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Dennis the Menace, 3/18/13

Oh, man, the knowing glances Dennis and Mrs. Wilson are exchanging here speak volumes. Mr. Wilson’s look of peaceful repose, hands crossed contentedly over his chest, can only mean one thing: he’s been dead for months, and Mrs. Wilson hasn’t told anyone so she can keep collecting those sweet Postal Service pension checks. Dennis found out, naturally, but just as naturally is happy to keep her secret, as long as Mrs. Wilson keeps the cookies coming. Preserving Mr. Wilson’s corpse through some no doubt ghastly home mortuary science was not strictly necessary for running the scam, of course; that’s just to allow Mrs. Wilson and Dennis to glory in their satisfaction at the old crank’s death.

Curtis, 3/18/13

Seeing as 90% of Curtis strips are variations on the same five or six jokes, I would not have picked it as the first newspaper comic to use the resignation of Pope Benedict as fodder for a punchline. Only five weeks after he quit, too! In the world of syndicated comic strips, that’s an amount of time that can only be detected with the most delicate of scientific instruments.

Slylock Fox, 3/18/13

More haunting evidence of the terrible cataclysm that wiped out humankind and left Earth in the hands paws of sentient beasts: although New York survived more or less intact, elsewhere whole mountain ranges were submerged by massive flooding. Typically, these creatures may be wearing hats and sailing boats and thinking they’re the ones in charge, but they’re still very keen to dig up some of the valuable remnants of the far superior civilization produced by the late lamented Homo sapiens.

Crock, 3/18/13

This camel is outraged that a bird wants to use his hump for sex.

Heathcliff, 3/18/13

It’s nice to see that Heathcliff and his owner went through the trouble of putting up a festive banner in their living room, to create some holiday context for just staying home and getting bombed out of their skulls.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 2/10/13

Guys, it’s been a long time since we’ve checked in with Slylock and Cassandra Cat’s wrong-side-of-the-law romance. So, what’s up? Hmm, it seems that Cassandra has drunkenly driven up on Sly’s lawn in the middle of the night, and is now making up a fairly pathetic story about why exactly she’s there. “I just … I just happened to be driving this way and then … this squirrel, Granny Squirrel, I always knew she was trouble, she just … she just ran me right off the road! Do you live here? I didn’t even know you lived here. I must have forgotten, or whatever. Oh, hi, Max, you’re here too, I guess that’s not a surprise. Anyhoooo, I gotta … lemme just put this into reverse … unless … you want me to stay? I could … I mean, of course not, God, I’m so stupid, let me just … [weeping]”

Funky Winkerbean, 2/10/13

I know it seems kind of dumb to say this, but … I’m kind of worried about Funky Winkerbean? Like, look, it snowed, and there’s a flurry of activity and people are shoveling out and then A SAD OLD MAN SITS IN A DARKENED ROOM IN A WHEELCHAIR ALONE, LOOKING DOWN AT EVERYTHING HE CAN’T PARTICIPATE IN BECAUSE HE HAD A STROKE. I mean, that’s the punchline. That’s the punchline. This is one of those moments where I think, “Oh, is my stock joke about one of the strips I cover really accurate?” and then realize “Yes, it’s more horribly accurate than I could ever have wanted it to be.”

Curtis, 2/10/13

Whoa, instead of doing a boring old report about some guy he looked up on Wikipedia, Curtis wrote a media studies paper, examining racial attitudes in the United States through the lens of popular cinema! Sadly, this probably will in fact get him in trouble in elementary school.

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Herb and Jamaal, 1/31/13

So, when does a comic make the jump from “funny little joke about life’s foibles” to “horribly depressing”? In the case of today’s Herb and Jamaal, that moment came when the artist decided to add such vivid emotion to Sarah’s face in panel one, as she briefly mistakes Herb’s clumsy reach for the lamp as an attempt to touch her affectionately. Is he going to hug me? Could this actually lead to sex? Haha, don’t be silly, Sarah, you’ve reached a “comfortable” point in your marriage, if you define “comfort” as “a cold, numbing absence of strong feelings of any kind.”

Dick Tracy, 1/31/13

I think traditionally Dick Tracy has used arrow-box-labels to identify the bits of gee-whiz technology the strip’s law-enforcement characters usually deploy. But since things like two-way wrist radios have now been superseded by boring, ordinary cell phones, I guess they’re just now going to be pointing out random objects. Architectural details in early 20th century mausoleums? Skeletons inside said mausoleums, which is exactly the sort of place you’d expect a skeleton to be? Sure, why not!

Spider-Man, 1/31/13

Say, what’s our good friend the Amazing Newspaper Spider-Man been up to since he was physically present when Kraven’s plot was foiled? Well, after finding out that one of his old nemeses was up to his old tricks in San Francisco, he decided to hitchhike from Las Vegas to San Francisco, because of poverty. (Isn’t MJ making decent money as a Broadway actress, enough to subsidize a bus trip or perhaps even coach-class plane travel? Maybe she quite wisely refuses to give him access to her bank account.) Then the guy who picked him up tried to rob him at gunpoint, and then he crushed the barrel of the gun with his bare hands, without the usual seven strips of agonizing about “oh, no, my secret identity,” presumably because whatever happens on I-15 several hours outside of Vegas stays on I-15 several hours outside of Vegas. Today’s strip made me laugh because of how devastated our ne’er-do-well is at the prospect of spending a few minutes looking for his keys in a roadside ditch. I’m thinking if you threaten someone with a gun and he turns out to have superhuman strength, this is probably one of the better possible outcomes?

Slylock Fox, 1/31/13

“So, what’re you doing, bro? I’m just gettin’ baked, makin’ calls on my fuzzy phone, and taking a bath in a tub full of pancake batter.”