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Mary Worth, 4/14/10

Oh ho, compulsive shopping, everybody! That’s what this Mary Worth storyline is about! Compulsive shopping at comically misspelled stores like “Maisie’s” (which is totally not at all related to Macy★s Department Stores, a brand that would never encourage its customers to spend beyond their means, ha ha, please don’t sue us). When all is said and done here, Mary might look back on this shopping expedition with a bit of guilt, but probably won’t because she lacks self-awareness of any kind.

By the way, Bonnie, I recommend that you take Mary up on her offer and formulate your own ideas on how she can help you break out of your terrible shopoholism. Any treatment plan she designs on her own will involve gathering her friends to berate and insult you until you kill yourself out of shame.

Apartment 3-G, 4/14/10

Sad as I am that this plotline will apparently end without a single shot being fired, I do sort of like the casual way Martin has taken advantage of Bobbie’s distraction to disarm her, almost as if this is a scenario that played out dozens of times during their marriage. In fact, it would be extra hilarious if he went upstairs and informed Gabriella that he and his wife had rediscovered the spark in their relationship and that his proposal to her was hereby retracted.

Margo, meanwhile, has presumably dozed off on the floor, just as she did as a kid when Roberta would get all pill-happy and gun-crazy. Doesn’t hanging out with our parents always bring us back to our childhood behaviors?

Mark Trail, 4/14/10

So not only has former blond Adonis Buzz Miller been turned prematurely white-haired, but now Senator Pimphand, who once sported a dignified grey mane that belied his propensity for violence, has now subsequently rediscovered the russet locks of his youth! I think that we may be onto something very big here: Senator Slaps-a-Lot is actually stealing the life-energy of his constituents, like poor Ranger Miller. This vampiristic misdeed will make Senator Other Senator’s little Endangered Species Steakhouse operation look like small potatoes.

Crankshaft, 4/14/10

I have no idea what Jeff’s terrible lopsided facial expression in the final panel is supposed to denote. I’m guessing it’s “Oh my God, I am physically incapable of not making terrible unfunny puns, please, somebody stop me, I hate myself so much,” but it may also be “I am so high on prescription drugs — which were, uh, ‘in the water supply’ — that I cannot feel my face.”

Pluggers, 4/14/10

Deep down, pluggers know that they cannot replace their long-lost intimate life with their spouses with eating, endless eating, but that won’t stop them from trying.

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Mary Worth, 4/10/10

Good lord, who is this person in the first panel supposed to be? Is it Mary, who, unbeknownst to all of us, has long, blonde tresses hidden under her forbidding white hair-helmet? Is it Tobey, who has finally snapped and gotten extensive facial surgery to look more like her meddling mentor? Or have the master and the apprentice merged into some kind of combined organism for terrible reasons we can only guess at?

Luann, 4/10/10

Ha ha, it was all a dream, everybody! I’m not sure whether the dream encompassed the entirety of this “Whitest West Side Story Ever” storyline or just the awkward post-performance party; either way, those who have been irritated by this plot have been rewarded with the most irritating sort of ending that narrative has to offer.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/10/10

So, sadly (by which I mean happily, but I have reached the point when I only can feel joy with the Funky Winkerbean characters are brought to unprecedented depths of misery), it looks like it’s just Montoni’s New York being shuttered, not the whole company as I had originally thought. Anyway, today we learn why New Yorkers were hesitant to embrace Westview-style pizza: the “inventory” apparently left sitting around a shuttered store in unrefrigerated boxes is still fit to at least give away, meaning that it’s almost certainly made entirely of science chemicals. Mmm, preservatives from the heartland! Taste what you’re missing, urban elitists!

Pluggers, 4/10/10

Pluggers are out and proud about their sexuality, but their compulsive eating invariably sends them into a shame spiral.

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Mary Worth, 4/7/10

Sweet Christ, if the sight of Mary grunting out the words “FINAL PARTING” through clenched teeth as she snips off the head of that flower doesn’t chill you to your very core, then you’re a much, much braver soul than I am. “Why wouldn’t her husband talk? He was quiet! Too quiet! Quiet people get their [snip] fingers [snip] cut [snip] off!”

Apartment 3-G, 4/7/10

For a while now people have been trying to figure out who the least essential person in this storyline is, since he or she will clearly the one who’ll end up on the business end of Bobbie’s gun. Most of the characters in the story are regulars or semi-regulars and it would be shocking to off them — but what if Bobbie plans to end her marriage by shooting herself? Having decided that her pill-addled life isn’t worth living, she can at least feel sure that the ghastly sight of a hallway decorated with her brains will traumatize Martin and Gabriella so much that they’ll never be able feel comfortable together again, knowing the consequences of what they’ve done. What she hadn’t counted on was the presence of Margo, whose inability to feel human emotions will throw a monkey wrench into her melodramatic suicide plans. Who could bear to end it all under Margo’s sneering, disdainful gaze? I’d be too ashamed.

Beetle Bailey, 4/7/10

There’s something about Miss Buxley’s expression in the final panel that I actually find quite poignant. She most definitely did not sign up to participate in the Halftracks’ spectacularly dysfunctional marital dynamic. The general’s ham-handed sexual advances are probably preferable.

Family Circus, 4/7/10

I’m pretty sure the last few Family Circuses have been straight-up re-runs, given some subtle differences in the art, so I’m assuming that this one is from the feature’s brief “experimental” period in the ’70s, when it eschewed jokes and humor of any kind and went for mundane slice-of-life realism. Yup! Egg salad again! Ha ha … huh … eh.

If I had to guess as to what in God’s name this is about, I’d say, based on some kind of half-remembered material floating around in my midbrain, that, back when only men worked and all women stayed home to keep house (i.e., in the ’50s, on television) and wives made their husbands’ lunches before said husbands headed off to the office, there was this cliché/running joke where said husbands would open up said lunches at work and, whaddya know, egg salad again! Isn’t that just like a woman, to make me a lunch that I don’t appreciate! And see, it’s like Billy’s gone into “the office,” which is school, and see, his lunch is … oh, hell, even assuming all these suppositions are true, it still isn’t funny. What I really want to know is this: Billy has a sandwich in his lap. Billy’s friend is holding a sandwich. WHERE THE HELL DID THAT OTHER SANDWICH COME FROM?