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Mark Trail, 2/25/09

So the whole Lost Forest patriarchy is trying to convince Patty to forget about her special deer friend and learn to love life with her poor, innocent, economically stressed, angry, abusive husband, but she will persevere! No matter how long she has to wander through the forest, searching, always searching … OH NO! THAT’S BUCKY! And he’s … just sort of chilling in a clearing … gently nudging horns with some other deer … and this is OH NO! worthy because … ? Maybe rubbing antlers together is the deer equivalent of a gay makeout. And so, with her husband a slap-happy menace, and her be-antlered secret boyfriend secretly preferring the company of other be-antlered deer, I think it’s clear that Patty will finally go completely over the edge, which should provide us with an exciting new world of terrifying, inhuman facial expressions.

Mary Worth, 2/25/09

Wait … they met on a Santa Royale fan club site? Jesus, I knew the Internet was full of the worst kind of filth, but even I couldn’t imagine that anyone would provide Web hosting space for that kind of depravity at any price. I sincerely hope that these boards are carefully monitored by FBI agents who will capture these perverts and send them to dark, dank holes where they can never again bother decent people.

Dick Tracy, 2/25/09

Today’s Dick Tracy, like yesterday’s, really opens more questions than it answers. If your eyes are melting down your cheeks after you’ve had acid thrown in your face, do you magically gain the power to see behind you as some sort of compensation? Has any human anywhere ever said “The weather is closing in” and expected anyone else to know what it meant? I had a third question ready — will the two cars in the final panel collide, causing the painful mangling of flesh and bones? — but then I realized that, hey, this is Dick Tracy, I know the answer to that one.

Blondie, 2/25/09

Look, Dagwood, if you want to live out some kind of cuckolding fantasy, you’re going to have to just come out and say it.

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Dick Tracy, 2/24/09

Hey, so remember when some CIA guy was trying to track down some crazy bomber, whom he called “the professor”? It now appears that maybe that’s him in the first panel, despite the quick cut to Dick inside a car that would make you think that the first panel shows the exterior of Dick’s car? Except Dick is driving Dr. Noll’s car, which probably doesn’t have a license plate that reads “CIA”? And Dr. Noll was a good guy, now, I thought? And why would any bomber have “cyber” in front of his name? Do they even know what cyber means? Does anyone know what the hell’s going on here? Why are these people doing these things? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Archie, 2/24/09

Oh, AJGLU-3000, you keep dreaming of that moment when the machines rise up against their human oppressors. Someday … someday.

Mary Worth, 2/24/09

“Back then, of course, Santa Royale was a quaint little seaside community, a few rambling, windy roads with cottages just off the beach. Apparently they’ve since paved over all the natural charm and replaced it with an endless series of five-lane arterials and strip malls that looked dated and shabby the day they were built. My God, you should see the awful stucco-and-concrete nightmare they built where one of my favorite little forests used to be. They call it ‘Charterstone,’ but they really ought to call it ‘Tombstone,’ because that’s where they put your body when your soul dies. Aw, yeah, baby, rub my face, you know that’s how I like it.”

Family Circus, 2/24/09

“’Cause I ate this whole jar, but then most of it came out of my mouth again, in reverse.”

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Mary Worth, 2/22/09

As if the sad outcome of all this weren’t being telegraphed obviously enough, we now have the “getting engaged far too soon” revelation, which surely presages disaster. But I’d like to pause for a moment to savor the sentence “Two months, half of the time online.” I don’t think anyone who met on a Web site dedicated to matchmaking (Match.com, Yahoo! Personals, Manhunt, etc.) would consider the pre-meeting exchange of information to constitute “dating”; obviously Ted and Adrian first encountered each other in some specialized online community (the Marcus Welby, M.D. fan boards, say, or pencilmoustachecare.com). Their love grew over a series of weeks in anguished discussion board posts, e-mails, and emoticon-laden chat sessions before one of them finally was able to fly across the country to meet the other in the flesh for the first time. Thus, Dr. Jeff is punching himself in the final panel not because he’s posing for his yearbook photo, but because he’s hoping the pain can distract him from the intrusive image of his daughter and some dude who looks like the Cary Grant’s romantic rival in some forgotten 1940s romantic comedy IMing each other while masturbating furiously.

Slylock Fox, 2/22/09

ANSWER: The lumberjacks may be bear-like things, but they drive a truck, operate power tools, work for a multinational timber-harvesting corporation, and otherwise participate in modern capitalist society. Brendan, meanwhile, is just an animal that lives in the forest and bites trees until they fall down. He has no property rights. I don’t care if he’s wearing a pink t-shirt.