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Mary Worth, 10/10/13

So Shelly is getting an award for her work volunteering at the homeless shelter (the Nobel Peace Prize? probably!) and who else is she going to thank other than the person who was most responsible for all the good work she’s done over the years: Mary! After all, what’s the more selfless and grueling task: working every day without pay to serve New York City’s vulnerable and sometimes difficult homeless population, or casually telling someone else to do it? The second one, right? It’s only just that Shelly thank Mary in her award speech, but shouldn’t the award just be going directly to Mary? Shouldn’t the homeless carry Mary about the streets of Manhattan on their shoulders, then raise her up and set her on a makeshift altar in an abandoned subway tunnel, worshipping her as their dread Goddess and Mistress?

Shoe, 10/10/13

“Pain in the neck” is pretty clearly a back-formed euphemism for “pain in the ass,” and it’s very rare for anyone to use either phrase to describe actual discomfort in the specified body part, unless they’re being cute; it always refers to someone who’s annoying. The only way this joke works at all, it seems to me, is if the guy dressed as a wizard were an actual doctor making a medical inquiry. But he’s not! Not that you’d have any reason to know this unless, like me, you’re a damned soul/frequent Shoe reader, but the guy dressed like a wizard is the local computer repair guy. Ha ha, because computers are confusing and fixing them is like dark magic! Anyway, long story short, I’m pretty sure the Perfesser is a robot.

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Shoe, 10/9/13

So it looks like my earlier theory — that the Perfesser has covered his floor in newspapers because he’s a bird, and shitting on newspapers on the floor of their home is what birds do — was something of a reach. It turns out that he’s just a hoarder whose home has reached such a state of chaos that he’s desperate to escape it. If you’re want an insight into his increasingly glum mental state, note that in the months since that cartoon linked above, he’s devolved from eating chips to picking from a bag of mysterious “SNAX,” presumably because he self-loathingly thinks that a guy with empty pizza boxes and tires strewn around his living room doesn’t deserve better than ambiguous snack-like foodstuffs to eat.

Momma, 10/9/13

I’m not sure what this comic is supposed to be getting at in the context of Momma’s usual themes — maybe that the fly mistook Francis for a fellow loathsome pest? My preferred reading is that we’re being reminded that all creatures have a sense of self and will to survive, and that we perpetrate a thousand murderous tragedies a day without even realizing it.

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Mark Trail, 10/5/13

Whoa you guys, Mark is using high technology to defeat his enemies. And by “high technology” I mean “a cell phone that appears to have a seven- or eight-inch screen.” That counts, for this strip! Hiding an enormous tablet-slab might be slightly trickier than stashing away a smaller phone would’ve been, though.

The tragedy of today’s Mark Trail is the terrible coloring job. Mark appears to be wearing a charming western jacket with arrows embroidered on it. Do you expect me to believe that the whole thing is just a dull brown? For shame, King Features colorists! We want to see Mark’s jauntiest outfit ever in all its glory!

Beetle Bailey, 10/5/13

Normally, if a beloved long-running family comic strip that runs in thousands of newspapers had a character openly arranging an orgy, you might think that was kind of noteworthy, you know? But now my attitude is “Well, at least all of the women he’s planning on having sex with are biological life forms and not crudely anthropomorphic robots,” so well played, Beetle Bailey!

Shoe, 10/5/13

This bird-lady and her bird-husband went on a second honeymoon and, despite her husband’s advanced years, they were able to have all the intercourse they wanted, thanks to modern pharmaceutical science.