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Mary Worth, 11/29/11

So, whatever the Mary-gets-her-purse-stolen plot lacked in action or interest of any kind, it made up for in brevity. Mary gets her purse stolen, Mary and Toby prattle on about fraud alerts and lists of credit card numbers for a few weeks, and now we’re apparently done. The whole thing only took a month! Remember, a month in real time generally covers a period of Mary Worth story time so short that it can only be detected with extremely precise scientific instruments.

And now we’re on to a heartbreaking missing child plot, as Mary stares at poor Emily’s poster, heavy-lidded and smug (“Well, at least I didn’t have my child stolen. Really, these Smith people ought to have been more vigilant”). Personally, I’m hoping very strongly that the purse-snatching was just the set-up to the real action. What if Emily has been kidnapped by the thieves who stole Mary’s purse, because they’re assembling a Dickensian child-pickpocket ring? That sounds pretty dastardly, but you have to admit that people who dress like this are capable of anything.

Archie, 11/29/11

Oh, man, I sure hope that these ’90s Archie reruns continue to be our window into the sort of things out-of-touch adults thought kids cared about, in the ’90s! Yesterday it was teen pregnancy, and today it’s parental advisory labels on music. Just as young people say “bad” when they mean “good,” they also take warning labels as an indication that music is worth listening to! Also big with the youth in the ’90s: mullets, and t-shirts that use transitive slang verbs intransitively.

Six Chix, 11/29/11

Ha ha! It’s funny because these birds will freeze to death, because they’re poor!

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Six Chix, 11/8/11

I’m a little puzzled by the visual messaging going on here. The icon of the culty robed figure, standing on a public street and holding a sign, is well established in the cartoonist’s vocabulary, if not in reality. Usually these people are bearded old dudes, and I’ll accept the divergence from the type here to accommodate Six Chix’s lady-centric mission, but the placards they carry generally offer dire warnings of impending apocalypse, and so I don’t buy the slightly too wordy (is “Hugs Not Drugs” trademarked?) anti-drug PSA this woman is perpetrating. I do like the sassy pill-popper’s response, though. “Oh, honey, I can go days and days without physical contact with another human being — let’s be honest, most of them smell bad or linger too long or both — but it’s been four hours since I took my last Vicodin and I’m really starting to miss it, you know?”

Mark Trail, 11/8/11

I certainly hope that Kelly Welly’s article is just an expansion of what we see in panel three, which is to say that it should be page after page of closeup photos of her eyes and bangs overlaid with free associated noun phrases. It will win every single Pulitzer Prize available.

Apartment 3-G, 11/8/11

Meanwhile, the Apartment 3-G writer and artist are in the middle of one of their “you are going to draw things if I have to kill you” spats. “What will it take to get you to draw clothing that is not boring? Lu Ann’s breasts? Is that what it takes? Fine.”

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Six Chix, 10/25/11

Aw, I like the mildly desperate grin that the skeleton is sporting in that costume shop window. “Ladies! Zombies are just as done as vampires! Skeletons are the new hotness! We’re shambling and terrifying and undead just like zombies, but without all that distasteful rotting flesh! Remember the Jason and the Argonauts movie, where he sword-fights with skeletons? Remember how bad-ass that was? SKELETONS! I … no, please, come into the shop … buy some of our skeleton paraphernalia … oh, God, I’m so lonely …”

Gil Thorp, 10/25/11

I’m really truly excited about Gil Thorp tackling the sensitive subject of Asperger’s Syndrome and totally botching it, but for right now I’d like to focus on good ol’ Wildcat, presiding over what appears to be a Milford Booster Club dinner party. Notice that everyone else is casual clothes, while Wildcat is gussied up in a white tuxedo, bow tie slightly askew. Is he coming home from his day job as a croupier? Or will “raising the formality of Milford Booster Club meetings” be his next crusade, right after he finds the Mudlarks a new kicker (precise location on the autistic spectrum unimportant)?

Momma, 10/25/11

Poor spelling is of course something we should be rightfully condemn, but we should at least give these pint-size taggers props for putting up graffiti with a philosophical message, no matter how nihilistic. Most vandalism seeks merely to aggrandize the vandal, or to mark out the territory of various criminal syndicates; these young men have instead proclaimed their bleak worldview to the city. Kudos!

Apartment 3-G, 10/25/11

“Thank goodness, everyone has stopped expecting any sort of achievement out of me. That’s a relief! Guess I’ll slip back into invisibility and quiet desperation once again. Really, it’s what I do best!”