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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.”

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Mark Trail, 8/19/10

Oh, look, the hideous little girl in the current Mark Trail plot has named her new deer-pet “Lucky!” I’m pretty sure that most of the wild animals who are taken out of their natural habitat and forced to amuse their hideous human overlords end up being named “Lucky” — there was of course Lucky the Beaver, and I’m pretty sure an injured goose that Rusty adopted was given the same name — because the cruel god of Mark Trail has a nasty sense of humor.

Mary Worth, 8/19/10

Wow, did I ever underestimate this storyline! It seems that Dr. Mike’s dad was could never take Mike’s calls not because he is a sad, shame-filled drunk, but because his mission of savage revenge occupies his every waking moment. I absolutely love his determined striding away from his family in the panel two flashback — “Well, kid, you’ve had eight or so years to help me track down Richie’s killers, and you haven’t done a damn thing. I’m through with you!” His shaking and sweating in panel one is not a result of the DTs, but rather because he can barely contain his anxious need to go to some seedy underworld club and start busting heads until he gets answers.

Pluggers, 8/19/10

Oh, come now, we all know that the only thing pluggers hate and fear more than elitist college education is the Orient.