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Mary Worth, 11/12/08

Never mind Mary and Frank’s hissy fit over the most effective way to mold your daughter to your will; what sort of sordid public coupling is going on to their left in panel one? Oh, sure, Coachy McPervert is just “helping” his young skater with her “coat” — but that doesn’t explain why she’s reaching inside his jacket to pull him closer. Looks like some skating coaches know the power of good, old-fashioned positive reinforcement (which, I can’t emphasize enough, only works this way if the skater you’re coaching is not your blood relative).

Apartment 3-G, 11/12/08

The Who On Earth Talks Or Acts This Way Follies continue unabated in Apartment 3-G. As near as I can tell, Gary is freaking out because Tommie went public with their relationship. Which sort of makes sense, because wouldn’t you be embarrassed about dating the least interesting Apartment 3-G girl?

Crankshaft, 11/12/08

Oh, look, it’s apparently characters sitting silently on the couch while the TV news inflicts terrible jokes on them week in Crankshaft. I note that the characters are not watching these wacky news jokesters together, because not even Crankshaft characters want to hang out with Crankshaft characters.

Family Circus, 11/12/08

“Thank you, Grandma, for invoking the name of Beth-Chu-Harebzed over my soup, turning it inky black, like the soul of our satanic master! Now it will give me the strength of ten thousand demons!”

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Mary Worth, 11/9/08

So for weeks now we’ve been watching the slow-motion buildup in this storyline, seeing Frank berate his sad sub-Olympic-level daughter, and wondering “When? When will the meddling begin? For the love of God, when?” Today, my friends … today is the day that the meddling begins. In the final panel, you can get a sense of the terrible wrath about to be unleashed as Mary’s face turns unnaturally blue and yellow and radiates pure meddling-energy. Her awesome and horrifying third eye is also beginning to become visible.

By the way, Frank, in case you’re wondering, it was the phrase “Mary, don’t interfere!” that sealed your fate. You may as well have danced in front of a lion shouting “Lion, don’t chew off my genitals!” while wearing underwear made of raw meat.

Dennis the Menace, 11/9/08

Here’s another entry in my occasionally interesting series of Comics Whose Tones Are Fundamentally Changed By The Throwaway Panels. Without that first row — which doesn’t appear in all newspapers — this strip consists of stomach-churning anti-menacing, in which our supposed hellion asks a loving God to shine grace upon all the people in his life, even those with whom he has an adversarial relationship. However, the opening panels reveal Dennis’s fundamental disbelief in anything so trite as a “happy ending.” In that light, his prayers can be read as a desperate plea to stave off the inevitable pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that will afflict his friends and neighbors.

And speaking of pain, heartbreak, and sorrow…

Funky Winkerbean, 11/9/08

“Okay, everybody! Say: achievement! Because even though you’re all 47 or 48 and yet look fifteen years older, it’s quite an ‘achievement’ that you survived being struck dead by cancer, or war, or cancer, or general despair.”

Also! In unrelated news, this week Amos and Edda, the two lead characters in 9 Chickweed Lane, finally had the sex, as indicated through the cartoonist’s usual elliptical methods. I read 9CL but don’t comment on it much, mostly because it’s simultaneously better in many ways than most of the strips I make fun of here and also is irritating to me in ways that don’t produce humorous commentary but rather just peevishness. However, all week commentors have been demanding my opinion on the Great Deflowering, which finally led me to write, in the comments section of the previous post, the following:

A comic appears on this site is not because something momentous happens in it, but because I can think of something funny to say about it. I can think of nothing funny to say about the aggressively virginal ape-faces in 9CL finally deciding to fuck and/or hand jive, for some reason. Sorry.

Upon reflection, though, that is actually a kind of funny thing to say, if I do say so myself, so I thank all of you for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

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Mary Worth, 11/4/08

Awwww, hell yeaaaah, kids! You know when your Mary Worth storyline has arrived? When you start seeing some motherfuckin’ thought balloons, that’s when! Presumably we’ll have days and days and days of Lynn’s cryptic, mopey internal monologue to enjoy. Is a doomed love affair responsible for her lackluster performance on ice? Was her heart wounded by her father, and will she join Vera Shields in the Mary Worth Pantheon Of Unsettling Women Who Talk About An Immediate Family Member In Terms That Seem More Appropriate To A Romantic Relationship? Or does Lynn, much like Jeff “Sackodog” “6-9” Ponczak, have a literal cardiac ailment, which could at any time kill her in mid-competition and leave her body to drop to the ice like a rhinestone-encrusted sack of potatoes?

Herb and Jamaal, 11/4/08

So if the jar labelled “sugar” is full of sugar, then the mug labelled “Herb” is full of … oh, dear lord.

Marmaduke, 11/4/08

“Also, there’s such a thing as being too casual about the dozens of human femurs you have mouldering in your terrifying death-shed.”

Psst! Thinking about posting a comment about today’s election? Please do so over here instead.