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Crankshaft, 9/18/12

One of my favorite things about Crankshaft (sorry, don’t have time to figure out all the levels of irony involved in my spontaneous decision to apply the word “favorite” to Crankshaft there) is that even when its characters are just bandying dumb puns back and forth, their facial expressions make it look like they’re the last survivors of a genocidal assault that took their entire families. Normally this is just a result of the vague sense of anxiety and unease that pervades the Funkyverse, but in this case Jeff is probably worried, with some justification, that his wife’s mind is going, and she’ll soon be an irritated, malaprop-spouting shell of her former self, just like her father.

Hagar the Horrible, 9/18/12

We often see the same situations over and over again in Hagar the Horrible, and as I’ve said before, I’ve come to believe that this is because events in the strip are playing out in a nonlinear narrative. Thus, every castle raid shown is really just a different moment in a single castle raid, every strip that features Hagar and Eddie in the dungeon is a different moment in the same stretch of imprisonment, etc. “Hagar and Eddie on a desert island” is another repeating trope, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the rest of the crew of Hagar’s ship similarly marooned with them. Still, I’m going to assume that this is again the same shipwreck, and what we’re seeing here is the early days of their time as castaways, before the turn to cannibalism.

Archie, 9/18/12

The silent, expressionless way Archie’s mom is staring at her son is pretty harrowing. Don’t complain about static cling, Arch; you’re lucky she can operate the dryer at all, as she appears to have taken many, many quaaludes.

Family Circus, 9/18/12

“Either that or the house is on fire, and the two of us will soon sizzle and cook like bacon in a pan. We’ll just have to wait and see! Have I mentioned that my home life is so oppressive that I don’t care whether I live or die?”

Funky Winkerbean, 9/18/12

“And then, once the paralytic drugs we’ve laced the wedding cake with kick in, we’ll laminate everybody and hang them on walls all over the house! We’ll never be lonely again!”

Mary Worth, 9/18/12

“Take you, for instance! You’re terribly crippled emotionally. I can tell by the way you dress. Which, admittedly, is visible. All too visible, frankly.”

Mark Trail, 9/18/12

HA HA RUSTY YES CRY BITTER, FLESH-COLORED TEARS

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Mary Worth, 9/16/12

The “Dawn gets dumped and mopes and goes to Italy and is in a shipwreck but is rescued” storyline sure has had a lot of twists and turns and so far, but now we are truly seeing the 100% amazing payoff: Dawn is comparing an admittedly traumatic incident from which she emerged completely unscathed physically with a traumatic incident in which a young man whom she just met lost an arm. Her adventures over the past few weeks sure have provided her with some much-needed perspective about her troubles! Nevertheless, we already know that this will somehow work as a pickup technique, since an epigram from Anaïs Nin surely portends incipient sexytimes.

Mark Trail, 9/16/12

Mark, for a so-called naturalist, you have some funny ideas about our relationship with phylum Arthopoda! Nature is a rich, vibrant tapestry, and the idea that humans and spiders are allies in some kind of “war” against insects is simplistic and reductive. No, clearly both spiders and insects are mankind’s implacable enemies, seeing as they are gross disgusting creepy-crawlies; but their mutual hostility is a boon to us, and we must pit each against each other in order to keep both groups weak. A spider-insect alliance, particularly one with support from their centipede and millipede relatives, would surely overwhelm us, so must surreptitiously encourage intra-arthropod hostility at all costs.

Hi and Lois, 9/16/12

The most disturbing thing about Trixie’s school fantasy is that she apparently assumes that by the time she’s of school age there will be two of her. This may be the way her infant mind processes the existence of her twin siblings — perhaps she believes that Dot and Ditto were born as a single person but then split into two before the age of five. On the other hand, Trixie also seems to believe that she’ll be reading Tolstoy in kindergarten, which shows a certain degree of intellectual precocity.

Panels from Slylock Fox, 9/16/12

I love how upset the two construction workers at the bottom left of today’s Six Differences look. “Noooo, what are you doing? Your blundering, amateurish excavation techniques are ruining the integrity of the dig site! This is a priceless paleontological find, but we’re losing so much data as you drag the fossils out of the ground willy-nilly!”

Luann, 9/16/12

Mr. Fogarty would gladly give up the burdens of sentience if doing so meant that he’d never have to deal with any of the morons in this strip ever again.

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Zits, 9/14/12

My wife and I got married seven years ago this week, and we were together for three years before that, so yes, there is a certain amount of gas-passing that goes on in each other’s presence at this point in our relationship, and by “a certain amount” I mean “good lord it is a constant chemical warfare battle of the sort banned by the Geneva Conventions.” And yet I still have a certain amount of sympathy for what’s going on at the bottom left of the third panel. Walt’s just shoveling spoon after spoon of fart-fuel into his gaping maw, blithely assuring his son that someday he and his true love will be so confident in each other’s affections that they’ll go through life hand-in-hand, surrounded by an invisible self-generated cloud of noxious gas, their farts mingling and becoming one; but Connie’s face is a frozen mask, as she tries to hide the fact that her soul dies a little every time Walt toots audibly at the dinner table. I mean, there’s a bathroom right up the hall, you know? It even has a fan.

Mary Worth, 9/14/12

Well, it looks like Dawn is going to be living a more meaningful life, since she’s sure to imbue the fact that her new boyfriend (DO NOT DOUBT THAT HE WILL BE HER NEW BOYFRIEND) has but one arm with much more meaning than the situation deserves. (As about a million people pointed out in the comments, Jim’s disability was completely obvious in yesterday’s strip and yet I managed to not notice it at all, whoops.) Will Jim turn out to be a war hero, or even a semi-hero like Gil’s ex-student? Or is he just some guy who shouldn’t have reached so far into the garbage disposal? Whatever the case, we all know who the real hero is here: Wilbur, for inventing the Meat-Tart that Jim is enjoying with one-handed ease.

Dennis the Menace, 9/14/12

It appears that a shifty-eyed Dennis the Menace has decided on a new tactic in his war against society’s strictures: hard-line Calvinist theology. Isn’t the omnipotent God, who created the universe and predetermined our very ends before time began, the real menace here?

Momma, 9/14/12

“Francis, you have 17 of your friends on ‘speed dial,’ despite the fact that your phone appears to be a rotary-dial bakelite model of the sort not produced in more than 25 years. Why? And, more importantly, How?”