over the planet in the Slylockverse haven’t quite matched our levels of achievement, have they? I mean, they apparently seized control of a human research station at the North Pole, an event that was presumably quite bloody and involved several polar bears, and they’ve been operating it in a sort of cargo cult fashion ever since, but now they’re in trouble. “Which way did they go?” the polar bears ask, poking their claw at the scavenged compass. “South? It’s all south.” The thief rides away and the bears, already growing soft in their warm enclosure, have forgotten they once were the fastest things on the pack ice.

Mary Worth, 11/15/15

This is an amazingly prefect Mary Worth Time-Killing Strip! Mary exchanges pleasantries with the cabbie, who is enough of a pro to not react to whatever meagre tip she’s giving him; then we get four solid action-packed panels of Mary thought-ballooning about the mechanics of letting her hosts know she’s arrived, a little retrospective on how she got there (not in any soul-searching or philosophical way, just the actual travel mechanics), and some platitudes about New York and how it’s Always Different! Slap a successfully completed phone call on at the end and a fabricated quote from St. Augustine on at the beginning, and you’ve got a Sunday!

Crock, 11/15/15

The answer to “how dark does Crock have to get before I laugh at it with respectful wonder” has now been established, and it is: botched suicide. I thank you for your time.