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Family Circus, 7/24/08

They say that smell is strongly associated with memories, and when she got just the faintest whiff of mimeographic fluid from the papers she kept in the chest, suddenly she was twenty-one years old again, and working as an assistant in that downtown office. There weren’t many women in business jobs in those days, but her boss, Mr. Franklin, seemed to take her opinions about things seriously. They spent a lot of time in his office, talking about sales strategies and advertising, and somehow she barely even noticed it when it became something more — something much more — than just a business relationship.

He told her he’d make her part owner of the company, told her that they’d travel around the world together, to London and Buenos Aires and China — but in the end, she couldn’t see herself living that life. Despite so badly wanting to say yes, she turned in her resignation, and Mr. Franklin accepted it, looking like a broken man. She married that boring but reliable boy from her high school class, the one that she knew would be a good provider, and would help her raise children, and grandchildren … grandchildren … moronic, melonheaded grandchildren … Jesus, what were they rambling on about over there? If she heard one more basic piece of English vocabulary mangled by one of those little genetic rejects, she swore she’d take a belt to them … anyway, the mimeograph sheets were nothing important. Some reports, about what she couldn’t even remember — they were just what she happened to be holding when she walked away from Mr. Franklin for the last time. She put them back in the box, carefully, knowing that she would inevitably come back to them again.

“Whatever they are”? Christ, usually the oldest one at least could muster something close to a pun at least. She imagined that nobody in Buenos Aires had even heard of “Ida Know” or, God help her, “Not Me.”

Crankshaft, 7/24/08

“Josh,” people ask me, “what keeps you reading comics that you obviously don’t like, day after day, for your entire life?” Well, sometimes you have to seize on to small bits of hope, no matter how unlikely they seem. For instance, I know that every day when I turn to Crankshaft, I’m probably going to see pettiness and anger and mean-spiritedness and quiet despair. But now I can say to myself, “Hey, maybe today’s the day when Crankshaft’s horrible yuppie neighbor is finally going to go on that killing spree with his hedge clipper.”

Momma, 7/24/08

This is Momma. The title character’s interaction with her children will make you profoundly uncomfortable. It’s a real comic strip, that runs in the newspaper, where everyone can see it!

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Apartment 3-G, 6/13/08

My God, everyone who identified Alan’s cylindrical “crack pipe” as a Pixy Stick was right!

Dick Tracy, 6/13/08

Yes, there’s certainly nothing that says “the inner city” like one of those curvy Sherlock Holmes-style pipes.

Family Circus, 6/13/08

I guess we should all be thankful that Jeffy’s strict religious upbringing has kept the word “nipple” out of his vocabulary.

Mary Worth, 6/13/08

“And I wasn’t attractive, I was radiant.”

Momma, 6/13/08

Francis + Momma + “I’d have that box filled every day” = NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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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.”