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Archie, 2/13/14

Good lord, Pop’s facial expression in that last panel chills me to my very core. “That’s right, Archie, Mr. Lodge doesn’t like you,” he thinks. “None of the adults in this town like you. Your time as a teenager, during which social convention demands that we be halfway pleasant and encouraging to you, is almost over. Prepare yourself for adulthood. Prepare yourself for … the shunning.”

Judge Parker, 2/13/14

So we’ve finally met April’s mysterious dying-of-cancer dad and he’s … one of the greatest things Judge Parker has ever seen? I’m not sure if he’s based directly on Hunter S. Thompson or if he’s been filtered through Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke, but he’s fantastic and I want him in every panel from now until the heat death of the universe finally brings this storyline to a close. My only regret is that April has actually drawn attention his tarantula companion; I sort of wish that it had just sat there on his shoulder, unexplained, for the next few weeks’ worth of strips, with everyone he meets reacting to it with silent but visible disgust.

Mary Worth, 2/13/14

Yep, Tommy’s coming back to Charterstone, all right! By the expression on her face you can tell Mary is almost as excited as I am.

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Mary Worth, 2/12/14

It looks like Mary’s encounter with a sad divorced woman and her child was only a warm-up meddle; she merely anonymously paid their dinner bill and moved on. No, Wilbur is about to put her back in the professional syndicated meddler game by once again begging her to take over his Ask Wendy column/persona. You might recall that, after Wilbur had a near-death experience, he started a column about how shlubs like him survive true horrors despite all logic, and so handed his advice column off to Mary, who naturally was driven mad by the power and influence it afforded her. Less than a year later, though, Wilbur had the nerve to eat Mary’s sandwiches but then ask for the column back, to distract him from the fact that his girlfriend had dumped him to spend more time with her meth-addict ex-con son. Mary acquiesced, but now Wilbur is trying to get her to take the column over again, like she doesn’t have anything better to do, which obviously she doesn’t, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. There have been hints this week that maybe Iris is back in Wilbur’s life, along with her amazing drug-dealer son, but we’ve been teased with the prospect before, so I’m not going to hold my breath.

Hagar the Horrible, 2/12/14

By the 10th century, the Vikings had expanded their trade and plundering routes across a remarkably wide stretch of the globe, with Norse voyagers reaching Greenland in the northwest and Constantinople in the southeast. But it’s true, they traveled almost always over water, whether the open ocean in the case of the North Atlantic or the Russian river systems to reach the Black Sea. So, yes, Honi, the Mongols, landlocked deep in the Gobi, are probably not going to encounter any of your kinsmen, and thus are not included among your potential romantic partners. But what about the Finns? The Franks? The Inuit? The Celts? The Rus’? The Byzantines? The Bulgars? The Northumbrians? The Saxons? Why do we always want what we cannot have?

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Mary Worth, 1/29/14

Whoa, Mary is wasting no time after her return from her New York idyl and is determined to prove to Santa Royale that, despite her period of absence, she is still its undisputed meddle-empress. Having only returned moments ago from her latest sex cruise with Dr. Jeff, Mary hasn’t even finished eating dinner before settling on the next victims of her unrelentingly sensible advice: this lady and her daughter, who are about to have their lives destroyed by the horrors of divorce. Did you know that sometimes married people realize that they no longer love each other, or perhaps even actively dislike each other, and decided to stop being married, thus undermining the social order? Well, not with Mary on the case they won’t! “You there, young woman, cease with this divorce talk! Your feelings are ruining everything! Push those tears back into your eyes with your hands! Yes, that’s the spirit!”

Mark Trail, 1/29/14

I really do wonder about the editorial direction of Woods and Wildlife Magazine, based on some of the (presumably paid?) assignments Mark’s gotten from them. Do they have any kind of social media strategy at all? I could see a slideshow of an attractive young woman nursing pelicans back to health generating some pageviews, but I have to question Mark’s belief that Jessica’s boyfriend “sounds interesting,” considering that all we know about him is that he’s a taxidermist. I pity the editor who has to write the headline that jazzes that one up. “People Keep Bringing This Man Dead Fish. What He Does To Them Will Shock You — And Delight You.”

Crankshaft, 1/29/14

Crankshaft’s co-worker Rocky is heavily invested in using performance-enhancing drugs, is what I’m getting out of this.