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Apartment 3-G, 8/30/13

Uh oh, looks like there’s another proposal in the works for Lu Ann! She was already engaged to Scott Gaines the cartoonishly rich janitor in 2005 and then got engaged to Paul Linski on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and I think she was engaged to someone else in between there too? I’m blanking now. We all know the chances of Lu Ann ever actually marrying anybody are nil, because that’d ruin the strip and also she’s emotionally and intellectually a child, so I guess the drama is whether she’ll accept the proposal and then dump the governor later or just kick him to the curb right now.

I suppose it’s appropriate that Lu Ann is most frequently engaged Apartment 3-G girl, since Margo is too much woman for most men; her one shot at marriage came when she found an engagement ring while snooping around her boyfriend’s apartment, right before he died in an avalanche. Pretty sure Tommie’s never been engaged, but even if she had been I’m certain it was super-boring and am not even going to bother hunting through my archives to find the sad evidence.

Momma, 8/30/13

This punchline was supposed to read “699,” right? Because otherwise Momma’s really managing to luck out!

Shoe, 8/30/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because the sexy lady bird has breast implants! Also, she’s sitting like five feet away from these other bird-people who are all ogling and/or gossiping about her. SHE CAN TOTALLY HEAR YOU, GUYS.

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Mark Trail, 8/7/13

The cruelty of Nature is well documented, but the cruelty of Mark Trail, Man of Nature, retains its power to shock. Blissed-out Rusty nurses his otter and dreams of fishing, but mere days from now he will have neither otter, nor fishing, nor any last shred of hope. Mark just twists the knife, while Andy’s mind is all on dinner. Say — maybe they’ll have fish!

Beetle Bailey, 8/7/13

In the grip of his alcoholic hallucinations, General Halftrack misinterprets Lieutenant Fuzz’s invitation to Where the Wild Things Are costume sexplay. Lt. Fuzz takes it as a rebuff and retires to his quarters for another long night of Patton, tears, and self-abuse.

9 Chickweed Lane (panel), 8/7/13

OK, I take back all the terrible things I said about the Not-Ardins’ mouths yesterday.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/7/13

Heather’s hissy fit reminds Rex what June has in store for him when he gets home. Four months wasted figuring out Milton’s vomiting might be something he ate, and no boat or free meal in it for them anywhere? And now he’s supposed to look into the Alzheimer’s thing, too? These wealthy, entitled jerks! Why, if Milton weren’t his only patient ….

Shoe, 8/7/13

Well OK on the face of it this is one of those “reverse-engineered from the punchline” jokiform utterances we see so often in Shoe, Archie, and Herb and Jamaal. A real-life bird-woman would say, “I surprised my husband in fishnet stockings”, but where are you gonna go with that when you’re on deadline and that tee-time is coming up fast, huh?

But on a deeper level, blondie here is being really unfair — I mean, sometimes a fella just wants to feel pretty, and pantyhose is gross in August and it’s not like I didn’t double-check to see what time you were coming back. Wait — HE! He didn’t check!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Shoe, 7/29/13

So, here you go: Shoe finally takes a stab at acknowledging that its denizens are sentient bird-men and -women, with puzzling results. First of all, I can’t believe I never made the flappers-bird connection before, and am reasonably sure that there’s some elaborate sentient-bird-women-as-flappers fan drawings out there, possibly on DeviantArt, possibly in the context of an all-sentient-bird Great Gatsby graphic novel. And yet the whole potential crossover is wasted, for the most part. Instead, Loon just tells a weird story about how his aunt used her unremarkable-in-this-context power of flight to … transcend to a higher plane of existence? Like in Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Or maybe she just died of exhaustion/oxygen deprivation? Anyway, if there were ever a situation where Shoe’s patented goggle eyes of horror would be appropriate, it’s this one — “let me tell you a fun story about my aunt that ends in her disappearance and probable death” — but instead the Perfesser just stares straight ahead with dead-eyed numbness. He stopped listening to Loon hours ago. He just says “Yeah?” during conversational lulls to feign politeness.

Gil Thorp, 7/29/13

It may be no Gail Martin mystery, but this summer’s Gil Thorp storyline has been zany in a low-key way, involving an amiable, Alzheimer’s-stricken ex-pro-wrestler and his also ex-pro-wrestler son wandering the nation on the dad’s whims. Today, our senile king of the squared circle is going to teach One-Armed Steve some wrestling moves! Steve seems amused and convinced this will all be in fun, about which he may turn out to be mistaken.

Family Circus, 7/29/13

I guess the tattered state of Jeffy’s blanket is meant to indicate that it’s a well-loved security object for him, but I prefer a different interpretation: it’s decayed during his multi-decade, Rip van Winkle-style nap. No, I’m not sure why Jeffy hasn’t gotten older or why his clothes and house are still intact, even though his family long since moved away and/or died. The important thing is that Jeffy has been thrust alone into a world he no longer understands, OK? Just … just give me this.