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Marvin, 5/30/12

At this point in my life I’m pretty deep in the throes of Marvin Derangement Syndrome, so I don’t really ever expect to find satisfaction in this feature’s panels. But I have to admit that I feel a certain amount of validation in knowing that even the other characters in the strip are disgusted at the thought of looking at more images of Marvin.

Ballard Street, 5/30/12

Ballard Street is a generally amusing one-paneler that depicts a mostly interchangeable cast of characters engaging in insane and inscrutable activities, so I usually leave it alone, but I thought that today’s installment, in which the punchline basically boils down to “Chip got drunk and passed out on the couch,” was worthy of your attention.

Six Chix, 5/30/12

I was going to huff that a plant needs the energy it derives from sunlight via photosynthesis in order to engage in the metabolic processes that this woman is demanding, but then I just decided to respect this panel for what it is: the melancholy tale of a person who feels so powerless in her everyday life that she comes home and bullies her plants.

Pluggers, 5/30/12

A plugger’s life is an awful charnel house in which everyone around them is dead or dying.

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Judge Parker, 5/25/12

It’s nice to know that I can do my best to come up with a ludicrously favorable plot outcome for a Judge Parker hero and still undershoot things. See, I thought that Avery Blackstone would sign off on Sam’s unduly generous and hastily written contract proposals only after Sam proved his fly-fishing prowess, when in fact Avery is so eager to spend some dude time with Sam that he’s willing to just skip the hard-hitting negotiations that are the entirety of his job duties. Presumably, once the two of them head down to a trout-filled brook, one of their flies will snag on the handle of a suitcase half-buried in the stream bed. They’ll pull it out and open it, find millions of dollars in bundled hundreds, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Mark Trail, 5/25/12

“Plus, I suppose, emotionally devastated, world falling apart, blah blah blah. I don’t know her very well, so I can’t say for sure that she has basic human emotions.”

Mary Worth, 5/25/12

“But wait, Dawn, I wanted to show you my latest invention — half ham sandwich, half Pop-Tart. I call it a Meat-Tart! Instead of frosting, it has mayonnaise!”

Ziggy, 5/25/12

In the post-apocalyptic future, the dwindling supplies of food are under the control of warlords and their gangs, and these thugs won’t accept the dead government’s fiat money in payment. They’ll only take payment in ammo and sex, and Ziggy is out of luck on both counts.

Six Chix, 5/25/12

The American judicial system’s hidden crisis: horny old ladies.

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Blondie, 5/22/12

We here at the Comics Curmudgeon spend a lot of time ragging on long-running legacy strips, which decades ago ceased to be the work of an artist/visionary and are instead staffed by hired guns in the employ of the intellectual property owners. But we don’t say enough about the advantages of this kind of working environment! Let’s say that, back in the summer of 2006, you come up with a funny joke — ha ha, did you know that the youth of today will pay good money for pants that are already torn up? mercy! — only to discover that lots and lots and lots and lots of your fellow cartoonists had the same idea! So you’d probably chuck it and try to come up with something else, if you were just working on your own. But if you were a cog in some legacy comic’s great machine, you’d have an advantage over your lone wolf competitors because you’d have access to what sociologists call “institutional memory.” You’d just file the joke idea away in the company Outlook calendar, and set an alarm for when everyone’s long forgotten about haha-torn-jeans jokes. Five years should do it, right? Let’s call it a shade short of six, just to be safe. Come 2012, whoever’s got your job (lord knows it won’t be you) will see the alert pop up and have the day’s strip already half written.

Six Chix, 5/22/12

Huh, against all expectations the puzzling tale of the two young birds that had sex and then had baby birds is continuing, and continuing to be puzzling! “I like the cute young guys, but this time I went to far, in that I had sex with a cute young guy and then had children, ugh.”

Dennis the Menace, 5/22/12

“Mostly I’ve just been in here watching TV, so I guess there really aren’t that many details to fill in. Hey, since you’re up, would mind wiping up the drool-puddle I’m leaving on the ottoman?”

Spider-Man, 5/22/12

Don’t worry, comic-book action fans, the current Spider-Man plot isn’t just going to be about how Peter Parker feels sexually threatened when his wife talks to handsome men! It’s also about how he feels inadequate when he talks to other superheroes.