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Spider-Man, 11/10/13

Aww, poor Spider-Man once dreamed of having his name in lights, either as “Spider-Man” or “Peter Parker,” either one, I’m having a hard time parsing out exactly what he means in that first panel, but the important thing is that he feels an overwhelming sense of personal failure, which makes me happier than I can describe. Still, it’s not like Peter doesn’t still know how to enjoy himself in the crumbling ruin he calls a life! For instance, as long as he manages to distract his hugely successful wife so that she screws up in a very public manner, his day is a little bit brighter.

Mary Worth, 11/10/13

Ooh, it looks like Shelly’s award dinner is at New York’s historic Waldorf-Astoria Hotel! Let’s take a look at Google Street View to see how accurately the strip managed to depict this landmark’s stunning art deco facade:

Yup, they pretty much nailed it! I couldn’t find any pictures of the hotel’s luxurious ballrooms, but I’m sure they all feature the hideous drop ceiling shown in today’s final panel as well.

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Mary Worth, 11/8/13

I think we really need to start wondering if Mary Worth has reached its logical end state: with Mary in some kind of fugue state, possibly full of drugs on her deathbed, just fantasizing about people praising her. She’s not even imagining herself doing anything praiseworthy anymore; she’s just being lavished with praise for things she may or may not have done in the distant past. This is why Mary is looking so ecstatic in panel two: this is her dreamscape, so she can hear Shelly’s very thoughts, and knows that for her entire speech Sheylly will just be smiling beatifically and saying “Mary … Mary … thank you Mary … Mary … thank you … Mary …” for two or three hours.

Spider-Man, 11/8/13

Spider-Man’s thought balloons, meanwhile, are pretty much par for the course in terms of his general unlikeability. “Yeah, it’s such a burden seeing my wife’s hit play, the success of which is making her happy and supporting me financially. I can’t believe I have to keep doing this. Hey, someone just praised me, all right!”

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Mary Worth, 11/6/13

“This award isn’t so much for me, or the other humans who work and volunteer there, as it is for the shelter itself — the actual physical building. I mean, if you think about it, all the volunteers and staffers in the world couldn’t help the homeless if we didn’t have a building to put them in, am I right? We’d just be standing around outside holding umbrellas over their heads or something, and that wouldn’t be very helpful at all! Anyway, that’s why we sometimes let the building wrench the very souls of some of our clients out of their bodies and suck them into a terrifying hell-dimension through the nightmarish maw-portal that lurks in the basement. Yes, the process is fatal and horrifying, but if this wonderful, helpful building needs to feed on the life-essence of 20 percent or so of the people we house in order to sustain its demonic existence, who are we to complain?”

Crock, 11/6/13

Wow, I sure don’t remember a hat-and-diaper-clad chinless blob-horror being among the cast of beloved legacy strip Crock. Newspapers are correct to eschew any affiliation with whatever awful demonic babble is emerging from this abomination’s perversely grinning mouth-hole.

Hi and Lois, 11/6/13

“Ha ha but what if there was a baby who was also a cougar” –an idea that should’ve immediately been discarded, but was instead turned into the punchline of a nationally syndicated comic strip