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Blondie, 4/28/14

Haha yes but … that’s a lamp, right? With a little antenna on it? The joke is that she’s pretending it’s a “conversation piece” art object but she really just went and bought a lamp with maybe a radio alarm clock in it? That’s the joke? Because otherwise the Blondie artist was faced with the challenge of drawing something truly strange, an baffling object sure to inspire conversation among everyone who catches a glimpse of it, and ended up drawing a combination desk lamp/clock radio. And that would be sad.

Pluggers, 4/28/14

I was willing to tolerate Pluggers using a vaguely suggestive phrase as a caption for a cartoon depicting wholesome gardening activities. However, today’s panel, in which the sexual ecstasy young people enjoy on the dance floor is cruelly contrasted with their bodies’ inevitable decay into an aged state where even walking is an agony, goes too far for my taste.

Apartment 3-G, 4/28/14

At last! The Margo we know and love is back! The Margo we know and love is a violent sociopath willing to resort to kidnapping or worse to impose her vision of correctness on her social circle and even her closest friends. Hope you were aware of that when you decided to know and love her! You’re in it for the long haul now.

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Pluggers, 4/23/14

I certainly don’t begrudge the Pluggers creative team their occasional week off to run Plugger Classics, as I’m sure depicting honest, hard-working Americans making do the best they can as freakish man-animals gets exhausting after a while. I am a little unsettled by today’s vague double entendre, which may be intended to dovetail with the whole “spring break” theme. However, if Friday’s installment is “PLUGGERS GONE WILD” and features the pluggers casting off their clothes, cars, and other anthropomorphic aspects and just straight up going at each other like predator and prey, I’ll be willing to forgive a lot.

Mark Trail, 4/23/14

Speaking of predators and prey, new-school Mark Trail not only loves his wife but engages in straight-up combat with enraged bears. ALL HAIL THE NEW ORDER.

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Shoe, 4/3/14

The workings of the human mind are mysterious and arbitrary. My own particular mind, for instance, struggles to remember the identities of the advanced hominids in B.C., but uses valuable neurological space to retain the names and schticks of each and every one of the bird-people of Shoe. Loon, for instance, is a sort of noble fool character whose jokes often revolve around his simplistic misunderstandings of life events. Thus, despite Roz’s Goggle Eyes of Murderous Rage here, I think we’re supposed to read his statement not as cruelty but as a harmless literal interpretation of a metaphorical product name. Still, he seems awfully sanguine for someone who casually believes that a substance exists that makes face-flesh invisible and, when applied properly, leaves its wearer’s brain and sinus cavities visible to anyone who wants to take a look.

Beetle Bailey, 4/3/14

I’ve never been in the military and I’m not a gun guy, so I could be wildly off-base on this, but my guess is that Sarge is less mad about Gizmo’s unauthorized but high-tech modifications to his rifle and more about his appalling attitude towards weapons safety, since he appears to be casually pointing the barrel without really looking in the direction of his fellow soldiers (and, more specifically, in the direction of Sarge’s crotch).

Funky Winkerbean, 4/3/14

Last year we breached the narrative space-time barrier between Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, two strips existing in the same universe but 10 years apart, and reality wasn’t torn to shreds, so we have more of that to look forward to, I guess? It appears that the current dullsville “Cory’s mom looks is trying to complete his comic book collection while he’s in Afghanistan” plot is going to dovetail with the even snoozier Crankshaft “Jeff finds his beloved comic books in the attic” storyline (for certain limited definitions of “story”) from earlier this month. Glad you enjoyed those comics again, Jeff! In ten years, your daughter is going to sell them to some lady. Anyway, for everyone who reads Crankshaft and hates its title character, the good news we get today is that 10 years in his future he’s ranting and raving in a squalid old folks’ home somewhere, where nobody’s listening to him.

Pluggers, 4/3/14

PLUGGERS WERE USED TO THINGS BEING ONE WAY BUT NOW THEY’RE ANOTHER WAY WHY ARE THINGS ALLOWED TO CHANGE WHHHYYYYYYY