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Marvin, 8/7/12

So Marvin is celebrating its 30th anniversary by having baby Marvin travel to his own future with his 30-year-old grown-up self. The time-travel process caused baby Marvin to spontaneously become 30 years old himself, despite the fact that travelling back in time didn’t turn 30-year-old Marvin into a baby, and if there’s one thing that offends me almost as much as constantly gleeful poop jokes, it’s inconsistent rules for time travel within a fictional universe.

Also, if you’re curious, the next thirty years will be an unending grind of economic malaise, and babies born today will never have the financial independence that generations of Americans have taken for granted! I’m kind of missing the poop jokes now, actually.

Mark Trail, 8/7/12

In a shockingly non-predictable development, Rusty was not captured by the sheep killers, who will now presumably menace the entire Mark-less Trail clan with their sinister, looming foreheads. I was going to say that the worry that Rusty would head right to some prison warden to show off his pictures is kind of bizarre, but you know what, it’s not like the kid has any friends his own age, paling around with some mid-level bureaucrat in the local Department of Corrections makes as much sense as anything else.

Mary Worth, 8/7/12

A lifetime of disappointments has trained Wilbur to set his expectations very, very low. “Well, this vacation didn’t end in our deaths! I guess we can call it … mostly enjoyable?”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/7/12

Haw haw, ladies sure be hatin’ their bodies, amiright fellas

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Judge Parker, 8/5/12

The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, it was at the tail end of a big Hitchock binge, and so one of the things I found most striking about it was that it was about half of a typical Hitchcock movie. Which is to say: As in most of his movies, we get a cast of quirky character trading snappy dialogue, and start to get a sense of dysfunction underlying their interpersonal dynamics. Usually, the story’s excitement would emerge from these relationships fairly early in the movie; but in The Birds, whatever plot you think is brewing is suddenly and violently pushed aside by an incomprehensible apocalypse, as (uh, spoilers, I guess) every bird in the world suddenly goes insane and starts attacking humanity. It’s well and truly shocking in particular if you’re a Hitchcock fan, because you watch one of his meticulously constructed universes suddenly shatter under assault from an external force that is never explained.

This is a long way of me saying that, if the current round of enjoyable but predictable Judge Parker antics were abruptly interrupted by a terrifying and bloody raccoon revolution, I for one would be fully in favor of such a development.

Mary Worth, 8/5/12

Guys, sorry I left you hanging on the Mary Worth boat-plot — metaphorically, I mean, not literally hanging off the side of a listing cruise boat, like these guys. Anyway, Wilbur didn’t fall to his death and it looks like our gang will be rescued by a helicopter instead? Which, call me a swimming-snob if you must, but is it really easier to pluck half a dozen terrified passengers from the tilted deck of a rapidly sinking ship than it is for those passengers to, say, swim the length of two swimming pools through warm coastal non-oceanic water to safety? Tell me I’m crazy! Am I crazy?

Rex Morgan, 8/5/12

I’ll probably get sick of “Rex Morgan smiles to himself while taking flack from sassy old people” plotlines at some point, but for now, I say bring ’em on! “Tell me something I don’t know!” Rex says to Melissa, trying to figure out how to get into the space suddenly left open in her will by her ungrateful niece.

Spider-Man, 8/5/12

As if you couldn’t tell from the entire run of Newspaper Spider-Man to this point, spider-sense can not predict or protect against public humiliation.

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B.C., 7/31/12

Hey, everyone, have you heard about the Olympics, which are in England, which is foggy, sometimes? Anyway, this is hilarious because if the rowing events were taking place on the Thames (which they aren’t) it would be foggy and there would be antics anOH MY GOD SHERLOCK HOLMES’ CORPSE IS FLOATING IN THE THAMES OH MY GOD HE’S REALLY DEAD YOU MONSTERS

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/12

So, quick poll: What’s creepier, addressing your spouse (while the two of you are alone together) as “[Honorific] [Your last name]” or as “[Nickname by which one of your descendants would address him or her]”?

Gil Thorp, 7/31/12

“It’s not that you have one arm too few, it’s that you have one arm too many! I’m a pointing top, you see. I’m the only one in a relationship who’s allowed to point at things, like so! No, don’t try to imitate me, you’ll just enrage me further.”

Mary Worth, 7/31/12

Wilbur may be about to tumble to his death, but at least he’s going out as he would have wanted: with his bulbous crotch looming at us menacingly.

Spider-Man, 7/31/12

Meanwhile, in Spider-Man, everyone is literally just sitting around killing time until the title character decides to show up.

Wizard of Id, 7/31/12

And in the Wizard of Id, a witch is puking into a bag.