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Crock, 10/19/08

I’m not sure which thought is more disturbing: that this is some sort of metaphor for pubic hair depilation, or that it’s a straightforward and genuinely insane comic about cactuses having sex.

Family Circus, 10/19/08

In order to keep Jeffy pure, his parents are sheltering him from troubling concepts such as “genitals.”

Slylock Fox, 10/19/08

Oh, Cassandra, isn’t trying to worm your way out of speeding tickets kind of beneath you? For that matter, isn’t stopping speeders kind of beneath the chief of police? Look, just show some leg, thus disabling the part of Chief Mutt’s brain that can do math, and we can all forget that any of this ever happened.

Panel from Blondie, 10/19/08

This is way more than I ever wanted to know about Mr. Dithers’ personal life.

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Slylock Fox, 10/12/08

This here in a nutshell is why my growing affection for Reeky Rat doesn’t translate into respect for his fellow small-mammal small-time crook, Shady Shrew. When caught in his acts of petty theft, Reeky adopts an air of sneering bravado, spinning alibis so outrageous that he’s almost daring you to throw him in jail. Shady, on the other, just seems pathetic, his attempts at pinning his pointless crimes (stealing tires off a police car?) on others just coming across as increasingly desperate improvisations. In addition, Reeky has an inimitable sense of style, while Shady favors the baggy, shapeless uniform of furtive perverts everywhere.

Funky Winkerbean, 10/12/08

Never has this strip come closer to really acknowledging its transformation from light-hearted high school romp to depressing trudge towards inevitable death. “I miss the days when everything ahead was bright and shining … instead of foggy, and grey, and full of tumors.”

Judge Parker, 10/12/08

You read it here first, everybody: THE DOG DID IT. That creepy little critter stole the rifle and took its revenge on the man who dumped the owner she adores. She’s smiling at you because she knows you’ll never figure it out, Sam.

I’m glad to see that the Phoenix police department has loosened its dress code enough so that black leather pants are OK for homicide detectives to wear on the job.

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Slylock Fox, 9/28/08

Dum de dum de dooo, what do we have here … why, it’s Slylock Fox, engaged in light-hearted math-based banter … with a pig … who’s working at … a … deli counter? Right next to a case that’s features distinctly pork-like offerings? This … this is an abomination! You just know that our cheerful cannibal is interested in the result of this little math puzzler because it can help him figure out how much usable meat he can get out of the hobos and lost children he lures into the supermarket after hours. The lovingly detailed deli slicer sure as hell isn’t helping, either. I wonder if our deli-man-pig maintains that creepy expression, with the frozen smile and huge, unblinking eyes, as he uses the slicer to turn his hapless victims into fine sandwich-ready meat products.

Yet more disturbing is Max’s fascination with the cheese, as he’s surely imagining the lady cow who produced it, who is kept in perverted captivity, complicated machinery hooked up to her nipples.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/28/08

Snuffy Smith more or less traffics in overwrought reaction shots. Usually, as in the second of the throwaway panels, these take the form of laughter so uproarious that it dislodges the tongue, and attempt by their sheer exuberance to make the strip’s lame jokes appear funny to someone. Even in this context, though, Elviney’s look of hat-popping horror in the final panel seems a bit much; to match it, Maw Smif ought to be pulling a blanket made of human skin out of her washbin.

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 9/28/08

Hey, everybody, you know what’s really menacing? Illiteracy! Teach a kid to read, today!