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Mary Worth, 5/19/08

Well, it’s Monday, and with the sad story of the Dead Donna and the Battlin’ Amalfi Boys having reached its natural conclusion, it looks like we’re gearing up for another … wait, what’s this? We’re still at the funeral? Oh, Mary, you wily silver fox, you! I should have known that there were more twists and turns awaiting us in this storyline, since we’re barely a month into it. Will there be fisticuffs at the reading of the will? Will Ron and Richard follow papal precedent and dig up their mother’s corpse, demanding to know who she really loved best? I’m all a-tingle! I should point out that one of the greatest Mary Worth plots in living memory, the tale of Drunken, Co-Dependent Rita Begler, started at a funeral just like this one.

In panel two, it seems that Ron is less thrilled with Mary’s continued presence in his life than I am, as he appears to be preparing a stiff right uppercut for her if she gets any closer.

For Better Or For Worse, 5/19/08

Last week’s tale of how Everybody Wants Liz Because She Is Perfect probably brought the levels of foobishness in your bloodstream to an uncomfortably high level; since this week promises to focus on Mike’s Totally Awesome Writing Career, we may have to brace ourselves for a public health emergency. Braver souls than I who have perused the official For Better Or For Worse Web site tell me that his latest opus was originally supposed to be some crap about a boy in the 1870s who’s mad at his father and joins the crew of a sailboat or something; but since the title appears to be Blood Cargo, I’m assuming that during the writing process it turned into a grisly tale of a boatload of demons, sailing from port to port, dragging the living on board and keeping their mutilated corpses below decks to use as food. Presumably he’s hoping for a quick cash-in by selling to a second-rate J-Horror director looking to make it big in Canada. Reading between the lines, Carleen’s dialog should probably read “I mean, you look like a normal guy — but you come up with all these ideas that make me think that you’re some kind of budding serial killer!”

What exactly is Weed doing in panel two? It looks like he’s somehow suspending an enormous empty picture frame in the middle of his hip loft apartment, possibly as an act of protest against the tyranny of “art.” Whatever it is, it’s as good as excuse as any to avoid talking to Michael and coming up with something nice to say about his terrible, terrible book.

Judge Parker, 5/19/08

“I’m the richest person in the county … I don’t get parking tickets! In fact, I could probably have this highway patrolman fired, or killed!”

Pearls Before Swine, 5/19/08

I have to say that I really love Pig’s facial expression in the third panel. I like the idea that he gets all excited just writing “Surprise!” I suppose the cable company won’t really get the full effect, since they can’t see it.

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Mark Trail, 5/17/08

It’s only now that the full idiocy of Mark’s plan is being brought to light: he uses the strongest obscenity in his vocabulary to express his shock and horror at the utterly unforeseen fact that the dognappers have a motor vehicle. “Goodness gracious, I assumed that they would have sedated Andy and put him in a cart or wagon, or perhaps just carried him on a stretcher, and I could have chased them on foot, using this World War II surplus tracking device! If only I had access to an internal combustion engine-drive vehicle of some sort! Oh well, back to the St. Bernard puppy mill.”

Momma, 5/17/08

It my continual quest to acknowledge it when comics that I usually consider terrible make me laugh, I give you this Momma, which made me laugh. My wife’s grandmother lived for a time in a retirement home that had a restaurant, where men were required to wear jackets to dinner and forbidden to wear shorts at any time, so I understand the oldsters’ insistence on propriety. Still, you’d think that Momma would relax a little about a casual dinner at home, though I can see why she’d be disgusted by Francis’s hairy jeans.

Meanwhile the final panel reveals that Thomas’s jaunty straw boater is considered ludicrously overdone even by Momma’s sartorial standards.

Mary Worth, 5/17/08

Is … is Mary hitting on Ron at his mother’s funeral? I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on here. Dr. Jeff is no doubt thrilled that she’s telling random men that she’s “available.”

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/12/08

I was going to make some snide comment about how sad it is that Herb and Jamaal thinks it’s keeping its readership enthralled by this cut-rate David-and-Maddie-style romantic tension plot, but then I realized that I keep commenting on it, so who’s the sad one, really? Anyway, today’s installment takes the strip’s usual nonspecific circumlocution to some kind of higher art form. Are these two even aware that they’re talking about each other any more? Is Jamaal !ing in the final panel because he’s trying to visualize what Yolanda means by his “hammer” and her “bent nail”?

Luann, 5/12/08

Speaking of tedious romantic storylines, with TJ safely bundled off to … wherever he goes to when he’s not in the strip (*cough* gay bar *cough*), will tonight finally be the night when Brad “mixes some Brad” with Toni’s “Toni”? I have no real idea what that sentence I just wrote means, but it sounds gross, so I hope not.

For Better Or For Worse, 5/12/08

Speaking of tedious romantic storylines, I have to admit that today’s FBOFW made me crack up. Sure, it’s a reinforcement of the horribly retrograde idea that the strip’s been going on about for some time — that if some guy you don’t like is coming on to you, all you can do is wring your hands and whine weakly about it unless you have a bit of finger hardware purchased for you by someone else with external genitalia. But the sight of Warren recoiling in horror from the second-cheapest ring from Zales (or its Canadian equivalent) as if it were filled with deadly radon gas is so hilariously over the top that Foob, Inc., has to be in on the joke. Right? Right? Right?

Mary Worth, 5/12/08

In happier news, Donna Amalfi celebrated Mother’s Day by dropping dead. Since this blessed event took place at the beginning of the week, we should be treated to five or six glorious days of Mary helping the Brothers R process their emotional pain before giving this whole thing up as a bad job and blessedly moving on to something equally dumb.

Ziggy, 5/12/08

AOL-themed joke from 1998 + talking feces = desperate, desperate cry for help.