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Apartment 3-G, 1/21/13

Sorry everybody, I know I’ve been falling down on the job a bit when it comes to reading Apartment 3-G so you don’t have to. So, after Margo got really blotto, Greg gently dumped her into bed. But wait! Remember Evan, all dressed up in his Druid robe? He left his giant package in Margo’s closet (note: not a euphemism)! And it was apparently a pink-smoke emitting incendiary bomb? Is … is Evan secretly a villain from the Adam West Batman TV show?

Funky Winkerbean, 1/21/13

In other keeping-you-updated news, despite my initial interpretation of last Tuesday’s strip, there’s nothing wrong with Darrin’s mother, except that she’s emotionally devastated after Darrin’s father suffered a stroke. How is it that you can know your whole life that someday you’ll be gutted by something terrible that will inevitably happen to you or someone you dearly love, and yet you still aren’t prepared for it? That’s just how you manage to live your life in an universe of cruel and unending trauma, I guess!

Hagar the Horrible, 1/21/13

Oh, that Hagar, what a jokester! Obviously he doesn’t “buy” houses; he just starts living in them, after his bloodthirsty band of Viking warriors murder the owners.

Heathcliff, 1/21/13

I’m pretty sure that if I churned out a series of paintings of sexy cats sitting on piles of filth, I could get a gallery show in one of Brooklyn’s hipper neighborhoods.

Slylock Fox, 1/21/13

The solution to this puzzle, if you don’t feel like turning your head/monitor upside down, is that we know Wanda is lying because thunder doesn’t cause lightning. You know what else doesn’t cause lightning? Witches.

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Mark Trail, 1/19/13

Here’s a free tip from a semi-professional writer person (and yes, the novel is coming along, everybody!): if anyone in your story says “As you know,” you’ve failed! You’re trying to wedge in some backstory in a “natural” way, but in the real world, people don’t go around telling each other things that they both already know. Try maybe introducing this information by having a character who doesn’t know it learn about it? Or even just have it conveyed by the omniscient authorial voice — there’s no shame in that, if you do it deftly!

Usually, of course, this clumsy technique is meant to introduce some information specific to the narrative at hand, but using it for a sweeping statement like “Most fishermen are good people” takes it to another level. I actually had never even considered that fishermen were more or less likely to be good than members of the population at large until ol’ Bluegill felt like he needed to make such a big deal about it; now I’m troubled by how little we really know about these sinister boot-wearing fish-murderers. Sure, they say their flies are made of fur, feather, thread, or other such material, but do we know for sure they aren’t made from human skin? It would be irresponsible not to speculate. If we went into Bluegill’s basement, would we find horrific kill-chamber? Almost certainly!

Slylock Fox, 1/19/13

Meanwhile, Slylock Fox continues to be the sleaziest comic in the newspaper. I don’t know if spraying a consenting partner with liquid out of your nose technically falls under the sexual category of “water sports,” but the satisfied, tongue-lolling expression on this duck makes it clear that this is no innocent bath.

Gil Thorp, 1/19/13

Speaking of bird perversions, you might think based on Scott’s thrilled expression in panel three that “the peacock” is what the kids are calling penises these days. Sadly, his girlfriend is just referring to an actual, albeit maybe magical, peacock.

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Mark Trail, 11/12/12

It seemed so natural, right from the start. The kindly old man who taught him the island’s secrets. The boy, normally proportioned, pre-orphaned and adoption-ready — who made no demands and cared nothing for fishing, content to play in the sand. The young widow, Ava, fit and eager like Cherry when they were new in love, a spark of interest in her soft eyes smoldering slowly into something more. And Andy, his rock. No place could be home without Andy. But this place — this could be home. Had always been his home.

Cherry filled her days making coffee and pancakes. Bill’s calls, full of wild excuses about a ransom no one ever expected to be paid, slowed and then stopped, to their mutual relief. But she watched in growing horror as Rusty huddled dead-eyed in the shack he built near the rotting pier, tying ever more garish and disturbing trout flies that he never used, wouldn’t sell, and finally grew too ashamed even to show her.

They met again, once — even touched. Mark on a supply run from the small island, Cherry on a desperate vacation from Doc’s endless gibbering and Rusty’s nightlong howls, their hands brushed reaching for the store’s last box of Bisquick. Cherry gasped as the caress of ruined, sinew-knotted knuckles resurrected longings she thought had been buried years before. Their eyes met, but Mark’s saw only an old woman, face frozen into a mask of bitterness and resignation. He let her keep the box out of pity, and never thought of her again.

The boy tried to run Otto’s kidnapping operation but had no head for the business side. The small island filled with unclaimed hostages, taxing the feeble aquifer — and the ocean only rose. At last one day, when the typhoid had claimed Ava and the boy sat in jail from a ransom sting, Mark brought Andy to the remaining boat and set sail for the mainland. He would keep them alive by fishing — surely a Man of Nature could remember how.

Dick Tracy, 11/12/12

Walt Wallet is at least one hundred and twelve years old, but despite a failed attempt to send him to the Old Comics Home in 2006, Gasoline Alley just can’t seem to pull the trigger on the old coot. So they’re outsourcing the job to Dick Tracy, the most efficient killing machine on Planet Earth. ‘Bye, Walt.

Slylock Fox, 11/12/12

With Mark on extended leave, the King brings in a couple temps to manage poacher-catching. Since Slylock knows only one human, expect Slick Smitty to be hauled off to jail any minute on some far-fetched pretext: “There are no taxis to Liberty Island!” “You ate the vegetables while standing in the garden!” “Only the real mouse has a tail!” “Anteaters don’t have teeth!” “Your earrings are cold!”

Is anybody else troubled by what “poaching” might mean in a kingdom populated exclusively by animals? I believe the rhino has given the matter some thought.

Say, I don’t see a ring on King Dandy Lion’s fingertoe — could he and Princess Pussycat be planning a merger of the realms once Slylock has exterminated the remaining humans? I hear wedding bells! Oh, wait — those are death knells. Catchy tune, though.

— Uncle Lumpy