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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/13/13 (panels)

What is the relationship between art and reality — among the dreamer, the dream, and the dreamed? Magritte gives us one viewpoint, Snuffy Smith another.

Snuffy reveals how the artist not only creates a work but selects its audience, source of his reputation and claims to authenticity. He is his own best example: once a mere usurper in Barney Google’s strip, he now asserts his own membership in the very elites who read his Sunday “throwaway panels” in their expansive flatlander newspapers or on high-falutin’ electronic devices. With a delicate hanky-dab at his nose, he rises — refined and redefined, “Snuffy” no more!

Judge Parker, 10/13/13 (panel)

Boy, this lady sure hates hats, doesn’t she?

Beetle Bailey, 10/13/13

You know, there are plenty of attractive and willing human partners around, like Sarge’s Sgt. Louise Lugg, Beetle’s Miss Buxley, and Killer’s groupies, but it’s all surrogates with these guys: robots, trees, and again with Beetle’s beloved pillow here. I’m just saying that’s kind of messed up.

Mary Worth, 10/13/13 (panel)

We had to wait a long time to see Mary’s head impaled on a fish, but I think we can all agree it was worth it.

Mutts, 10/13/13

Mooch ignores the comics’ prohibition of “FLICK” to imply that Earl has sex with his own parasites.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Mary Worth, 10/10/13

So Shelly is getting an award for her work volunteering at the homeless shelter (the Nobel Peace Prize? probably!) and who else is she going to thank other than the person who was most responsible for all the good work she’s done over the years: Mary! After all, what’s the more selfless and grueling task: working every day without pay to serve New York City’s vulnerable and sometimes difficult homeless population, or casually telling someone else to do it? The second one, right? It’s only just that Shelly thank Mary in her award speech, but shouldn’t the award just be going directly to Mary? Shouldn’t the homeless carry Mary about the streets of Manhattan on their shoulders, then raise her up and set her on a makeshift altar in an abandoned subway tunnel, worshipping her as their dread Goddess and Mistress?

Shoe, 10/10/13

“Pain in the neck” is pretty clearly a back-formed euphemism for “pain in the ass,” and it’s very rare for anyone to use either phrase to describe actual discomfort in the specified body part, unless they’re being cute; it always refers to someone who’s annoying. The only way this joke works at all, it seems to me, is if the guy dressed as a wizard were an actual doctor making a medical inquiry. But he’s not! Not that you’d have any reason to know this unless, like me, you’re a damned soul/frequent Shoe reader, but the guy dressed like a wizard is the local computer repair guy. Ha ha, because computers are confusing and fixing them is like dark magic! Anyway, long story short, I’m pretty sure the Perfesser is a robot.

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Six Chix, 10/8/13

Oh, you really expect us to believe this is only “one day” at the Louvre, Six Chix? If you posit that inanimate statues are capable of thought but not movement or communication, then the Venus de Milo has been has been silently screaming about her missing arms for centuries. If only her head had fallen off during all those years underground! Then at least the thinking, the useless, awful, endless thinking, would be over and done with! Or maybe statues don’t think with their heads. Maybe being headless would only render her unable to see or hear, an unmoored mind whirling forever within cold, lifeless stone. Anyway, I know my next trip to the museum just got a lot more depressing!

Speaking of museums, Six Chix seems to have taken advantage Rex Morgan’s discovery that you can put naked butts in the comics as long as it’s fancy art, and has gone one step further and shown us some full-on boobs. If only certain other strips had the nerve to push the envelope!

Mary Worth, 10/8/13

Haha, remember when Mary was determined to spend more time with Jeff? Well, that plan is off if it involves going with him to gross third world countries, apparently! “I too am going on a trip … to … somewhere not infested with giant insects, and where I can get a nice dinner that won’t confuse and terrify me? Yes, let’s say that.”

Spider-Man, 10/8/13

Sure, El Condor’s regime is a brutal dictatorship, but he doesn’t only use his iron fist to crush all political dissent! He also uses it to enforce sensible modern building safety codes.