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Apartment 3-G, 5/24/12

Oh, say, what’s been going on in History’s Greatest Love Story, the tale of Nina and Scott Gaines? Well, Scott is determined to win back Nina’s love, and has decided that the best way to do that is to spend all his free time hanging out with the woman he was caught smooching, in a wacky misunderstanding of a totally innocent moment drunken face-mashing. Margo, whose plans to derive sexual pleasure from Scott have been stymied, now decides to try to extract some money from him instead, in the form of lucrative fees for her shoddy PR services. Scott is cartoonishly wealthy person, but there’s never been evidence that he’s ever done anything interesting enough for the rumor mill to take notice of, though that may soon change now that the woman he’s rumored to be having an affair with has suddenly been put on his payroll.

I don’t want to tell Margo how to do her job (really, I don’t, men have been killed for less), but if I were Scott’s PR manager, my first bit order of business would be to forbid him from leaving the house in a turtleneck/sports jacket combo (aka “the Robert Wagner”) ever again.

Mark Trail, 5/24/12

Wow, we’re all pretty hard on Mark for his inability to understand the motivations of humans or love his wife or talk as if he weren’t a soulless mandroid. But is it possible that he exhibits those behaviors only because he focuses all his mental energy on collecting seemingly insignificant bits of information and sifting through them like a Sherlock Holmes-style supersleuth? Ha ha, obviously not, we all know Mark is a moron. Anyway, since the mystery of Who Killed The Guy Mark’s Friend Gene Certainly Didn’t Kill is now solved (SPOILER: IT IS THE DEAD MAN’S WIFE, WHOM WE MET EARLIER THIS WEEK AND WHO IS OBVIOUSLY SHADY AND PROBABLY RECENTLY QUIT SMOKING, JUST YOU WAIT) maybe we can focus on the brutal murder of that innocent bird, which is going on in plain sight of Mark as he natters on about gum wrappers.

Pluggers, 5/24/12

Pluggers refuse to acknowledge that everyone they’ve ever known and loved is dying. “Gizmo isn’t dead, do you hear me? James M. Smith, Jr., that man in the coffin — I’ve never heard of him. I can call up my old buddy Gizmo and talk to him anytime I want. Don’t feel like doing it just now, but it’s good knowing that I can.”

Mary Worth, 5/24/12

ROMANCE TIP: You need to give your ex a little time before inviting her to have a three-way with you and your new girlfriend.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/19/12

Uh-oh, in her sad and futile attempt to finally get ahead of Rex in their ongoing dickishness contest, June has gone a little off-script when it comes to her more immediate task, namely keeping Iris off the sauce. “Hey, Iris, you sure look pretty in that funeral dress! Good thing, too, since you need to wear it all the time, seeing as everyone you ever loved keeps dying. It doesn’t show off your rack to the same advantage that mine does, of course, but then what would, right?”

Spider-Man, 5/19/12

Thanks, Newspaper Spider-Man, for neatly encapsulating your narrative philosophy for new readers. “I don’t need any amazing, exciting powers beyond those of ordinary humans to dislike that creep! Sullen, baseless jealousy will be the engine of this plot, not a superheroic battle to save mankind!”

Pluggers, 5/19/12

An archaic, failing bureaucracy is pretty much the only thing tethering pluggers to the mainstream of human society, and once that tether snaps, things are gonna get real depressing real quick.

Mary Worth, 5/19/12

The sad thing about the awkward, violent gesture in panel one is that Wilbur thinks it’s a hug.

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Curtis, 4/24/12

Whatever issues I have with Curtis’s repetitive and corny jokes (and I have many issues with them), I’ve always been a fan of the strip’s incidental details. The posters hanging up in Curtis’s room are generally good for a laugh, whether they’re extolling rap as an abstract concept or hot new rap groups like Nuns with Guns. Today we see that Curtis’s genre classifications have gotten more sophisticated (he’s traded in his RAP posted for a HIP-HOP poster), but really what tickles me is that he has a giant, textless picture of a triple-decker hamburger hanging on his wall. It’s the sort of thing Dagwood Bumstead would own, if he had any authority over his home’s decor.

Apartment 3-G, 4/24/12

If anyone wonders why I always think Margo is the best: This is why Margo is the best! Most of us, if caught drunkenly making out with a pregnant friend’s spouse, would at least offer some kind of half-assed apology. But that’s not Margo’s style. Margo’s style is boozily slurring “No … you’re out of line!” at her friend instead.

Pluggers, 4/24/12

Elitist Neapolitan ice cream reminds pluggers of the two things they hate the most: immigrants and race-mixing.