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Family Circus, 3/11/12

The Keane Kids’ responsibility-dodging spirits vie with the Billy’s dotted-line trails for the title of the Family Circus’s most iconic gag. Still, while Ida Know and Not Me are fairly well known, I don’t think Nobody shows up so often, which may explain why I was so surprised and horrified by his creepy mustache. I mean, the mustache and the hat already combine to make him look like your slightly skeevy uncle, if your slightly skeevy uncle were three feet tall and a ghost; but, since he has no visible nose or mouth, the mustache is just a stripe of hair across a mostly featureless face, which is completely terrifying to me.

On the other hand, I approve of the way that the children and their daemons have been lined up against the wall, since it appears that Mommy has finally had enough and is just going to have them executed by firing squad for their dish-breaking crimes.

Crankshaft, 3/11/12

Longtime readers of the Funkyverse strips know that one of that fictional universe’s most prominent characteristics is the relentless and omnipresent punning. Today, however, we see that this behavior may in fact have an evolutionary advantage. The first three panels of the strip feature Jeff getting increasingly angry at yet another instance of injustice, looking like he’s about to strangle someone or at least suffer a major coronary event. But in the final panel, Pam’s terrible bit of wordplay seems to have flummoxed him, knocking him out of his rage-cycle and leaving him in a state of slant-mouthed confusion. How many lives were saved by her quick, corny thinking?

Dennis the Menace, 3/11/12

We spend a lot of time worrying about whether Dennis has lost his menacing vibe, but what of Mr. Wilson? One might worry that the lack of a worthy antagonist has caused the old man to lose his edge. But fear not, as today he manages to implant in Dennis that special shiver of existential terror we all get when we first realize that we, too, will grow old and die. I dearly hope that the otherwise unexplained photo of Dennis in the opening throwaway panel represents a Portrait of Dorian Grey-style magical object, which will wither and age while Dennis stays young, until it comes time for the Devil to reap his soul; that would be menacing indeed.

Panel from Mary Worth, 3/11/12

Well, Nola, if you won’t listen to good advice from John Lennon, maybe Jesus will talk some sense into you, hmm? If nothing else, the relative efficacy of these two quotes may resolve some longstanding debates.

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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!