Post Content

Pluggers, 3/16/13

Cats are a species that are always suspect when it comes to Real American Authenticity, so naturally the cat-plugger tends to be an outsider in the world of pluggerdom. Speaking as a cat-type myself, I’m not sure what exactly this panel is all about — are there baseball cards that don’t come with bubble gum? are they “fake,” somehow? wouldn’t old cards sold at a garage sale have stopped smelling like bubble gum years ago, assuming they aren’t in their original wrapper? — but it’s fun to see how sad the cat-plugger is at having his wares rejected. Haha, cat-plugger, your attempt to sell off these tiny bits of your childhood and some of your furniture in order to stave off economic catastrophe has been met with only scorn! Why don’t you go back to gay communist France, with your bogus baseball cards?

Mother Goose and Grim, 3/16/13

One of the central schticks of Mother Goose and Grimm is that Grimm the dog and Attila the cat cordially despise each other, but even still, Grimmy isn’t a narc. He knows that snitches get stitches! (Or more stitches, in this case.)

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/16/13

Nearly eight years after Mary Worth threw down the gauntlet, Rex Morgan looks poised to be the first syndicated continuity strip to feature a graphic vomiting scene. Just in time for a large-format full-color Sunday strip, too!

Mary Worth, 3/16/13

You guys, I’m starting a new meekcore band called Beth Kinley, and the title of our first single will be “I’ll Just Have Regular Water (If It’s Not Too Much Trouble)”.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 3/14/13

The tale of Mary’s new neighbors, the Kinleys, is rumbling along! We’ve learned that Beth is a professional romance novelist and that her mother Elinor is mean and belittling about everything, especially how stupid the romance novel genre is (this being the market that is presumably paying for the condo that Elinor lives in, but let’s leave that aside for the moment). But today we learn that Elinor doesn’t just hate romance novels; she’s disgusted by her daughter’s failure to experience romance herself. “You know nothing about real-life romance! You’ve never felt your heart beat at the sight of your beloved! You’ve never held hands with the guy you’re going steady with down at the malt shop! You’ve never let some dude put his thingie in your hoo-hah! You’re a fraud, a disgusting fraud!”

It’s surprising, really, that someone with a supportive mother like Elinor hasn’t been able to work up any kind of romantic self-confidence. Anyway, we all know, of course, that Beth is going to fall under the spell of depressed shut-in divorce Tom Harpan. The key question is: will Beth move into Tom’s apartment, probably several yards away from where Elinor will be staying? Or will they all live together in mutual animosity, to cut down on costs?

Gasoline Alley, 3/14/11

Meanwhile, the battle for the rights to sex up this donkey, for love or money, continues! It’s only Thursday, so you’ve got at least two more days of this horrorshow.

Post Content

Mark Trail, 3/9/13

OK, fine, I’ve been ignoring it all week, but yes, Rusty was snooping around Rod Bassy’s van and saw the cheating-at-fishing equipment and got caught and now has been tied up, and, I mean, it’s hilarious and all but it’s not exactly a surprise, is it? The best part here is that Rod Bassy is reacting to the fact that his friend/accomplice Catfish has, you know, forcibly kidnapped a child with irritation that this will complicate his plan to rig the outcome of yet another bass fishing tournament, rather than with mounting panic and despair a là William H. Macy in Fargo. I mean, really, the tied-up little boy is in a van with Rod’s name painted in enormous letters on the side! You know, there’s a reason child kidnappers usually use vehicles without distinguishing marks.

Mary Worth, 3/9/13

Carlos Alora is the Charterstone groundskeeper and he hasn’t been seen in years, like, not since I started reading this strip in 2002 or thereabouts. Now they’re misspelling his name, which is more insulting than just dropping him down the memory hole. JUSTICE FOR CARLOS! WE CAN HEAR THE DOUBLE L WHEN YOU PRONOUNCE IT, MARY!

Shoe, 3/9/13

Man, can you believe it’s been four years since the rebooted Star Trek movie came out? Which means it’s probably been about three and a half years that Shoe’s been sitting on this joke, but now at last it’s relevant! Wasn’t it worth the wait? (No, no it wasn’t.)

Six Chix, 3/9/13

“Good lord, that was a filthy fuckfest, in every sense of the word! I had sex with a lot of men that weekend, but your father was the only one whose name I learned. Of course, that was only after we had done it five or six times. Hey, where are you going?”