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Mary Worth, 10/22/12

You know what, you guys, this Mary Worth plot, in which Jim and Dawn are helping each other through their trauma and have the beginnings of romantic feelings for each other, is really quite sweet, and I thAHHH AHHH AHHH DAWN LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE JIM’S SISTER WHO WAS KILLED IN THE FERRY ACCIDENT IN WHICH HE LOST IS ARM AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

There are a lot of possibilities here (reincarnation? long-lost twin? Dawn really is Jim’s sister and survived the wreck and has amnesia and/or a whole set of false memories?) but I think we all know what the best one is: that Jim’s “sister” never existed, that this is a Photoshop job, and that if Dawn doesn’t accede to his demands that she move into the sisterly love chamber he’s prepared for her in his basement, she’ll find that picture with her eyes scratched out taped to every tree in her neighborhood.

Mark Trail, 10/22/12

Ah, the eternal dilemma of modern governance! Sure, we’d all like for our little village to run itself, with the main island keeping its politics out of things — but with main island politics come main island money! Do you want those fat cats on the main island calling the shots on how your village does things, or do you want to have to resort to yachtjacking to fund your local schools? Hopefully Mark can come up with a settlement between the village and the main island that respects local autonomy while sharing fiscal burdens. If negotiations fail, he may need to impose it with his fists.

Spider-Man, 10/22/12

So I looked it up, and last-minute bus tickets from New York to Las Vegas are only about $100 cheaper round trip than last-minute plane tickets … and the bus ride involves changing buses four times over 3 days. J. Jonah Jameson’s dedication to humiliating his employees is intense.

The Lockhorns, 10/22/12

“Also, Leroy’s been dead for three days! I figured I’d call someone to take him away when I got sick of looking at him, but, you know, it hasn’t happened yet.”

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Mary Worth, 10/14/12

Jim Romenesko’s media blog has already covered the unusually flush finances of Woods and Wildlife magazine, but has been neglecting the turmoil on the feature pages of the Santa Royale Gazette-Whatever. Wilbur Weston is fully focused on his new survivors column, “I Shouldn’t Be ALive,” leaving Mary to keep noodling along with “Ask Wendy.” Absent any editorial supervision, she has quite clearly gone completely insane. Having long ago forgotten that the “Ask” in the name indicates that she’s supposed to be responding to reader letters, she now just unloads her philosophy on her readers in long, stream-of-consciousness rants. “None of us can solve the problem of evil! The ever-changing nature of the universe and the self has bedeviled humanity since the age of Heraclitus! Only through immediate action, directed by my iron will, can life have any meaning! OBEY ME, READERS! OBEY WENDY! OBEY!”

Blondie, 10/14/12

Over the course of most of this comic, I found it charming that Dagwood was imagining that he had a hooting, rowdy audience for the latest instance of his thrice-daily sandwich-building ritual. But when I realized it was actually Elmo providing the audience reactions, it suddenly got a lot more pathetic.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/14/12

Oh, nothing much in today’s Slylock Fox, just Reeky Rat and his punk friends sneaking a extremely filthy double entendre of a band name into comics pages across America.

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Gil Thorp, 10/2/12

If there’s one thing I genuinely love about Gil Thorp, it’s that it keeps track of a bewildering cast of characters who stick around over multiple storylines. At the end of the summer storyline, Gil offered embittered one-armed Milford alum Steve an unpaid coaching gig of the sort that he often hands out to the strip’s over-18 hangers-on. In a lesser strip, this would have been the resolution to Steve’s storyline and we would have quickly forgotten about him, but instead we see that this tiny modicum of power has transformed him into a cultish dictator. “We move together,” he shouts, waving his single fist in the air, “as one unit, one people. We hear the count in our mind before it is uttered. We present an unbroken wall of flesh to our enemies. We leave behind any family who may have once loved us, as we are all the family we need. After practice, each of you will chop off the arm of the man to your right, to make our union as real as the flesh and blood we sacrifice to the greater good.”

Mary Worth, 10/2/12

Haha, Mary Worth is really gunning hard for a spot on The Discovery Channel’s History’s Greatest Monsters this season! “Mary, my friendship with Jim is based on shared interests and experiences, not any sort of pity I have for him because of his injuries.” “That’s nice, dear, but have you considered that Jim is a charity case and that your friendship is a precious gift to him, much more valuable than his is to you? Don’t think of him as a person; think of him as an opportunity to give of yourself selflessly and condescendingly. Remember, he only has one arm!”

Apartment 3-G, 10/2/12

Not to go on too much about my “process” or anything, but when I made jokes yesterday about Evan cowering unseen in the corner while Margo and Greg bickered, it was funny because of course he wasn’t actually in the room while this was all happening! That would be super awkward! Except, um, apparently he was? Today’s first panel dialogue also nicely heads off any further jokes I might make about Margo and Evan’s twisted S&M relationship. Anyway, my point is that Apartment 3-G is getting dangerously close to producing self-aware camp and putting me out of business.