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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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Gil Thorp, 9/29/15

You guys can’t imagine how relieved I was to see this scene of cultish flame-worship in today Gil Thorp. There’s only two days left in the month, and I was worried we were about to go into October without seeing the annual Milford bonfire, that extremely unsafe ritual where the town’s children risk horrible burns in the hope of achieving fleeting football glory. After years basking in the sacred fires, years of speeches and devil horns and clenched fists and threats of violence and pleas for health and initiating foreigners in the brotherhood of burning and flinging innocent women into the air and wild-eyed, hours-long harangues, the Mudlarks finally won their championship last year. That’s why it’s extra important to engage in proper cultic behavior this year, to make sure that good fortune is repeated. The scapegoat has already been selected if the spell fails! Meanwhile, Holly Dobbs’s reality crew is capturing all this on tape, which means that Child Protective Services and/or Homeland Security is going to be investigating this whole scene in short order.

Spider-Man, 9/29/15

I can’t really blame this guy for basking in his moment of press attention. After all, usually the only time anyone wants to interview a cruise ship officer for a publication other than Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine (or its arch-rival, World Cruise Industry Review) is when they accidentally steer their ship into a rock or when the toilets all stop working and you’re still three days away from Curaçao. I’m a little more concerned that all the world’s leaders have decided to let Captain Epaulets take the PR lead on the issue of an undersea kingdom denying humanity use of the oceans. “Yep, our ability to transport goods from manufacturing centers to high-income nations — completely shut down!” says the grinning man who’s mainly happy that for once the chyron under his face doesn’t say ‘POOP CRUISE’ CAPTAIN: WE USED BUCKETS. “The supply chains on which modern society depends are already collapsing!”

Mary Worth, 9/29/15

“Toby, I’m going to Jeff’s place for a few hours! If you want to invite Ian over … and talk to him on neutral ground … remember that nobody else knows you’re staying here and that these black walls hide blood splatter well.”

Momma, 9/29/15

Here’s today’s Momma! It’s about her walking by a funeral parlor and reflecting that it’s definitely time for her to die.

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Curtis, 9/23/15

Oh look, it’s a Curtis plotline that’s probably of interest to me and … nobody else? Curtis’s family has always been portrayed as being of modest means, and they live in a high-rise apartment building in a dense city with a subway that Curtis’s dad takes to work, and I’ve always just assumed that they just didn’t own a car for financial reasons or by choice. I’m pretty sure it’s never come up in the strip that Curtis’s dad couldn’t drive or that he claimed to not have a license. But, you know, if you were Curtis, and you knew driving was a pretty universal thing in American society but that your dad never did it, maybe you would assume he didn’t have a license! Maybe if I had a hypothetical tweenage son, he would assume that about me, so let me tell you, child who does not exist: I do, in fact, have a driver’s license that I got in my teenage years in the usual way, but then I had a bunch of accidents and near accidents and lived in cities with decent public transportation and eventually decided, you know, maybe driving isn’t for me. But even though I haven’t driven a car since 1998, I take the written tests and get a new license every time I move to a new state, because who knows what the future holds! Is this Curtis’s dad’s deal too? Guess we’ll find out! Hopefully at least the fact that he works at the DMV will be mined for ironic material somehow.

Mary Worth, 9/23/15

Toby’s pantomiming here just reinforces my belief that this storyline is, in its low-key way, one of the greatest Mary Worth has seen in years. “No, Mary! I’m not here! Lie for me! Lie for … aw. Poop.”