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Dennis the Menace, 8/25/10

It seems at last that Dennis has found something truly menacing to do: serve as a self-appointed eugenicist enforcer. “Miss, did you have authorization from the Central Hereditary Bureau to bear that child? I can tell by looking at you that your genome is suspect.”

Gil Thorp, 8/25/10

Gil Thorp has managed to find something duller than golf in real life or golf on TV: golf in the comics. Yes, I know we’ve been talking about golf in the strip all summer, but the last few … days, I guess (it seems like years) have been taken up by an actual single golf game. It’s been so boring that Torrey is well aware that most of the readership has dozed off, and is attempting to poke them to wake them up in the first panel. The person I really feel for is the behatted multi-chinned dude in the first panel. You can tell he’s all excited about his big Gil Thorp cameo! Wore his best Hawaiian shirt and everything! Too bad it’s in such a snooze-inducing strip.

Mary Worth, 8/25/10

Why is Mike surrounded by a halo of distress in panel two? Does he fear that his father is going to die of massive liver failure right there in front of him, and he’ll be responsible for disposing of the gin-soaked body? Or is he disgusted that the old man is satisfied to go to his grave without having tracked down Richie’s killer, thus becoming a failure at officially everything?

Pluggers, 8/25/10

Pluggers know that the chances of their working up the energy to have sex with one another will be improved if they can’t see each other.

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Mary Worth, 8/22/10

I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of “most consistently hilarious depiction of drunkenness in a comic strip” Reuben Award, and Mary Worth is gunning for it, hard. Lonnie began his drunken day with a jacket and pants of different colors — obviously, the hard drinking has destroyed the fashion centers of his brain. (That’s why he only wears grey now.) But once he’s got a real bender on, we can see the true horror that booze does to a man. Did Lonnie unbutton and then drunkenly try to rebutton his shirt? Probably! Because that’s what alcohol does. It leaves your wispy stomach hairs visible for the world to see. Is this what you want for yourself? Turn away from the drinking, before it’s too late!

Apartment 3-G, 8/22/10

I’m pretty sure that Lu Ann’s stylist is supposed to be some sort of sassy gay artiste. Unfortunately, as depicted, he looks more like the answer to the question “What if Mr. Clean were a supervillain who was also a resurrected undead king from ancient Sumer?” This is a question that I’m pretty sure has never been asked, ever, and even if it were I would hope that the character so described would not be saddled with the name “Mister Mojo.”

Funky Winkerbean, 8/22/10

Ha ha! It’s funny because Funky can’t feel joy, due to his crippling emotional problems.

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Apartment 3-G, 8/20/10

“Going soft?” Bite your tongue, Lu Ann! Margo isn’t freaking out about getting her hair cut because, unlike you, she hasn’t linked her sense of self-worth to something frivolous and external like a hairstyle. Margo knows that hairdos come and hairdos go, but that whatever happens to her hair, nobody can touch her heart, her core. Margo will always be Margo. Her self cannot be harmed by whatever silly makeover plans Kat and Kitty have in store.

She also sees the hair-styling portion of the show as a great opportunity for escape: all she has to do is grab a pair of scissors and stab her way out.

Crock, 8/20/10

What if you wrote a comic strip that nobody, not even your editors, read or cared about? Would you keep dutifully churning out the lame jokes, day after day, so long as the checks kept clearing? Or would you grow resentful and eventually just replace the dialogue with banal non-sequiturs, just to see if anybody noticed?

Mary Worth, 8/20/10

“And if one of the bums I interrogated didn’t know anything, I made ’em switch clothes with me. That might seem strange to you, kid, but I was on the street, and I had to live my life by the codes of the street. And those codes say that when a man doesn’t help you with your vengeance mission, he forfeits his right to his clothes. That’s how it works. On the street.”