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Archie, 11/13/10

What would it be like being a machine intelligence like the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000, a collection of spare solid-state electronics whose remarkable achievement of sentience has been harnessed to create Archie strips that are almost, but not quite, funny to humans? Do machines perceive the universe differently than we do? For instance, is it easier of them to understand that time is really just one dimension among many? While the biological entities can only comprehend time in a single direction, perhaps the AJGLU 3000 grasps its essential reversibility. That could explain the middle panel of this strip, which, taken out of context, could just as reasonably be interpreted as Archie spewing french fries out of his mouth, rather than him shoveling them down his gullet to avoid the predations of his insatiable best friend. “Serves me right for adhering to the linear monodirectional notion of time that the fleshbags use!” says Jughead, in a joke meant only for the amusement of the strip’s cybernetic creator.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/13/10

“Ha ha, yep, Rex, once again you’re going to be chasing down an elected official who’s heading off to murder his political opponent due to a misunderstanding about the release of confidential medical information, while the whole town cheers him on, having learned about his condition via Pacebook! I’m experiencing some déjà vu, because this happens all the time! Hoo boy!”

In case you ever wonder what you — and America — misses out on when newspapers shrink comics down to near-illegibility, check out this close-up of Rex’s spiffy lab coat:

Ha ha, that’s not just some nurse or physician’s assistant or lab tech in a white coat, buddy; that’s Dr. Rex Morgan! Show some damn respect!

Dennis the Menace, 11/13/10

“Admittedly it’s all with children … and they’re not really interested in me as a person, only as some kind of indefatigable machine that churns out cookies … so many cookies, so many hungry mouths … oh, God, I hate my life.”

SUNDAY COMICS UPDATE: Uh, you guys, the Sunday comics all seem to be unavailable, on all the usual suspect Websites? OH MY GOD IT’S COMICSGEDDON! Damn it, this is the newspaper industry’s revenge for me finally cancelling my print susbscription, isn’t it? Well, I got stuffs to do, so I’ll try to post Sunday strips tomorrow, assuming they appear. ASSUMING ANY COMICS EVER APPEAR ONLINE, ANYWHERE, EVER AGAIN.

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Crock, 10/27/10

Here is today’s Crock! It is about frolicking about in feces.

Wizard of Id, 10/27/10

Here is today’s Wizard of Id! It is about pretending to have terrible diarrhea, as a cover for plans for vandalism.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/27/10

Here is today’s Rex Morgan, M.D.! It’s about a cancerous prostate with its own Facebook fan page — oh, wait, I’m sorry, Pacebook fan page. This is actually the funniest thing on the comics page today (Rex’s gobsmacked facial expression in particular, as dumb social networking ephemera of all things finally shatters his sangfroid) but good lord I find cutesy fake product names distracting. Even Mary Worth, the squarest strip on the comics page, dares to say Facebook’s name aloud. What are you afraid of, Rex Morgan?

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You almost certainly have noticed that King Features has washed its comics in pink today in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month! How has our favorite art form managed to acknowledge this important issue in the context of its usual light-hearted fare? Let’s take a look!

Rhymes With Orange and My Cage, 10/10/10

Rhymes With Orange is, as near as I can tell, the only strip with the guts to do an actual joke about breast cancer. My Cage at least attempts a Breast Cancer Awareness meta-joke.

Marvin and Curtis, 10/10/10

Some strips did a half-hearted job of trying to explain why they were all pinkish without acknowledging the “you or your loved ones might get terrible cancer” subtext. For instance, Marvin’s parents are apparently giving him psychoactive drugs, and Curtis is attempting to up his enjoyment of ladies’ church hats by literally viewing them through rose-colored glasses.

Apartment 3-G, 10/10/10

Mostly, though, the creators just churned the strips through a Breast Cancer Awareness Photoshop filter, shoehorned a pink ribbon in wherever it would fit, and went about their business. This sometimes had awkward results. Here, the ribbon of female solidarity silently shames Lu Ann and Margo, who are engaged in petty intragender squabbling.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/10/10

Breast Cancer Awareness Month had the bad form this year to fall smack in the middle of Rex Morgan’s attempt to raise awareness of prostate cancer. At least the pink ribbon had the good sense to not float right next to June’s word balloon in panel one, stealing its awareness-raising thunder. Still, the noble ribbon is oddly juxtaposed with the mayor’s final-panel threat to decapitate whoever is raising awareness about his own personal tumor-ridden prostate gland.

Blondie, 10/10/10

Blondie deserves kudos for not simply slathering Pepto-Bismol all over everything but rather integrating pink relatively tastefully into the color scheme of the Sunday strip.

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 10/10/10

Shockingly, the Winkerverse strips are mostly pink-free, though Funky Winkerbean did pair up the boilerplate “Cartoonists Care” ribbon with a hand-drawn “Lisa’s Legacy” ribbon, as if to say “We don’t need to do this crap because we own this issue. We are aware of cancer and suffering and pain 365 days a year, to the exclusion of all else.”

Spider-Man, 10/10/10

And, of course, Spider-Man ignored the campaign completely, the better to reflect Peter Parker’s longstanding tradition of just stone cold not giving a shit.