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Apartment 3-G, 7/10/10

OMG YOU GUYS TRIPLE MAKEOVER! At long last, the A3G girls will be returned to their sexy, sexy glory days, after they are transformed into such visions of fashion-forwardness as … uh, Kat and Kitty here.

Seriously, this would actually be a pretty intriguing way to transition to a new artist, one with a sexier, more modern style. But I can’t find any information about such a shift of personnel online. Surely King Features would at least put a press release out about it, right? Or just hand-deliver it to me, since my blog is probably the only “media outlet” that would care?

Funky Winkerbean, 7/10/10

Aw, it looks like Funky isn’t dead or traveling through time to harass his younger self after all, just hallucinating from the agony of his body being shattered in a car wreck. “You’re going to be okay, buddy,” the paramedic says, knowing that in Westview, having your deluded mind living out fantasies within your mangled physical form is as “okay” as it gets.

Slylock Fox, 7/10/10

I’m a non-driver and a firm advocate for public transit, but even I will admit that taking the bus reduces’s one’s pimp-cred considerably.

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Slylock Fox, 6/10/10

Ed Power of My Cage has frequently teased us with hints that someday we will learn what happened to all the humans and how his strip came to be populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals. But Slylock, with its more atomized narrative, just sort of takes the new biosphere as a given. Still, today’s Six Differences could be offering a glimpse at the precise moment when the dominance of H. Sapiens over the planet began to falter. A cheerful bird began to attack a gentleman’s newspaper; a freakishly huge spider terrified a nearby child; another bird sat on a rooftop, watching, waiting; and, before anyone could really understand the hows or whys, canines were in charge of law enforcement and Slick Smitty and his few remaining fellow humans were reduced to running petty scams in order to survive in the New Animal Order.

Archie, 6/10/10

What was the cause of humanity’s decline? Panel one of today’s Archie may have an answer. Can you explain what exactly is going on anatomically between Jughead’s feet and his head? Human civilization presumably collapsed either because of rampant genetic abnormalities or pervasive hallucinogenic use.

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Spider-Man, 5/24/10

The final deadly confrontation between Spider-Man and Sabretooth that we’ve all been waiting for has at last arrived — only to be derailed by the appearance of Wolverine. Since Sabretooth was only harassing the web-slinger to find his brother, I assume that Spidey and Mary Jane can now quietly leave the theater and let this family spat work itself out. Whew, another opportunity for superheroics thankfully avoided!

Note that Wolverine learned a little about living the good life from his earlier encounter with Spider-Man: his villainous brother was apparently unable to track him down because he’s been spending his time in his apartment, watching television. I am impressed that he’s no longer sneaking into the back of trucks and instead is flying commercial when he needs to travel long distances.

Slylock Fox, 5/24/10

I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen Dumpy Dog before, and thus the strip doesn’t trust us to automatically assume he’s guilty, even though he displays the poor posture and grooming endemic to the Slylock Fox rogues gallery. “Look, we’ve already done the legwork on this one, OK?” the strip is essentially telling us. “Just count the damn spiders.” I guess this is how Max feels, all the time?

Archie, 5/24/10

Archie’s dad remembers a day when youth were afire with literary passions! They stayed up late at fashionable salons, smoking and drinking wine and arguing the merits of the latest Booker Prize winner until the wee hours. They really believed that prose could change the world, and thus it’s terribly depressing to him that the next generation sees in printed matter only utility. There is a cold majesty to the practical advice in the books Archie reads, but the magic that once animated his father’s days is long gone.

Family Circus, 5/24/10

Speaking of the death of enchantment, the Keane Kids are so crushed by omnipresent corporate culture that their very souls are stunted. The transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, once a source of such wonder to so many generations of children, has in their minds been reduced to an act no more interesting than the elevation of a group coordinator to an assistant regional manager. One imagines the chrysalis bursting open and the butterfly shaking its wings free, only to settle into a cubicle just slightly larger than the one it left, under the glow of the same harsh fluorescent lighting, wondering if this was really worth all the striving.

Jumble, 5/24/10

Now here’s a kid who hasn’t lost his belief in magic. “Remember, if you see your presents before your birthday, they’ll vanish into the ether! And mommy will know you’ve been naughty, and will kill you with her mind.”