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Family Circus, 7/19/09

You might have noticed the title of the book Big Daddy Keane is reading to his little ankle-biters, Rat and Pig Get Lost, which is an installment in a good-natured back and forth between the Family Circus and Pearls Before Swine. More intriguing, though, is what this cartoon reveals about the Keane Kids: not only are they illiterate, but they can’t even sit still to be read aloud to, and rather will wander in the direction of the hypnotic, glowing picture box, the better to move their brains past their current gelatinous state and straight on into liquidity.

Mary Worth, 7/19/09

While this installment might seem to be taking place immediately on the heels of yesterday’s, with Mary tidying up and thought-ballooning like mad and Delilah wandering aimlessly around the grounds, note that both ladies have changed into completely different (though still hideous) outfits, so this could be days or months later. But apparently enough time has passed that Delilah is finally ready to make a call … to her dealer, if her freakishly enlarged pupils are any indication.

Slylock Fox, 7/19/09

The main mystery panel in today’s strip is fairly bland — another fox-mouse double date leading up to some drunken partner-swapping that the radical differences in size will make incredibly awkward — but I’m pretty intrigued by the scene over in Six Differences. Are the woodland herbivores engaging in some kind of Druid ritual to call down a lightning strike against their predator-enemy, the terrible wolf? I hope the pagan magic will keep the beavers safe, as I’m not sure the open water is the best place to be in a thunderstorm.

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Garfield, 7/18/09

Some years back, some friends of mine got married at a little camp they had rented in lovely Big Island, Virginia, in the rural foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. After the reception, they headed over to a nearby bed and breakfast, while most of the guests crashed overnight at the camp; the next day, the happy couple came back to the camp to have lunch with us, with a tale to tell. Apparently, there was one other couple also spending their wedding night at the bed and breakfast that night, and at breakfast the next morning, they looked like they were in more or less a state of shock — as my friend put it, they appeared to have experienced “a night full of terrible discoveries.” That’s what popped into my mind here when I saw John and Liz’s traumatized faces. Have they crossed some line, gone someplace from which they can never return? Will they ever be the same again? Was there a lot of tongue involved?

I’m amused, meanwhile, that Garfield feels a need to euphemize a disgust-prompted quantum of vomit as a “hairball.” Perhaps Paws, Inc., believes that the newspaper comics morals police would accept a reference to the sort of regurgitation natural to the cat lifestyle, whereas straight-up barfing would be forbidden. Clearly, they hadn’t seen this.

Mary Worth, 7/18/09

Speaking of people who have just experienced a night of terrible discoveries, check out Mary and Delilah’s devastated facial expressions here. You’ll have noticed that, while I breathlessly kept you up to date two weeks ago on every aspect of the interaction between Mary, Delilah, and Charley, I have been silent in the aftermath; that’s because the aftermath was boring, consisting of Mary and Delilah having the same pointless conversation, about how Delilah should get back together with her husband and Delilah saying she’d like to but she’s not sure, that they had for like three solid weeks leading up to the wonderful Charley episode. Mary is now washing her dishes with a look of defeated resignation on her face, her meddling having apparently failed to break through Delilah’s thick skull. Delilah, meanwhile, has chosen to wander unescorted around Charterstone in her revealing outfit, which will surely result in Charley leaping out of the bushes and wooing her with more transparent sleazy banter. Thus are the punishments the gods dish out to those who ignore Mary’s sound advice.

Gil Thorp, 7/18/09

Meanwhile, in Gil Thorp: The Stalkening, it appears we just might have a worthily bonkers summer storyline. WHO could hurling these baseballs at Gil and/or leaving them in his mailbox, since Shep Trumbo is “on vacation” (i.e., in prison for loosening the caps of all those saltshakers)? Who has Gil wronged in a baseball-themed manner, leading him to lurk in the shadows, wearing a Phantom of the Opera-style half-mask, cackling evilly and plotting revenge? Could it be Elmer Vargas, now condemned to work for the Kalamazoo Kings for all time? Clambake, whose dreams of baseball coaching glory were forever ruined by his ugly season with the Mudlarks? Everyone who’s played on the baseball team for the past six years and failed to go anywhere in the playdowns?

Mark Trail, 7/18/09

I’ve never had anyone assassinated by a sniper right in front of me, but I’m willing to bet the resulting noise would really be more like a BLAM or a KA-POW or a neeeeerrrMMP than a WHAM. However, the more important question is: what sound effects will the bullets make as they are punched out of the air one by one by Mark, as he slowly and deliberately makes his way back to confront our sinister villain?

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Funky Winkerbean, 7/11/09

NOOOO! DON’T OPEN THE DOOR! DON’T OPEN THE DOOR! IT’S … ZOMBIE WALLY, COME TO EAT YOUR BRAINS HAPPINESS!

No, seriously, this whole week has been full of foreboding and doom, and since we all know that nobody in the history of Funky Winkerbean can ever be happy, and since there’s been all sorts of weird hints about it, obviously Wally has been held secretly captive in Iraq for 10 years, or 5 years, or whatever mishmosh of space-time has passed since the big jump, and now he’s come back to find that his wife has remarried, and everyone involved — Becky, Wally, John, Wally Jr. — is going to be absolutely devastated no matter how it all plays out. It’ll be just like Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story, except not good.

Mary Worth, 7/11/09

NOOOO! DON’T LOOK BACK, DELILAH! DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT! YOU’LL BE DOOMED! DOOMED!

God bless Mary Worth for really bringing the laughs this week. Today’s second panel is particularly hilarious. The gears in Charley’s head are spinning furiously; he seems to have consulted some mid-century text on how to have a socially appropriate interaction with someone that doesn’t make it obvious that you’re just trying to bang whomever you’re talking to, and he suddenly remembered, about 45 seconds after the conversation actually ended, that you’re apparently supposed to mention that you look forward to your next encounter with your interlocutor. Meanwhile, Mary looks like a grim-faced Marine escorting a civilian prisoner out of some sort of war zone. “Don’t worry, you’re in good hands now. Once we get back to base, though, you’ll have to undergo an extensive debriefing to see we can glean any useful intelligence from your contact with that enemy subject.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/11/09

The real menace here, of course, is the suffocating nanny state, which has filled Dennis’s head from birth with such emasculating nonsense as “steps should be taken while traveling via motor vehicle to reduce the chances of being horribly killed.” Now Dennis can’t even enjoy red-blooded American sports like being trampled to death by horses!

Oh, and hey! Even though I didn’t post yesterday, it still was a very important moment: it was the fifth anniversary of the very first post on this blog. Have I really been doing this thing for five years? Mercy! Huge thanks to all of you, new readers and old alike, for your constant support and affection, without which I surely would have given this up in despair long ago. And special thank for the reminder of my agedness to longtime faithful reader Mooncity, creator of the Autumn Lake Webcomic, who whipped up the following charming graphic for the occasion:

To be fair, it’s also possible that people aren’t following the site because they haven’t heard of it — yet. If you know some non-ninny who might enjoy it, send them the link, won’t you?