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Six Chix, 12/4/11

I feel that our current long economic slump has yet to meet its potential for packaging economic desperation as sport. Sure, we’ve seen the occasional hobo party, but what about the dance marathons of old, where people boogied to exhaustion for cash prizes? That’s why I’m pleased to see how much our job fair attendees are really getting into this game of musical chairs. They’re not just walking sullenly in a circle waiting for the music to stop; they’re shaking their money makers, in the hopes that they might someday soon be given a chance to make money, via gainful employment. Dance, proles! Dance for your jobs, and for the amusement of your betters!

Hagar the Horrible, 12/4/11

Just to review, Hagar makes his living by leading bands of bloodthirsty warriors from Scandinavia down to Western Europe, stealing whatever movable goods he can find, murdering all who resist, and raping and enslaving the rest. Probably the nice people of France stopped being trusting and started being suspicious and fearful right around the time the first Viking horde came up the river and burned their villages to the ground! But it’s true, Hagar, you don’t have to lock your door, because you’ve bought the loyalty of a group of retainers, with plunder, so they’ll fight off your enemies for you. Unless your raids have been less than successful lately, in which case one of the more ambitious young men among them will probably kill you and take control of your warrior band!

Judge Parker, 12/4/11

Earlier this week Sam and Randy made a date to go to the firing range, where Sam’s going to give Randy some tips! But obviously Randy doesn’t need advice on how to turn down repeated offers of sex from beautiful women, as he’s already a master at that.

Spider-Man, 12/4/11

Last month my wife got a promotion, and now she makes more than me! I responded by mumbling something insincere and then stalking off to sulk. (Ha ha, just kidding, I congratulated her effusively and then we went and had a nice dinner, because I’m not a complete jackass.)

Panels from Mary Worth, 12/4/11

“I enjoy my cooking and thought that your opinion of it might be as high as mine! People who don’t like the things I like are trash and I don’t associate with them.”

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Mary Worth, 11/29/11

So, whatever the Mary-gets-her-purse-stolen plot lacked in action or interest of any kind, it made up for in brevity. Mary gets her purse stolen, Mary and Toby prattle on about fraud alerts and lists of credit card numbers for a few weeks, and now we’re apparently done. The whole thing only took a month! Remember, a month in real time generally covers a period of Mary Worth story time so short that it can only be detected with extremely precise scientific instruments.

And now we’re on to a heartbreaking missing child plot, as Mary stares at poor Emily’s poster, heavy-lidded and smug (“Well, at least I didn’t have my child stolen. Really, these Smith people ought to have been more vigilant”). Personally, I’m hoping very strongly that the purse-snatching was just the set-up to the real action. What if Emily has been kidnapped by the thieves who stole Mary’s purse, because they’re assembling a Dickensian child-pickpocket ring? That sounds pretty dastardly, but you have to admit that people who dress like this are capable of anything.

Archie, 11/29/11

Oh, man, I sure hope that these ’90s Archie reruns continue to be our window into the sort of things out-of-touch adults thought kids cared about, in the ’90s! Yesterday it was teen pregnancy, and today it’s parental advisory labels on music. Just as young people say “bad” when they mean “good,” they also take warning labels as an indication that music is worth listening to! Also big with the youth in the ’90s: mullets, and t-shirts that use transitive slang verbs intransitively.

Six Chix, 11/29/11

Ha ha! It’s funny because these birds will freeze to death, because they’re poor!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/27/11

The throwaway panels of today’s Snuffy Smith shed light on a perennial interest of mine and nobody else’s: the economy of Hootin’ Holler. Though I’ve never spotted him as one of the strip’s cast of characters, apparently “Farmer Johnson” lives in this blighted hamlet, attempting to make a living from agriculture. Since the chickens and sausage he produces are invariably stolen by his parasitic neighbors, one wonders why he hasn’t pulled up stakes long ago, or at least given up working hard like a sucker.

If anything, the rest of the strip is even more unsettling, in that we learn that Snuffy, had not his neural circuits been overloaded by visions of chickeny pleasure, would have killed and devoured his hapless nephew. Jughaid’s pleas for mercy would have only registered in Snuffy’s mind as clucks as the thieving hillbilly lived out his great fantasy of eating an enormous angel-chicken. I assume the first throwaway panel depicts one of these divine fowl, which leads us to a sad question: Are chickens killed, dismembered, fried, and eaten, even in chicken heaven?

Crankshaft, 11/27/11

C’mon, Crankshaft, there’s plenty of room for another word-balloon lobe there, so why not end Ed’s musings with “…and, finally, your coffin?” The general vibe of the Funkyverse would seem to demand it. I mean, I’m assuming the family is intending to wall up their hated matriarch in that room Cask of Amontillado-style anyway.

Panel from Mary Worth, 11/27/11

We’ve had a few thousand years of YHWH trying to guide our morals, but we haven’t really taken the lessons to heart. A much crueler God will be handing down the commandments from now on.