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Mother Goose and Grimm, 9/22/06

Grimm is about to euthanized.

Slylock Fox, 9/22/06

This adorable bunny is about to collapse from thirst and then be killed by a poisonous snake bite. Afterwards, its corpse will be eaten by vultures.

Mary Worth, 9/22/06

A drunken Aldo Kelrast has gone careening off an extremely ill-placed cliff. His body is about to be shattered, as is his bottle of liquor, which he seems to be desperately trying to protect.

Mark Trail, 9/22/06

Molly the bear and Andy the dog are about to either drown or tumble over a waterfall. Meanwhile, Hoyt demonstrates that he lacks the charisma necessary to hold an angry mob together for very long.

(Of course, we all know that Molly and Andy are going to be fine. It’s interesting to note that, as near as I can tell from people’s comments and my own reactions, Molly has engendered more of an emotional attachment among Mark Trail readers than any human character this strip has ever seen.)

B.C., 9/22/06

Clumsy Carp cannot afford the medicine upon which his life depends. The prehistoric caveman pharmacist looks on smugly.

(And wow, I never thought I’d be saying this about B.C., but: Hey, Pluggers! If you want to make this joke, only actually kind of funny, this is the way to do it.)

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Mary Worth, 9/19/06

While we can’t really tell that Aldo’s car is in motion here as he chugs down his bargain-basement booze, I think you and I both know that it is. And while some square lame-os will tell you all that this makes him a bad person, I think you and I both know that it actually makes him totally awesome. If there’s one thing that can make up for the bowl haircut, the late-70s ‘stache, and the dorky polo shirts all in one deft move, it’s tipping back a bottle of hooch with one hand as you try to navigate Santa Royale traffic with the other. Aldo’s willing to smear himself along the side of a school bus for our amusement, which is more than any of those so-called “responsible drinking” advocates can say. It certainly trumps Gil Thorp’s Marty Moon, who just drank himself into a stupor in a parked car like a little wussy.

Garfield, 9/19/06

I haven’t really changed my opinion about the slightly retooled Garfield of recent weeks: yes, it suddenly has other characters, and yes, it’s slightly funnier, but it still pretty much blows. Today’s strip actually supplies something of a metaphor for this, visually. When you first look at it, it looks like, in typical hack fashion, the same drawing has been photocopied and reused three times. But if you look at the final panel more closely, you can see that Jon’s upper lip is protruding out a bit more than in the previous two, so obviously some redrawing work has gone into it. So, I can appreciate that effort on a theoretical level, but in a larger sense, why bother putting in the work in the service of this gag, which manages to hint at something unspeakably perverted and yet actually just be dull and lame? The difference is noticeable, but ultimately not important. Which is in the end how I feel about the changes to the strip.

Pluggers, 9/19/06

You’re a plugger if nobody in the world would rather be you.

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No complete strip really grabbed my attention Sunday, so for a change of pace, I thought I’d get up close and personal with three individual panels:

Panel from Curtis, 9/17/06

I’m pretty sure that Dr. Horsehead is almost always referred to as “the evil Dr. Horsehead” in the Curtis comic-within-a-comic, but the relative harmlessness of his crime here gives good reason for leaving the epithet off for once. If he keeps this up, he’ll be downgraded to “that mischievous Dr. Horsehead.”

Panel from Mary Worth, 9/17/06

Of course, we all love this panel because it indicates that Aldomania 2006 is far from over, and could even roar drunkenly into 2007. It also contains what might perhaps be a subtle shout-out to this site (commentators long ago proclaimed Bombay Sapphire the official liquor of the Comics College of Cardinals) and a pair of stalker-stalking, cell-phone-toting busybodies (“Like, oh my GOD, he’s going into the LIQUOR STORE!”). But what I like best about it is the subtle hunch in Aldo’s shoulders. He knows he’s walking into that booze dispensary a broken man.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 9/17/06

There could be worse omens for your marriage than you having to forcibly remind yourself of your estranged wife’s name in your thought balloon. You could be thinking “Or hopelessly in love with my wife, what’s-her-name.”