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Lotta italics today and I’m not ashamed of that

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Shoe, 11/13/14

It’s a well-known technique among schoolchildren everywhere: if you don’t know the answer, just dazzle ’em with some prokaryote erotica.

Mary Worth, 11/13/14

OK, so, the whole point of this storyline is that Mary has deemed Hanna no longer competent to drive and is now browbeating her into making significant lifestyle changes as a result. And yet look at panel one. This is one of the worst parking jobs I’ve ever seen. Mary has thrown her car diagonally across this admittedly enormous parking space willy-nilly, and in panel two is just unbuckling her seatbelt like she thinks it’s good enough. It’s super not good enough, Mary. BAN MARY FROM DRIVING ANYWHERE FOREVER.

Family Circus, 11/13/14

I like how profoundly angry Jeffy looks at being forced to breathe in some of (presumably) Mommy’s perfume and appreciate it as it’s meant to be appreciated. No, he seems to be saying, I will not and never will experience puberty! I will be a filth-covered little melonheaded urchin for eternity within the Protective Circle. Adulthood means change. Adulthood means death.

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ALERT: MARY WORTH PLOT IN HIGH GEAR, CANCEL ALL MY APPOINTMENTS

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Mary Worth, 10/8/14

Congrats to Mary Worth for deploying an actually interesting narrative technique this week! After yesterday’s head-on collision, we smash cut to Ian, sweaty and wild-eyed, barging into his own home and gibbering wrathfully at his terrified trophy wife. We’re left to imagine the trail of verbal carnage he left in his wake. The sneers! The condescension! He’s clearly been driven into a frenzy of fender-bender-based superciliousness, and everyone is going to hear about it! Poor Toby: you get the feeling this isn’t the first time she got a finger wagged in her face because of something unforgiveable that somebody else did.

Shoe, 10/8/14

Ha ha, it sure does look like you live alone, Perfesser! Because generally most people don’t like living in unsafe hoarding-zones filled with literal trash. Say, remember how you used to live with someone else? Your nephew, Skyler? Ring a bell? It’s not clear if he’s finally decided that life as a homeless runaway would be better than the unsanitary lifestyle you keep, or if he was just crushed to death under a pile of newspapers.

Heathcliff, 10/8/14

It’s true: far too much garbage ends up in the ocean, disrupting ecosystems vital to life’s long-term survival on earth. Heathcliff is right to look so sad.

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MaryLou’s funereal ensemble is not helping

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Momma, 9/15/14

I don’t mean to intensely overanalyze a few stray sentences in an ephemeral work of art … no, wait, it turns out that’s exactly what this blog is for, so I think I’ll do exactly that with today’s Momma! Anyway, I find Momma’s pronoun use somewhat unsettling in this strip. Perhaps MaryLou’s line was originally “I’d like to eat dinner out for a change,” with dinner cut for space reasons, but as it stands Momma is resolutely refusing to explain to her daughter what, exactly, she will be required to eat, and it’s freaking me out. There is only the mysterious, terrifying it. “Too late! It’s ready to eat. You’ll hate it … but you’ll EAT it. Don’t you understand? IT must be C O N S U M E D”

Shoe, 9/15/14

I have to say that I appreciate the fact that there’s a banner halitosis headline on the front page of today’s Treetop Tribune health section, as the Perfesser’s question thus actually sort of makes sense in context now, rather than just being an off-the-cuff joke setup. Maybe Tribune staffers are being tasked with starting real-life “viral” conversations about the paper’s content, in order to compete with these newfangled internet sites and their social media reach? Anyway, Biz the cantankerous old bird-man is chiefly concerned with not dying, so maybe, considering audience demographics for print newspapers, the Tribune health editor ought to be assigning more stories on that topic.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/15/14

Way back in the mists of time, Bull Bushka was not the amiable if slightly dim fellow who appears in the current iteration of the strip, but rather a vicious bully whose narrative purpose was to make Les’s life miserable. Anyway, it’s good to see that, despite his change of heart, he still likes to pull elaborate little pranks to make teenagers feel terrible about themselves.