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Mary Worth, 3/1/12

OK, Mary, I’m starting to get just a little bit tired of you repeatedly emitting lines of gobsmacked shock every time Nola informs you of her latest act of moral depravity. She lies, she cheats, she adulters! She always gets what she wants and she lets nothing get in her way! I think the reason Mary is so drawn to Nola is because she needs the jolt of adrenaline she gets every time the woman confesses another sin. Everyone else in Mary’s life is so terrified of her that they only think happy thoughts in her presence; when Nola smiles and describes her amoral adventures, Mary is relieved to discover that she can in fact still feel.

Archie, 3/1/12

Ha ha, Professor Flutesnoot’s heavy-lidded expression in panel two is terrifying. “Look, kid, they’ve tied my salary to the results of the No Child Left Behind test results, so if the Department of Education decides you need to know about Henry VIII, you’re going to learn about Henry VIII, capisce? Remember, your scores can’t bring down my average if you turn up dead in a dumpster the morning of the test, so how about you shut your yap and start memorizing the names of Henry’s various wives and coming up with a coherent four-sentence explanation of what the ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’ was.”

I was going to question the subject matter here because I’m pretty sure that Professor Flutesnoot actually teaches chemistry, but in a world where a teenager comes into school wearing a shirt adorned by two awkwardly placed playing cards, we can’t really expect anything to make sense.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/26/12

I had always hoped that, if there were anywhere in America where the bane of helicopter parenting had yet to arrive, it was Hootin’ Holler. And yet here we have the Smifs hovering intrusively over their toddler instead of just letting him engage in the sort of non-supervised play in a trash-strewn backyard that made Americans from previous generations healthy and strong (those that survived, anyway). My one consolation is that Snuffy is still pretty bad at this, having stuck li’l Tater in a dog house that’s almost certainly filthy beyond description.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 2/26/12

I suppose that Loretta needed to be in the back seat in order for this joke to work (to the extent that you would consider this a “joke” that “works”), but that still doesn’t solve the mystery of who this grim-faced fellow is in the front seat. He sort of looks as he’s being driven somewhere by the Lockhorns to be done in execution-style and dumped in a shallow grave, but if that were the case he’d probably be happier to see this cop, so I’m assuming that he’s just listened to them talk for 15 or 20 minutes and has now completely lost his ability to feel joy.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/26/12

It seems that Rodney Rat has graduated from eager teenage grifter to “career criminal,” with sunglasses and everything. It makes me a little sad that he’s hit this elevated status in his criminal trajectory while his much awesomer relative Reeky is left back in the small time. I also question the practicality of the rope-lasso as a prisoner-retainment device, which may help explain why Rodney gets to make a career out of his criminality.

Panel from Mary Worth, 2/26/12

Mary, no! You don’t have anything to prove to her! YOU’RE LETTING HER INSIDE YOUR HEAD!

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Pluggers, 2/25/12

When I was in college I had a big thing for a Catholic girl and one week I went to church with her (ROMANTIC PRO TIP: This very rarely works) and it was a typically crunchy collegiate parish and at one point the bearded priest busted out an acoustic guitar and we got a folk-rock version the Lord’s Prayer and all I could think was “Oh my God, Mel Gibson was right.” Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I feel you, my cranky plugger friend! And I’m not ashamed to say it!

Mary Worth, 2/25/12

More proof that Nola is being unfairly depicted as the villain in this story! Obviously in whatever badly decorated office this is the well-known rules of engagement are that one sleeps one’s way to the top. It’s probably right there in the HR manual! Our catty duo knows that they’d do the same if only they were endowed with the sexy gams and malleable face of their rival.

Crankshaft, 2/25/12

So Crankshaft was inducted into the local sports hall of fame to his great delight, but for some reason this week the plot took a turn and was suddenly about how this one-armed reporter we’d never seen before accidentally wrote and published an obituary for this other guy we’ve never seen before, which, weird and not-funny as it is, is surely better than seeing Crankshaft enjoy anything.

Marmaduke, 2/25/12

Don’t be ungrateful! It’s polite of Marmaduke to shake your hand before he brutally dismembers you, just as it’s polite of him to have dug graves for your various body parts rather than just leaving them strewn about the yard.