Dennis the Menace, 7/5/08
This is today’s Dennis the Menace! It’s about the Mitchells’ dog urinating all over the back seat of their car.
Garfield, 7/5/08
This is today’s Garfield! It’s about Jon stepping in excrement.
Shoe, 7/5/08
This is today’s Shoe! It’s about a horny, horny bird-lady.
Gosh darn it, those Sunday strips are so big! With my feeble attention span, I could only focus on these small bits of them:
Panel from Mark Trail, 6/8/08
Hmm, there were 50,000 grizzlies in North America, but now there are about 1,200 … plus another 30,000 in Alaska? Apparently the Russians, not satisfied with merely reversing the political consequences of the Alaska Purchase, are secretly in the midst of building a canal down the Alaska-Canada border and using the resulting dirt to fill in the Bering Strait, thus making the grizzy-rich Seward’s Icebox a part of Asia! Mark Trail’s gonna have to punch a lot of Russkies to stop this.
Panels from Shoe, 6/8/08
The philosophical implications of Roz’s first statement here — “I hate time” — sort of boggle my mind. Does she hate time as an abstract concept? Does she wish that everything happened at once? Is she actually opposed to entropy, which scientists call “time’s arrow”? These intellectual musings serve to distract you from her statement in the second panel, which, given that Shoe takes place in an all-bird milieu, we must take quite literally: Roz has horribly mutilated one of her fellow avians and is wearing its feet as some kind of grisly trophy. Her “somewhere” implies that she doesn’t even know the whereabouts of her hapless victim, implying that she committed her ghastly crime in a fugue state — so perhaps it’s “lost time” that she really has a beef with.
Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/8/08
Speaking of philosophical dilemmas, Rex is about to find out just how hard it is prove a negative. “See, here’s my ID, which says, ‘Rex Morgan, M.D., a doctor, and totally 100 percent not a cop.'”
Panel from Family Circus, 6/8/08
Ha ha! Jeffy is terrifying his little brother with some kind of horrific demon mask! Oh, it’s all fun and games until Daddy finds out he’s been poking around in the Ritual Room again.
Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/8/08
“She is convinced that Shady Shrew is the nut-grabber.” Oh, well played, sir.
UPDATE: Oops, that’s actually “nut-nabber.” Curse you, tiny type and failing eyes! I like my version better anyway.
Hi and Lois, 5/11/08
Yes, happy mother’s day, Lois! I’m glad to see that you’re spending it crushing any ambitions your girl-children might hold of having kids and having some other identity for themselves when they grow up. After all, everyone knows that nobody could possibly be a princess, rock star, poet, or CEO while also being a mother. Why, that’s pure madness, I tell you, pure madness!
I do have to give Lois points for having rock star fantasies that involve a gig at CBGB — and since she’s probably in the 40-45 range, this is even vaguely appropriate, chronologically. The beatnik poet look, not so much. I’m also curious as to where Chip is during this celebration. Because he’s an aspiring musician himself, it may be too painful for him to hear once again how her band had to break up after she got knocked up with him by some corporate tool she met one night after a show.
Shoe, 5/11/08
HOLY CRAP THEY’RE FLYING! I complain a lot that the bird-ness of the birds in Shoe is not exploited often enough, so it’s somewhat gratifying to see Shoe and the Perfesser swooping through the sky in living color. But since all the offices and homes and restaurants we see the Shoe characters hanging out in are on tree branches, it makes the sprawly suburban landscape that they’re navigating over somewhat disconcerting. I’d like to see them walk into one of the strip malls below them and order lunch, only to be met with uncomprehending stares and/or shrieks of terror.
Another strange anomaly thrown into sharp relief in the air: the Perfesser wears clothes — a shirt and shoes, at least — while Shoe is naked as whatever kind of bird he’s supposed to be. This brings a whole new level of discomfort to his drunken advances on barflies that we’re occasionally forced to endure.