Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/19/12

As advertisers of electronic devices, apps, and Web services are learning, it’s tough to make a compelling image out of somebody staring at a screen. I mean, a CEO can feign rapture while eavesdropping on his sales team’s BS from his iPad, but when that ad runs on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, he’s just gonna look like an idiot.

So pity Mary and Toby, stuck on the couch watching Wilbur’s Italian Adventure this week. No amount of compulsive cheek-touching or sedative chit-chat can make them more than props in this turgid recap.

But what’s going on with Ian?

Mary Worth, 8/15–19/12 (excerpts)

Our Favorite Blowhard has been going through the changes all week — from smug confidence that somehow this will all work out well for him, through shock that it doesn’t seem to be going that way, to feigned indifference, alarm, then petulant dismay at the continued disregard of his Presence, and now RAGE that no one — NO ONE — is paying any attention to him at all! Toby’s in for a rough night.

Crankshaft, 8/19/12

Aw, look — it’s a charming and gently amusing Sunday Crankshaft! You gotta love Quad-Cane Guy at second, right? And nobody’s talking! Wait, I guess that’s not a coincidence, is it?

Mark Trail, 8/19/12

Oh, Aristotle my ass: animals that live in the water are fish. Deal with it.

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 8/10/12

You know, in most forms of narrative, when a small but out-of-the ordinary event happens — like, say, a job applicant failing to include a reference’s phone number on his resume, but happening to have it on a business card — you sort of file it away in the back of your mind as potentially significant. But since this is a soap opera comic strip, it’s probably a safe assumption that the entire pointless action in today’s installment only exists to kill time and means nothing and will never be mentioned again. Which, frankly, is a good thing, because I have a hard time imagining a plot so boring that it hinges on The Mysterious Episode Of The Phone Number That Wasn’t On The Resume But Was Easily Provided Separately.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/10/12

Hey, everyone, Wally Winkerbean is working through his PTSD with the help of an adorable therapy dog, and is involved in a healthy romantic relationship! Don’t worry, though, he’s still perpetually haunted by the grim spectre of death.

Pluggers, 8/10/12

Pluggers urge their sports heroes to viciously injure their opponents in career-ending and crippling ways.

Ziggy, 8/10/12

I’m not sure if I’d trust a doctor who reads off of continuous feed paper printed out of his dot matrix printer, and who has a certificate hanging on his wall that just says “Doctor” on it. But then, I guess Ziggy can’t really afford decent medical care, what with his explicitly acknowledged poverty and all.

Mary Worth, 8/10/12

“I mean, can you believe it? Everyone fucking hates that song! The boat probably committed suicide out of shame.”

Post Content

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