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Mary Worth, 5/14/14

I’m not going to claim that Iris and Tommy’s dialogue in panel one consists of the greatest twenty-word sequence in the history of English prose, but let’s just say that it’s my current favorite, OK? I hereby order anyone who lives in Atlanta, New York, Houston, Phoenix, or any other city with a Midtown and who is talking about a restaurant in said neighborhood to say, airily, “you know, the eatery down in Midtown?” Will one of your friends respond with “Yeah, I know of it”? That all depends on whether you hang out with hardened meth-dealing ex-cons whose native tongue is the language of the streets, I guess!

This is, quite obviously, the beginning of the promised Redemption of Tommy, and I have to admit that I’m charmed by how extremely chill he’s being about it. “Enh, maybe that lady was right and I can expiate my past sins by finding a job. Hey, does this Jerry guy want to give me a job? Can’t hurt to find out, I guess.”

Dennis the Menace, 5/14/14

OK, let’s ignore the dumb wordplay and just acknowledge that Dennis is maintaining eye contact with his mother while dumping the meal she made for him directly into the trash. Would it be more menacing if he were saying “This is garbage, just like all the other garbage I have to put up with in your garbage house”? Yes, but let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Family Circus, 5/14/14

Oh, man, PJ is just delightfully smug in this panel. “That’s right, Dolly, you wallow in nostalgia all you want. Your day is done. I’m youth! This is PJ’s time now!”

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Mary Worth, 5/7/14

Ten years ago (ten years ago!), Mary unleashed a magnificent act of passive aggression on poor Iris; after smelling Tommy’s weed-smoke drifting through the air vents, she dropped by to say hi to Irish and mention “whatever Tommy was smoking” all snide-like. Now, a decade later, she’s prepared to get semi-confrontational right to Tommy’s face! I’m not sure what I like better, her casual reference to “your history” or the idea that an ex-con will somehow magically have an easier time finding a job if only he reframes the process in his mind as some kind of redemption narrative.

Heathcliff, 5/7/14

So, I guess Heathcliff must occasionally seek legitimacy from the electorate to continue his reign as untouchable god-king? I’m assuming that this is just a Stalinist sham election with only a single name on the ballot: the campaign poster doesn’t even try to convey even the vaguest of political philosophies to entice the voter, but merely promotes a vision of Heathcliff as omnipresent and inevitable, which is of course its own sort of ideological stance.

Hi and Lois, 5/7/14

I’m not exactly sure why Hi and Lois decided to go with a featureless, inky black floor for their kitchen rather than a more traditional tile or linoleum pattern, but if they thought it wouldn’t show dirt or stains as vividly, they were clearly very much mistaken.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 5/7/14

Grimm is panhandling for money to see what appears to be a porno version of Spider-Man.

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Mary Worth, 5/1/14

“But … but, Wilbur … I’m not sure I’m comfortable taking on a ex-con drug addict with no restaurant experience!”

“Look, Jerry, maybe we never spoke about it aloud, but you and I both know that the ‘Best Eats’ column in the Santa Royale Courier-Intelligencer is prime real estate — prime real estate — and that there’s an admission fee to get in, one that you would have to pay eventually. Do we understand each other? Now, you pick up that phone and tell your accountant that you’ve found a better man for the job. Or your sommelier. Either one, it doesn’t matter to me, but it has to happen by the end of the day. Got it?”

Rex Morgan, M.D. 5/1/14

Anyway, long story short, this is how Sarah ended up in a specially constructed all-plastic prison cell guarded by a platoon of soldiers who don’t speak English.