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Zits and Sally Forth, 4/7/07

On Saturday, we reach the logical conclusion of the set-up from earlier this week. This may look like further disaster for the Forths, but all the pieces are actually falling neatly into place: Sally’s mother is left isolated in her hateful splendor to sleep on a futon, Jackie can spend two weeks baby-sitting Hilary, with her permissive lifestyle opening all sorts of new experiences up to her that her hyper-controlling parents would never allow, and Ted and Sally will finally get to take that trip to Paris. Connie and Walt, meanwhile, can just do it like bunnies, God bless ’em.

For Better Or For Worse, 4/7/07

See, now, here’s a mature attitude about marriage, you hedonists. It’s something to be endured and withstood with great suffering, something that will force you to move out of the comforting womb of your parents house no matter how hard to try to stay there, and, of course, something that should not include any yucky sex once you’re managed to produce the required pair of children. I hope you’re sufficiently shamed, Forths and Duncans!

Shoe, 4/7/07

Ha ha, it’s funny because … oh, wait, it’s not funny at all. “She’s actually outside right now, waiting for me to get some food. For the love of God, call the police! She’s insane!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/7/07

“Yes! Rex will engage him in thinly veiled homoerotic banter for days! We’ll have plenty of time to come up with an action plan!”

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Shoe, 3/24/07

A thing that I know I shouldn’t get worked up about and yet do is the presence of animals in comic strips where everyone is an anthropomorphized animal. I mean, Roz’s dog is on four legs and doesn’t have humanoid hands, so I guess he’s supposed to be a non-sentient being, and I suppose its species-ist of me to just lump animals all together in one class, but it creeps me out to see a bird who owns a dog. In a world where everybody’s an animal, a hotel with a “no pets” policy is kind of like a hotel with a “no slaves” policy.

Um, not that I’d be really all in favor of a hotel with a “Yes, we love slavery!” policy or anything.

I’m curious about why exactly Roz is checking into this hotel in the first place, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen her not behind the counter of her greasy-spoon treetop diner. Perhaps she’s gotten tired of shoveling food at ingrates and has burned it down for the insurance money.

Mark Trail, 3/24/07

There’s a lot of weird crap in Mark Trail that I accept without too much mental discomfort — Mark’s unsettling lack of affect, his repeated acts of vigilante justice that go unpunished, the giant animals with word balloons coming out of inappropriate places — but I have a really hard time accepting that Mark suddenly deduced Diver Dan’s entire nefarious scheme from a single tiny screw hook, mostly because Mark has shown repeatedly that he doesn’t have the brainpower that God gave a bowling ball. Cherry, meanwhile, seems kind of horrified by the very thought that Dan might still be alive. “HE’S DEAD, YOU HEAR ME? DEAD! I WANT HIM TO STAY DEAD! IF I SEE HIM ALIVE, I WILL DROWN HIM AGAIN!”

The Lockhorns, 3/24/07

I know the central schtick of the Lockhorns is that the title characters are intolerably cruel to one another by turns, but for some reason Leroy’s smugness and Loretta’s downcast expression are especially poignant to me today. Loretta’s unisex getup may not be as sexy as what the lady in the red dress has on, but at least she’s not wearing those crippling shoes. Mr. Cardigan-Turtleneck Combo is about to find that the gal he’s been chatting up is going to fall into his lap, literally.

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Slylock Fox, 3/19/07

Another day, another insanely dementedly wonderful Slylock Fox. While it’s usually the visuals that wow me in this strip, I have to admit that what I most love here is the phrase “transfer the brilliant mind of Slylock Fox to the soft innards of a ripe eggplant.” Not that the visuals aren’t awesome, of course: you’ve got Slylock’s usual sang-froid cracking just a little as he contemplates the purple prison that will soon entrap his very soul; you’ve got Max Mouse hiding out in what appears to be a mouse-sized coffin; you’ve got the slavering vulture, no doubt giddy in anticipation of feasting on Slylock’s empty husk; and, most poignantly, you’ve got the earlier results of the same fiendish procedure, languishing in a jar and, in what seems to me to be an insult added to injury, submerged in water.

Shoe, 3/19/07

Another sad example of the problems with working backwards from the punchline. Clearly this “joke” was thought up in advance, and the “healthcare plan” was shoehorned in later as a generic phrase that stands in for “Senator stuff.” Because honestly, while healthcare policy can cause a great deal of heated political debate, the only way his healthcare plan would actually cause havoc and pandemonium would be if it could boiled down to “free amphetamines for everybody.”

Marmaduke, 3/19/07

Ha ha! Marmaduke ate something that wasn’t edible, and now can’t pass it through his digestive tract! He’s ill and might die! Ha ha!

Normally I hate cartoons that depict animals in pain, but I might be willing to make an exception for Marmaduke.

Crankshaft, 3/19/07

Is it wrong of me want something terrible to happen to this child, whom Crankshaft is apparently throwing off of his bus onto the side of the road in the middle of nowhere? Perhaps if he gets kidnapped, just for a little while, before being found (unharmed, of course) in the trailer of some drifter on the outskirts of town, then Crankshaft will finally be seen as the monster that he is, with the ensuing media circus forcing him to leave town along with his resentful family.

Normally you get bumped off of an airplane because it’s full. By kicking this kid off of what appears to be an empty bus, Crankshaft earns extra asshole points. Not that he needs them.