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Judge Parker, 11/10/14

Oh no! Could our super-rich heroes be encountering ill fortune? Actual mild inconvenience? This is insane! Why, they might have to stay in this RV park for literally hours until AAA can come out and fix the engine! After reading the first panel, I was hoping that the Spencer-Drivers were victims of class warfare — that the muttonchopped/combovered RV salesman who unloaded this thing on them knew that he was selling the rich swells a lemon and didn’t care because he was going bankrupt anyway and screw those guys, you know? But it turns out it’s squirrels, which is even funnier. Just a bunch of squirrels, frolicking around the vast Spencer-Driver estate and then chewing through important parts of their machinery with their razor-sharp ever-growing incisors. Even the adorable wildlife is revolting against these insufferable people.

Momma, 11/10/14

Even for a comic that repeatedly dwells on the Oedipal relationship between the title character and her sons, this strip is pretty dark. “Well, Francis, I can’t change your diapers anymore, thanks to the court order, but I still demand satisfaction! What was the most shameful thing that’s happened to you since last we spoke? Spare no details, no matter how disgusting or humiliating!”

Heathcliff, 11/10/14

Hello Kitty is 40 this year! What better way to celebrate than by implying that Heathcliff is fucking Hello Kitty?

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Momma, 11/9/14

Wow, notorious mulleted layabout Francis Hobbes has gotten a nice haircut and apparently enlisted in our armed forces! Based on the uniform, I’d say he’s enlisted in our armed forces circa 1955? And based on his chevrons he’s already a Staff Sergeant? This all might explain why “in honor of next Tuesday” and “my salue to Veterans’ Day” seem to be two different things in his mind. “This is all in honor of next Tuesday, when my living history group will be re-enacting the First Battle of Naktong Bulge! And, uh, Veterans’ Day, yeah, that too.”

Dennis the Menace, 11/9/14

This would be just more weirdly retrograde marital misanthropic misunderstandings if not for those throwaway panels. Look at how anxious the new office manager looks as Henry Mitchell holds on to that handshake for an uncomfortably long time. She’s already mentally composing her letter to the EEOC about the what a hostile work environment this generic white-collar office is.

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Family Circus, 11/6/14

The idea that one is constantly being closely observed and assessed by others is known within psychology circles as the “imaginary audience”. It’s common in children, but if it lingers into adolescence it’s generally considered a variety of diagnosable narcissism. Frankly, I think it’s about time for Billy to grow out of it; instead, his own inborn egotism, fed by a steady diet of for-profit media, has led him to the delusion that not only is his dull life fascinating to the faceless millions watching his every move, but that his antics are somehow amusing enough for someone to actually buy ad time against them.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/6/14

I mean, sure, if you’re going to predicate your strip on the idea that dogs are sapient to the extent that they talk and hire psychotherapists, why stop there? Why only dogs? Why not the fleas that live on the talking dog’s skin and feast on its blood — why can’t these parasitic creatures also think and reason and talk, their incessant chatter banging around the edges of Grimm’s consciousness? And why stop at the fleas? What about the microbes that live on the fleas? Why shouldn’t all the individual cells making up the fleas and the dogs and the therapists have their own thoughts and feelings and opinions? Why shouldn’t be the world be a baffling, terrifying blur of murmuring consciousness, a quicksand of souls pulling us into whirling chaos?

Momma, 11/6/14

Ugh, that got a little heavy, didn’t it? Here’s today’s Momma as a palate-cleanser. Ha ha, it’s funny because Momma and her sons are literally the last people in America who don’t have a calling plan with unlimited voice minutes!

Pluggers, 11/6/14

Desperate to maintain readership, Pluggers will now only offer comic panels that can be easily misconstrued as something so horrifying that you have to read the caption to reassure yourself that the world is still a sane place.

Apartment 3-G, 11/6/14

This is gasp-worthy news! On the one hand, Margo loves her mother and wants to do right by her; on the other hand, Margo is not very good at planning weddings, just like she’s not very good at all the other glamorous-sounding consulting businesses she’s set up and abandoned over the years. Fortunately, if this week’s strips are any indication, Margo can just arrange to have the wedding inside some dowdy apartment and tell her parents it’s New York’s most fashionable restaurant.