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Slylock Fox, 8/9/09

Of all the unfairly persecuted victims in Slylock Fox, Count Weirdly is clearly the most unfairly persecuted. Gosh, he’s developed some sort of revolutionary hologram chamber than can create what appears to be real environments out of thin air, and Slylock is complaining that every detail isn’t perfect? What sort of anal-retentive jerk would insist that the world created in such a holochamber should mimic reality as closely as possible, anyway? If you want to see owls with regular claws, you can just go out into the woods. If you want to see owls with webbed feet, though, you’ll need to go pay $125 an hour to enter the Count Weirdly Total Fantasy Experience Capsule™. (FINE PRINT: Count Weirdly Total Fantasy Experience Capsule™ customers will be eaten by alligators.)

Family Circus, 8/9/09

My favorite part of this cartoon is Mommy’s disgruntled look, as she knows that she’ll be responsible for dealing with the aftermath of Daddy’s terrifying tales. “Who’s going to go down to the river and wash all this soiled underwear by hand?” “Not me!”

Mark Trail, 8/9/09

This strip seems like a desperate attempt to make amends for the spike in rabies treatments that resulted from last year’s insane “Sneaky the raccoon is a delightful pet” storyline. “Remember, kids, if you’re concerned about rabies, only allow non-rabid raccoons to live with you in your house! They’ll still hoard all of your shiny objects in a nest in your crawlspace and viciously scratch at your face if you try to take them back, though.”

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 8/9/09

“Yes, Cody, I’ll miss all the ‘rides’ with you. Oh, and the horse too. Once again, Margo’s problems mean enforced celibacy for everyone else!”

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Crankshaft, 7/20/09

Oh ho. Oh HO HO HO. Remember a few years ago, when beloved comic strip Funky Winkerbean killed off one of its main characters and then leapt pell-mell a decade into the future (of internal narrative space, not of absolute time)? Of course you do, because you’re all comics obsessives, but even if you weren’t, chances are you might have heard of it because there was actual coverage of this event by the legitimate media. And here today, in Funkyverse sister strip Crankshaft, we appear to have the exact same chronological discontinuity happening, which, as near as the Google can tell, has been mentioned exactly nowhere. Ha ha, Crankshaft, nobody likes you, just like nobody likes your title character!

You’ll forgive me for chortling just a little at the sight of Crankshaft’s slumped, broken form slouching semi-consciously in a wheelchair, kept alive by machines and underpaid but still perky nurse’s aides. Normally I’d only have the deepest sympathy for someone whose body and mind have been ravaged by time until they’re only a shell of their former self, but since Crankshaft is (a) a fictional character and (b) a colossal dick, I’m not feeling too guilty about my terrible glee.

Anyway, in the absence of any sort of Big Event-style coverage, I’m guessing that this is a temporary thing, a brief glimpse into the ’Shaft’s terrible future — or, if the middle panel is any indication, his future and his past, like Slaughterhouse Five with less firebombing and more groan-inducing puns. Eventually we’ll settle back on the present, in which Crankshaft is old and cranky but not senile or wheelchair-ridden. The journey will have made him more sympathetic to us, right up to the first time that he opens his mouth.

Gil Thorp, 7/20/09

Wait, are we sure that Shep Trumbo isn’t behind this? Because the sinister message on that baseball appears to be written in text-speak, and if there’s one thing I remember about the Shep Trumbo storyline despite my best efforts to purge it from my memory, it’s that it involved texting in some way. (Though I guess a full-on text-stalker-ball would read “U O M3.”)

Anyway, I just thought of someone else from the past who could be sinisterly stalking Gil: Brent Raptor! Or, better yet, Brent Raptor’s mom! Brent was a pudgy white kid who played baseball for Gil a few years ago and loved the rap music, thus earning the nickname “Rap-Dog,” which was probably meant to be insulting and/or ironic but he adopted it because it was the only affection anyone ever showed him. Brent’s life was made a living hell by his trashy, overbearing mother, out from under whose thumb Gil tried very hard to extract Brent, eventually succeeding by arranging for her to take a trip to Phoenix (really!). Anyway, since obviously nobody has ever done anything in return for a trip to Phoenix, I’m guessing Gil made a dark, secret promise to Mrs. Raptor, and now she’s come to collect … in blood. Or in off-brand corn chips and menthol cigarettes, which would seem more her style.

Mark Trail, 7/20/09

Jack Elrod knew he’d come under fire from religious and cultural conservatives for his latest work, Virgin Mar(k/y): Pieta. Fortunately, his editors at the syndicate knew that the newspaper comics were the last venue where uncompromising art like this could be showcased, and published it without fear of the consequences.

Archie, 7/20/09

The funniest thing about this Archie — other than Reggie getting punched in the face, obviously — is the lava lamp decorating the floor of Archie’s makeshift ashram in the first panel. Because meditation = the ’70s = lava lamps, obviously! Ha ha, the AJGLU 3000 has no idea what year it is.

Slylock Fox, 7/20/09

More proof that Shady Shrew is an unlovable loser: as his yellow bandana indicates, he was considered insufficiently cool to join either the Bloods or the Crips, and instead had to affiliate himself with a lesser gang, the “7th Avenue Insectivore Crew.”

Beetle Bailey, 7/20/09

Oh, Beetle, we know you yearn for Sarge’s abusive attentions, but you should really try being at least a little subtle about it.

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Family Circus, 7/19/09

You might have noticed the title of the book Big Daddy Keane is reading to his little ankle-biters, Rat and Pig Get Lost, which is an installment in a good-natured back and forth between the Family Circus and Pearls Before Swine. More intriguing, though, is what this cartoon reveals about the Keane Kids: not only are they illiterate, but they can’t even sit still to be read aloud to, and rather will wander in the direction of the hypnotic, glowing picture box, the better to move their brains past their current gelatinous state and straight on into liquidity.

Mary Worth, 7/19/09

While this installment might seem to be taking place immediately on the heels of yesterday’s, with Mary tidying up and thought-ballooning like mad and Delilah wandering aimlessly around the grounds, note that both ladies have changed into completely different (though still hideous) outfits, so this could be days or months later. But apparently enough time has passed that Delilah is finally ready to make a call … to her dealer, if her freakishly enlarged pupils are any indication.

Slylock Fox, 7/19/09

The main mystery panel in today’s strip is fairly bland — another fox-mouse double date leading up to some drunken partner-swapping that the radical differences in size will make incredibly awkward — but I’m pretty intrigued by the scene over in Six Differences. Are the woodland herbivores engaging in some kind of Druid ritual to call down a lightning strike against their predator-enemy, the terrible wolf? I hope the pagan magic will keep the beavers safe, as I’m not sure the open water is the best place to be in a thunderstorm.