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Mary Worth, 10/14/12

Jim Romenesko’s media blog has already covered the unusually flush finances of Woods and Wildlife magazine, but has been neglecting the turmoil on the feature pages of the Santa Royale Gazette-Whatever. Wilbur Weston is fully focused on his new survivors column, “I Shouldn’t Be ALive,” leaving Mary to keep noodling along with “Ask Wendy.” Absent any editorial supervision, she has quite clearly gone completely insane. Having long ago forgotten that the “Ask” in the name indicates that she’s supposed to be responding to reader letters, she now just unloads her philosophy on her readers in long, stream-of-consciousness rants. “None of us can solve the problem of evil! The ever-changing nature of the universe and the self has bedeviled humanity since the age of Heraclitus! Only through immediate action, directed by my iron will, can life have any meaning! OBEY ME, READERS! OBEY WENDY! OBEY!”

Blondie, 10/14/12

Over the course of most of this comic, I found it charming that Dagwood was imagining that he had a hooting, rowdy audience for the latest instance of his thrice-daily sandwich-building ritual. But when I realized it was actually Elmo providing the audience reactions, it suddenly got a lot more pathetic.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/14/12

Oh, nothing much in today’s Slylock Fox, just Reeky Rat and his punk friends sneaking a extremely filthy double entendre of a band name into comics pages across America.

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Beetle Bailey, 9/22/12

I know it doesn’t pay to overthink Beetle Bailey (though I do, constantly; “Overthinking Beetle Bailey” will be the name of my autobiography), but one sign that your strip isn’t very good is that there’s really no coherent background that could explain the action we see in the first panel. Have the men of Camp Swampy been sent on a Bigfoot hunt by meddling government scientists who have somehow got the ear of top Pentagon brass? General Halftrack may not have a PhD in cryptozoology, but he still feels that he knows how likely it is that various sites might have Bigfoot infestations!

The easiest explanation is, as ever, total madness, which is to say that the most likely thing is that Halftrack is barking incoherent complaints into a bar of soap to nobody and is about to be waylaid by the weird, underimagined hallucination we see in panel two. But that’s undermined by the fact that the flat black rectangle he’s pressing to his face is a shockingly accurate depiction of a 2012-era smartphone. I mean, usually in Beetle Bailey you’d expect him to be talking into something with a huge antenna or maybe a curly phone cord trailing off to nowhere at the bottom of the panel. The presence of a recognizable piece of modern technology in this strip ought to shake you to your very core. On the other hand, it’s possible that the cellphone industry’s industrial designers have finally created objects so simple and minimalist that even Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC can draw them.

Slylock Fox, 9/22/12

That’s right, kids, don’t worry about the horrifying, violent fights between your parents, the ones that always attract the attention of the police, the ones that are literally tearing your house apart. Just focus on the Six Differences. Find the Six Differences and it’ll be OK.

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Gil Thorp, 9/17/12

“Let’s put it this way … we only have one bonfire, and it burns forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Constant human sacrifice is necessary to keep the sacred flames alive, but we consider this a small price to pay for its numinous protection. Surely your own Druid ancestors would approve! Oh, yeah, and, like, we get all jazzed up about football too, I guess. But mostly we’re into the searing fire of divine grace.”

Slylock Fox, 9/17/12

Oh, Slylock! Your fancy science knowledge might explain why those balloons popped, but elementary physics will never help you understand why this innocent birthday party for children so quickly turned into a scene of vicious adult accusations and recriminations.

Marmaduke, 9/17/12

Marmaduke has finally succeeded in digging a hole back to the hell-dimension from which he was long ago exiled, and now he plans to climb down a ladder he stole from a fireman he ate and reclaim his awful kingdom.

Ziggy, 9/17/12

The mice who live in Ziggy’s walls are really into whip-its, but tonight things have gotten out of hand.

Wizard of Id, 9/17/12

Sir Rodney’s date caught a venereal disease from a frog.