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Apartment 3-G, 8/14/13

Hi everybody! I’m back from scenic Canada, and as always am appreciative for Uncle Lumpy’s fine comics-mocking skills and your pleasant behavior. Just to show you how dedicated I am to vacationing: I found out that Mark finally took Rusty fishing just like you did: on joshreads dot com, your #1 source for Mark Trail news. It was an interesting feeling and it made me think: what if I treated my relationship with the comics like the normals do, and didn’t bother to read the ones that I missed while I was away? This idea lasted roughly five seconds, because Apartment 3-G left me floundering in confusion, because wait why is Peter kissing Margo oh wait that’s Zoey what the hell did she always look exactly like Margo only with short hair? Turns out no, she used to look more like Margo’s mother Gabriella, but expecting Apartment 3-G characters to maintain stable facial configurations for more than a week or two is pretty much asking for disappointment, so whatever.

Mary Worth, 8/14/13

I also went back to see what was happening (for certain extremely limited definitions of “happening”) in Mary Worth, but I kind of regret that now. Wouldn’t it have been better to take in today’s strip without any buttressing narrative structure and just appreciate it for what it is: a guy with a mustache angrily complaining about his terribly disappointing life to the vaguely sympathetic members of a “talk group”?

Funky Winkerbean, 8/14/13

I actually deliberately stopped myself from going back and reading previous Funky Winkerbeans. I don’t want any context for this. I don’t even want the context supplied by the first panel. I just want the image of Harry Dinkle, smiling beatifically as he imagines a freakishly huge version of his younger head vomiting out a marching band. Where is the band coming from? What horrible non-Euclidean hell-dimension lies inside the Dinklemaw? I want this image and only this image, forever.

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Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/9/13

Pluggers: Origins

Spider-Man, 8/9/13

At last, the Tarantula has arrived! And he’s right — it’s always a comedown for Spider-Man when a real superhero shows up.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/9/13

Oh gosh: not only is Ginny being forced to wed the least-desirable feller in Hootin’ Holler, but he expects an arch-conservative marriage including wifely submission. Everyone who has ever met a Hootin’ Holler feller — or gal — finds this hilarious.

Momma, 8/9/13

Francis got promoted to “Dirt”! Those years spent toiling as “Assistant Dirt” really paid off!

Mary Worth, 8/9/13

Adding Mary Worth to your “sharing circle” is like inviting a wolf pack to your all-you-can-eat buffet.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Sally Forth, 8/8/13

Aw — seems like just yesterday she was a cute little fifth-grader, and here she is ruining her first summer romance with a pointless, self-destructive neurotic meltdown. Little Hilary, all grown up!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/8/13

Wait! Tell us more about this “Charlie” player, cutting a wide swath through the maidens of Hootin’ Holler with his smooth talk, fancy ring, and bait-and-switch mating strategy. Is he unaware of the role played by firearms in his community’s courtship rituals?

Or perhaps Hootin’ Holler’s ancestral wimminfolk cobbled together their own ritual from scraps of Sadie Hawkins Day and Musical Chairs, in which eligible wimmin pass the ring down from one to another as one by one they wed, until at last the final maiden is doomed to wear it as she weds the Final Feller — the Feller No One Wants.

Yes, that must be it, judging from the look of shock, horror, and despair on Ginny’s face — it’s exactly how Loweezy looked wearing the ring at her own weddin’ a generation ago.

Mary Worth, 8/8/13

Swimming! Hiking! Stretching! A life of petty intrusiveness requires constant discipline. Not for the weak!

Herb and Jamaal, 8/8/13

Jamaal lives every day as though it were his last, and reeks so bad everyone around him wishes it were theirs.

— Uncle Lumpy