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Mary Worth, 1/27/13

A comment of the week from December demanded it, and so it has been done: today’s Mary Worth has provided a genuine cake-decorating-training montage. Feel free to play the theme from Rocky in your head while reading it, or, if you’re feeling saucy and/or 90s nostalgic, Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” Personally, I’m more interested in John’s relaxed, cheerful facial expression as he declares that this is a victory or death situation, and that the Santa Royale Civic Center will either echo with his bellows of triumph or be splattered by an awful melange of batter and blood.

Archie, 1/27/13

“Why do I get the feeling that Riverdale High isn’t going to qualify for Race to the Top funding for innovation in education any time soon? Maybe it’s because our ‘homework’ consists of simple questions on disparate subjects, the answers to which require no critical thinking skills and could easily be looked up on the Internet.”

Panel from Judge Parker, 1/27/13

“And he’s dying!” “Too bad!” Really wish this strip had featured Sam staring bemusedly at a six-figure check because then I could just quit reading Judge Parker and look at this panel every day forever.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/27/13

Haha, yes, the salinity of the Dead Sea, but also COUNT WEIRDLY’S FACE EMERGING FROM A HATCH THAT OPENS IN THE VERY FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE.

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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.