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Spider-Man, 2/7/11

Whoah, big surprise in Spider-Man today! No, it’s not the fact that newspaper Spider-Man has finally decided to cash in on Twilight mania; that was more or less inevitable. Nor should we be startled by the title character’s braggadocio over his epic sleeping prowess, since we’re all well aware that the sheer magnitude of his laziness is his only distinguishing feature. No, the shocker is that J. Jonah Jameson has decided to transform the Daily Bugle into a British-style tabloid, as we can see in panel two. Unfortunately, on day one the copy desk already used the only Britishisms they knew — “cheers” and “Yanks” and were forced to just slip a placeholding “something” in as the headline’s final word, hoping to cram in some BBC watching in time for tomorrow morning’s edition.

Shoe, 2/7/11

Speaking of the mass media, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve ever seen ostensible news-bird Cosmo actually perpetrating journalism in this strip. I’m not really sure why he’s filing his story from the Roz’s diner rather than the newsroom, unless the gruesome crime scene he’s describing is actually just off panel, and the characters’ favorite lunchtime spot has become a scene of unimaginable carnage, with corpses everywhere. Gory as the thought is, the strip at least deserves kudos for actually making its bird-world setting integral to the joke, for once.

Mark Trail, 2/7/11

Barely a year after managing to keep an inarticulate interrogative to himself, Mark Trail has apparently learned how to think exclamations without saying them. Soon he’ll be able to construct a sentence complete with nouns and verbs silently, entirely within his own mind — and then there will be nothing he can’t do.

Lockhorns, 2/7/11

Loretta doesn’t want Leroy passing out like last year, so she hid all the booze! Which is frankly pretty cruel. The only thing worse than a birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate is a sober birthday party with no guests except the wife you hate.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/26/11

Oh, thank goodness, this tortuous negotiation is over. Berna will go to Rex and June’s financial advisor, “Dex,” who will be Rex wearing a fake mustache and speaking in a comical fake British accent, and who will urge her to invest her lottery winnings in the series of Cayman Islands-based shell corporations that Rex and June have set up for just this sort of eventuality. With that settled, Rex will go and deign to spend five minutes with whatever patient has been coughing his or her lungs out in the waiting room for the last hour.

Shoe, 1/26/11

Well, that’s because doing homework is an essentially boring activity to look at, and television as a medium is all about visual excitement! The comics, by contrast, seem to feature child characters doing their homework all the time. This … this could be relevant to the state of the medium.

Dennis the Menace, 1/26/11

Dennis refusing to join Margaret in a little light necromancy? Definitely non-menacing.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/18/10

Holy cow, you guys, I’ve been totally neglecting my duties to bring you the latest Rex Morgan storyline, mostly because it hasn’t even started out interesting, and we all know that the Rex Morgan problem is that Rex Morgan starts interesting and then gets boring, so who even knows how dull this is going to get. Anyway, to summarize briefly: Berna, Rex and June’s receptionist, won the lottery, and she insists that non-financial experts Rex and June manage her winnings. Today we learn why: she was once rich herself, heiress to a vast hardware store fortune, but all that money was swindled away by a MONEY MANAGER. This would be Berna’s superhero origin story, if being terrified of having all your money stolen by a financial planner were a superpower, which, for the record, it is not. Rex and June are so shocked by this shocking revelation that the blue goo that sloshes around the parts of their skull where ordinary humans keep their brains has started to leak out through their temples.

Mary Worth, 1/18/11

I have of course been giving you near-daily updates on Mary Worth, since it continues to be amazing. Today, after belching forth the language-like utterance “I’m glad because I feel the same!”, Scott, his eyes suddenly glowing orange, thrusts his simian face into Adrian’s personal space. Watch as she playfully/desperately attempts to keep him at a distance. Save it for the honeymoon, tiger!

Apartment 3-G, 1/18/11

Remember last year, when the Apartment 3-G drama was driven by Tommie’s anxiety over Lu Ann and Margo’s bickering? Well, I guess her newfound confidence has put an end to that. “Yawn! Borr-ing! Get back to me when you gals start pulling each other’s hair, OK?”

Shoe, 1/18/11

Meanwhile, the bird-men of Shoe are apparently peeing on each other, what the hell.