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Apartment 3-G, 3/2/10

YES YES YES OUR GREATEST MOST AWESOME SUSPICIONS HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED! Margo’s father’s wife, the one she believed was her mother for some unspecified stretch of her childhood and adolescence, the one Margo calls “Roberta,” is, as predicted, none other than our beloved shrink-schtupping manic-depressive Bobbie! Even this initial exchange between the two provides evidence of the fraught family history, as our pill-crazed avenging angel has, in her pharmaceutical haze, mistaken the changeling she raised for the once-young immigrant maid her husband cheated on her with. If only Bobbie knew that Margo was as disgusted by Martin and Gabriella’s gross love for one another as she is! They should be joining forces in their joint battle against all genuine human affection, not fighting amongst themselves!

The only question is: why is Bobbie lurking invisibly in the shadows at the bottom of the staircase? Presumably it’s to build suspense for those who haven’t figured this all out yet. But maybe it’s because there’s something even more horrific in the works — like, maybe she’s wearing the bloody, severed face of her mugger-turned-firearms-supplier as a hat.

Mary Worth, 4/2/10

Meanwhile, Mary, having been unwillingly pushed to the peripheries of the great Wilbur-Kurt-Dawn sandwich/frolic-off, is making sure to cement her place in this new storyline from the get-go. “Oh, your husband’s a terrible lout, is he? If you ever need a sympathetic ear, I’m here for you … listening … nodding thoughtfully … drinking your pain, your darkest emotional pain, like the sweet, sweet divine nectar that it is … oh, God, tell me, tell me, TELL ME…”

I also like the way Mary is somewhat ostentatiously gesturing towards the calendar in the first panel. It’s as if she’s saying, “Look at this, bitches, it’s 2010 and I’m still being published! So long as there are nursing homes that subscribe to newspaper print editions as a courtesy to their residents, I will live on!”

Mark Trail, 4/2/10

Good lord, is there no end to the Parker Brothers’ depravity? Even Ma Parker seems unsettled by whatever “processing” they have in mind for their captured geese; presumably they’ll be using the wood chipper to convert them into goose slurry, which they’ll attempt to pass off as foie gras at Senator Sinister’s restaurant, TGI McPoachers. These foul ruffians are so far beyond the limits of decency that the blue-shirted one (Joe? Moe? Jake? Snake? Who can keep the names straight?) probably began his sentence in the third panel with some kind of terrible curse word, which the upstanding narration box thoughtfully blocked for us with a well-placed “Meanwhile.”

While the goose-netting longhairs are obviously this piece’s villains, I think it’s notable that Mark is just taking pictures of the captured birds rather than attempting to free them. This is because geese are well known to be the meanest birds alive; Mark might be willing to take on an shotgun-toting rustic armed with nothing but a Holga, but even he knows better than to unleash a flock of angry geese.

Garfield, 4/2/10

Speaking of well-placed text, Garfield’s third-panel thought balloon allows today’s strip to neatly sidestep a key problem with the gag: Wouldn’t Garfield need to cross out the apostrophe as well to make the joke work? And if so, how would he do it? Doesn’t a crossed-out apostrophe just look like a messy apostrophe? Kudos to Paws, Inc., for their quick thinking!

Blondie, 4/2/10

On Good Friday, Dagwood makes the risen Christ weep with his horrifying rabbit fursuit. 85 percent of the people in the “furfans” and “Blondie fans” Venn diagram overlap are now writing clarifying letters to King Features, emphasizing that Dagwood was not the character they wanted to see dressed in a sexy bunny outfit.

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Mary Worth, 3/30/10

Longtime readers know that, while I may dabble with your Luanns and your Blondies, my heart belongs to Mary Worth above all. Thus, the beginning of any new storyline in this strip is a moment of great giddy excitement for me, even though “Wilbur meets his bastard not-son” will be hard to follow up. So far, we’ve gotten Mary foisting her friendship onto a pair of standoffish neighbors with her patented brand of hospitality. (I’m referring specifically to Patent No. 3087330, “System and method for establishing interpersonal relationships via taupe, oblong food-like products.”)

Bonnie and Ernie seem happy enough in panel one, contemplating the “nice spread,” the hilarity of the constituent shapes and colors of which I cannot emphasize enough. Who wouldn’t be all smiles when confronted with a big bowl of whipped potatoes, a tray of whipped sweet potatoes, a bowl of steaming whole unpeeled potatoes, another square tray of unpeeled potatoes, a tiny square tray of something white (eggs?), and a bowl of some mushed up vegetable of some sort? Mmm mmm good! But in panel two everyone’s facial expression has suddenly taken a turn for the grave, as if “getting to know [other humans] better” is something Bonnie and Ernie simply don’t do. Why? What terrible secret do they hide? This is why Mary Worth is so exciting! Because someday, in the next six to ten weeks, we’ll find out, and it will be blander than we can possibly imagine!

One sort of delicate point that I feel compelled to bring up is that Mary’s new friends are both pretty profoundly unattractive, even by the standards of a feature in which ol’ cross-eyes is the resident beauty. Since this strip is about as subtle as a frying pan beating you about the head and neck, forever, obviously their appearance reflects badly on their character; they’re no doubt going to be revealed to be perverts or scam artists, or monsters pieced together from human corpses and reanimated by a crazed scientist eager to play God.

Hi and Lois, 3/30/10

It’s all too appropriate that our blue-haired librarian is wearing a pink scarf. Thanks for destroying everything that’s good in the world with your terrible library, Fidel Trotsky-Tsung!

Spider-Man, 3/30/10

“And let’s hear it for lounging around the house in your underwear and high heels! And for cowardice! Sweet, sweet cowardice!”

Slylock Fox, 3/30/10

In panel one, a delightful band of puppies wants nothing more than to frolic and play with this laughing child. In panel two, the lad is about to be torn limb from limb by a vicious pack of feral dogs.

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Prince Valiant, 3/28/10

A couple minor setbacks in the inky gloom is all it takes for Val to ditch Aleta and high-tail it back to the surface: “Hey, Arn, I tried, all right?” No matter, though — these guys who seemed so scary back in October come off up close like cranky grey Smurfs or tiny Burghers of Calais or something.

And while it’s sad to see Aleta’s slow-mo trail-marking striptease come to an end, under the circumstances a “loss of prudence” may be exactly what she needed.

Slylock Fox, (panel) 3/28/10

Sly, enraged that inamorata Cassandra Cat prefers his well-endowed rival Buford Bull, lashes out with yet another flimsy, jewelry-related pretext for jealous revenge. I ask: who’s the real heel here?

Only Max notices actual thief Reeky Rat, whose hiding place is becoming his tomb. “Squeak!” “Squeeeeeeeeak!”

Comics for Kids?—I think not!

The Lockhorns (panel), 3/28/10

Loretta corresponds online with Darkness Itself, who logs off in haste and horror.

Mary Worth (panel), 3/28/10

In an otherwise undistinguished recap of the week’s non-events, Mary vents her disgust and resentment at Bonnie and Fine Ernie Johnson, with their to-themselves-keeping, intrusion-resenting, arrogant lowness of key. Just who the hell do these people think they are?

Hey, yeah, still me. Heh, heh: y’know, Josh, amirite? Monday for sure, I’m told.

— Uncle Lumpy