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Slylock Fox, 11/7/11

Oh, Reeky! Foiled by the waiter’s clumsiness … and some dirty snitch who will be getting a Reeky-style ass-kicking as soon as Reeky can post bail, obviously. Still, you have to wonder if this little restaurant heist hasn’t compromised our rodent antihero’s dignity a little bit. Reeky normally styles his hair to show his contempt for society, whether he’s wearing it in a resplendent pompadour/mullet, or maybe just a shag dyed manic panic red. For this job at a snooty restaurant, though, he apparently feels compelled to shape his hair into some kind of hideous helmet, which is presumably the sort of haircut that he thinks would be worn by a respectable people, whom he views through a veil of seething class-based contempt. I dearly hope that his plan was to whip off this awful wig and let his true ’do cascade magnificently down his neck, right before he pulled out his gun and snarled out his demand that the assembled bougies start handing over their valuables.

Luann, 11/7/11

So, things have been happening in Luann, and I guess I’m supposed to be telling you about them? See, Toni physically threatened Brad’s boss and we’re supposed to like her and … no, wait, uh, see, Toni and Anne are jockeying for Brad’s sexual favors and … gah, no, um, Brad needs this minimum wage job at Weenie World to maintain his dignity, and … er, by which I mean, Anne is thrusting her breasts around because Brad is supposed to be desirable, I guess, and you know what? I can’t do it. Look up the archives if you really need the info, I can’t deal with it.

Judge Parker, 11/7/11

“The problem is she doesn’t have a boy, and the solution is that she’s buying one! It’s like you’re not even paying attention.”

Apartment 3-G, 11/7/11

Ha ha, Ruby’s swivel-headed look of horror in panel two is priceless. “Lu Ann, I’ve held my tongue about your pre-marital whoring because I know that’s how they do things in the big city, but I will not let the sanctity of wedding dress symbolism be violated! Your dress is champagne colored or I walk.“

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Slylock Fox, 10/26/11

That’s right, kids! Many of your favorite films were actually derived from so-called “books”! In these mysterious objects, speech is transformed into a series of pictogram-like scribblings, based on a method designed by the ancient Phoenicians. Doesn’t it sound mysterious and exciting? Doesn’t it make you want to achieve at least basic literacy, enough to be able to read your daily newspaper and the comics therein? Just think, you’ll know the endings to all of Hollywood’s major motion pictures (like Ape Noogie, coming this fall from New Line Cinema) before any of your friends — if you read the books first!

Mary Worth, 10/26/11

Maybe you find yourself unable to enjoy Mary Worth either sincerely or ironically. But can’t you at least enjoy Mary’s propensity to haunt pie joints? As usual, the subtly weird perspective in this strip makes it hard to tell how far anything is from anything else or how big it is, but I’m guessing that pie in the background in panel two is at least two feet in diameter.

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Crock, 10/17/11

It may demolish everything you hold dear to hear this, but, when I go on vacation, I often don’t catch up on many of the comics that otherwise make up my daily rotation. I mean, obviously I need to keep up to date on every bizarre moment in Gil Thorp (OMG THERE IS AN ASPERGER’S SYNDROME STORYLINE YOU GUYS FOOTBALL SEASON MAY GET GOOD/HORRIFYINGLY ILL-CONCEIVED YET), but, you know, I usually don’t feel like I really need to check in with all the Crocks I missed just for completeness’s sake. And yet today’s installment left me scrambling through the archives, desperate to figure out if, as the word “still” in the opening word balloon here implies, that there was some sort of ongoing plot involving the two hotbox prisoners finally going insane due to heat and isolation. But no, there’s no explanation, really, except maybe this, which only makes sense if the prisoners in the hotboxes are also vultures. Which seems insane, but, when you think about it, no more insane than the idea that one of the hotbox prisoners is having a psychotic break in which several cultural touchstones from the 1980s and 1990s merge together to form some kind of spectacularly unfunny punchline-like utterance. But focusing on the details here causes us to miss the important big picture, which is: don’t do drugs, kids, for serious.

Spider-Man, 10/17/11

I understand and respect those who simply cannot work up the energy to deal with newspaper Spider-Man on its incredibly inane terms, but really, panel two does remind me why I love it so. I’m trying to parse precisely what kind of dumb Spidey is supposed to be exhibiting here; my guess is that he truly believes that MJ has spontaneously acquired spider-sensing powers, which comes as an enormous shock to him because he knows better than anyone else that his supposed supposed spider-sense doesn’t actually exist.

Slylock Fox, 10/17/11

Fun fact for you: frogs and toads are no longer considered distinct groupings by biologists. The order Anura embraces all frogs and toads; any species of that order that lives most of its life on land is labelled a “toad,” but these species don’t have a single common ancestor distinct from the common ancestor of everything in Anura. I found this out while doing a bit of research to come up with a joke about this strip. Slylock Fox may call itself “Comics for Kids,” but I’m 37 years old and I still learned something from it! So I feel a little churlish pointing out that today’s puzzle’s solution hinges on something of a scientific inaccuracy, and furthermore that said solution focuses on the amphibian life cycle and yet the illustrative comic includes a frog with a belly button.