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Archie, 1/2/13

This sick burn on Mannequin 2: On The Move and/or soulless corporate control of all media was probably more pointed back when the strip first ran in the early ’90s, when Mannequin 2: On The Move was a recent memory and we hadn’t yet resigned ourselves to soulless corporate control of all media.

Crankshaft, 1/2/13

The sad, love-starved souls in the Funkyverse think that gently resting your back against somebody else’s back qualifies as “cuddling.”

Heathcliff, 1/2/13

Heathcliff’s owner has lost a bet to his cat, and because they’re not allowed to bet for money, he’s now subject to humiliation and physical abuse on his own front lawn.

Shoe, 1/2/13

Biz’s old buddy Zeke is going to die soon.

Ziggy, 1/2/13

Ziggy is sick and tired of working so hard to prevent his animal friends from killing each other.

Marmaduke, 1/2/13

Translation: WWHOORRRR WHOOORRRRORRR HORROR HORROR KILL KILL I WORSHIP THE DEMON BLOOD GOD BELOW

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The Better Half, 12/16/12

Say, let’s check in with our favorite not-Lockhorns one-panel comics couple, Harriet and Stanley! Today’s panels are each amusing in and of themselves, but taken together they form a richer narrative of economic desperation in an age of austerity. Our adorable Parkers start off cracking wise about the yawning financial hole that awaits them when they stop working — ha, ha, let’s steal some sugar packets to save money! ha ha, when I retire I’ll just sit here on the couch until I die of a heart attack, which won’t take long! — but soon come to the grim realization that they’ll be working until the day they drop dead at their hated jobs.

Shoe, 12/16/12

Meanwhile, this foreign bird seems to think that he can just come over here and steal our American Dream. Too bad we took all his money! Yeah, that’s right, you dumb foreign bird! Why don’t you go back to … rooster … land?

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/16/12

Meanwhile, Dawn and Jim are enjoying their friendship! This is the only thing happening. This is the only thing that’s ever happened. This is the only thing that will ever happen, forever.

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Shoe, 11/25/12

Since the early days of this blog, I have been complaining that the bird-people of Shoe refuse to fully acknowledge their avian natures. Today is a prominent example, in which two barfly bird-men (barbirds?) talk about birds that are hunted for sport, and then imagine a crazy, impossible world in which they were hunted, as if they weren’t birds, as if they weren’t delicious, as if their plumage wouldn’t look beautiful when draped over a taxidermy form. No, instead, the Perfesser just cracks wise about how at last call all the hot fellas are hunted, by the sexually voracious ladies, which, I hate to break it to you guys, but the lights are up and you two are the only ones in there, and nobody seems to be hunting you, for sex.

Panels from the Better Half, 11/25/12

Your Uncle Lumpy has got me reading the Better Half, of all things, and I have to say that it’s … mildly interesting? It’s sort of like a distant relative of the Lockhorns, except instead of regarding each other with murderous contempt, Harriet and Stanley seem genuinely in love but also somewhat baffled by each other, and indeed by the world at large. Nothing in the gentle marital foible-themed cartoons I’d read up till today had prepared me for this nightmare, of course. Stanley’s enthusiasm over the fact that his corpse will someday break down to its organic components (if the flesh isn’t first torn off by scavengers) can be written off as eccentric, if unsettling; but once we see him rambling angrily about about great heaps of discarded, beautiful human faces mouldering in dumpsters all over Hollywood, we know that something very, very wrong is going on inside his tiny cranium.

Family Circus, 11/25/12

The innumerable dead are not thankful for much, but they are thankful for this: they have been spared knowledge of Jeffy.