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Apartment 3-G, 6/29/10

Wait, Ari was in the army? You’d think that his megaphone-wielding drill sergeant would have instilled enough discipline in him that he wouldn’t have become a pills-for-sex peddler in his old age. My guess is that his army service was actually a cover for his CIA work, and that the Company had him conducting MK-ULTRA mind control experiments. Ari’s involvement in that program would explain why all of those experiments failed.

Family Circus, 6/29/10

Jeffy, why do you hate America? Billy will beat some patriotism into you, in 3/4 time.

Mary Worth, 6/29/10

“Yeah, I don’t care how awkward that segue was. I am not talking about Mary fucking Worth on this date.”

Archie, 6/29/10

Jughead is breaking off his affair with Archie, because Archie is terrible in bed.

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Herb and Jamaal, 6/28/10

Naïve idealist that I am, when I saw this cartoon I thought that Herb and Jamaal had finally returned to the “Herb’s barber is wracked with anxiety” plotline it had launched a year and half ago. But upon consulting my archives, I discovered that it “returned” to the plot only in the sense of just rerunning the strip. I suppose that certain avant-garde critics might consider a sort of eternal narrative repetition to be advancing a plotline in a sense, if the core message of that plotline is that all human existence is a series of sorrows that will recur over and over again.

Mary Worth, 6/28/10

A blind date in which one of the parties locks a death-grip onto the upper arm of the other immediately upon the first in-person meeting is either an awesome blind date or a terrifying blind date, depending on your predilections. Also, the way Jenna and Mike are pointing their heads in random not-at-each-other directions in panel two might seem to indicate that the phrase “blind date” should in this case be taken literally.

Judge Parker, 6/28/10

“Thank God you’re back in the good old US of A, Ned, home of the best burgers in the world! Excuse me a moment while I drench this one with enough tomato-flavored corn syrup to make it edible.”

Shoe, 6/28/10

Ha ha, it’s funny because his wife’s soul is being tormented with fire, in hell, because of her sins!

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Judge Parker, 6/21/10

While Sam and Neddy’s French boyfriend (about whom she has expressed ambivalence!) are back home writing elaborate legal disclaimers for fancy shoes, Neddy has slipped off to meet up with … the mysterious Mark! Is this the fellow that Neddy was doing the “tongue thing” with, when she was making her tearful goodbyes before heading off for her semester in France, four and a half years ago? No, that was apparently “Bob,” whose necking session with Neddy was spied upon by pretty much the entire Spencer-Driver household. (Click those links to check out the pre-Barreto Neddy and Abbey — rawr!) Anyway, this Mark fellow seems to just be some dude in an ugly green polo shirt with whom Neddy will apparently not be making out, yawn.

Luann, 6/21/10

I’m assuming that these screams of shock and horror are because Luann has accidentally walked in on Gunther changing and is seeing him in some extremely mild version of undress (i.e., without his omnipresent grid shirt), and this is going to set up another dumb “Tales of Ribaldry”-style sequence. Still, I’d like to imagine (for narrative interest, not sexual thrills, as all of these characters make my libido shrivel and die) that something truly “AHHH!” worthy is going on there: Gunther in a crotchless fursuit, Gunther in a crotchless fursuit humping a Luann-shaped pillow, etc.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/21/10

Well, it looks like Funky has stepped back from the precipice of full-on alcoholic relapse … for now. But what is the significance of our anachronistically attired barkeep’s decision to gulp down the cocktail Funky left behind? Perhaps the pall of gloom that seems to hover over the entire Funkyverse really only afflicts the main characters; the ancillary players live normal, happy lives in the background, until the day they come in contact with Les or Susan or whoever. As soon as Funky entered the bar, the awful aura of death and misery that surrounds him presumably chilled the bartender to his very core, leaving him very much in need of a stiff drink.

Mary Worth, 6/21/10

Dr. Roberts may be reluctant, but Jenna is insanely eager to get this Mary Worth-orchestrated romance off the ground. “Aww, yeah, here we go! I got my bowl of cottage cheese, my tall glass of Metamucil, and my laptop! Let’s get this party started!”

UPDATE: Good lord, i almost missed this:

One Big Happy, 6/21/10

The fellow in the first panel is, of course, wearing a Finger-Quotin’ Margo shirt! You can order your own and wear it with pride, whether or not you choose to sport goofy facial hair.