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Slylock Fox, 1/22/07

This little scene immediately brought to mind a quote I’ve always liked, from A.W. Brian Simpson’s Cannibalism and the Common Law:

Leading cases are the very stuff of which the common law is made, and no leading case in the common law is better known than that of Regina v. Dudley and Stephens. It was decided in 1884 by a court in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. In it, two profoundly respectable seamen, Captain Tom Dudley and Mate Edwin Stephens, lately of the yacht Mignonette, were sentenced to death for the murder of their shipmate, Ordinary Seaman Richard Parker, after a bench of five judges had ruled that one must not kill one’s shipmates in order to eat them, however hungry one might be.

Fortunately for Slylock, who’s grinning a grin here that’s a little too sly, as a non-human animal his conduct is governed not by the common law, but by the Law of Nature. Max will make a tasty little snack to take the edge off until the raft washes up on the west coast of New Zealand, where our vulpine detective will use his powers of elementary deduction to solve long-running land disputes between the government and the Maori before dining on the native fauna, which is completely unadapted to mid-sized predators.

Also beyond the Queen’s justice in this vignette is that crafty bottle-stealing octopus. I will say again that Slylock Fox has some of the best incidental details of any strip out there.

Dick Tracy, 1/22/07

So the Tracys seem to think that kicking a little cash at some Alzheimer’s researchers will somehow atone for the monstrous crime of erasing a man’s mind. Note, however, the “Inc.” in the address. That’s no high-minded government research lab, it’s a for-profit pharmaceutical firm — probably a shell company in which GlaxoSmithKline owns a controlling interest. Dick and Tess will no doubt be seeing a generous return from that generous thing she did.

Elsewhere, some dude plans to break into a jewelry store with a crowbar, in a totally interesting criminal act that will surely demand the attention of the world’s greatest, most techno-enabled detective.

Family Circus and Dennis the Menace, 1/22/07

Jeffy’s blatant assault on his mother yesterday was apparently just the beginning; today, she must bribe him with food to stave off another barrage, a strategy that will last only until his little tummy is filled up. Meanwhile, the snowball offensive has spread to Dennis the Menace as well. Mrs. Wilson looks fairly shocked by Dennis’ naked aggression; no doubt years of sub-par menacing have lulled her into complacency.

If all the children in the comics pages rose up senselessly and violently against the adults, like the birds in The Birds, I for one would be a happy guy. I’m sure Elmo has a lot of aggression he needs to work out against Dagwood.

Apartment 3-G, 1/22/07

Lu Ann needs to make nice with her ghost, so she’s brought in … her incredible psychic microwave! Good lord, she’s even dumber than I thought.

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Slylock Fox, 1/15/07

This has to count as one of the most frankly sexual newspaper comics I’ve ever seen. I neither expect nor at any level want to see red-hot mouse-on-mouse action in Slylock Fox, but in a medium that tippy-toes around the love life of three healthy single women in Manhattan and goes to excruciatingly unrealistic lengths to protect Elizabeth Patterson’s virtue, the matter-of-fact presentation of Max “visiting” Melody in the middle of the night — and of the two of them obviously being woken up by Slylock’s frenzied late-night call — is kind of shocking.

This sidekick business is clearly no cakewalk; clearly, Max must be forced to carry a beeper around with him, or to give his vulpine boss the phone number of all his lady friends’ houses. Either that, or he’s only cultivated his relationship with Melody because he knows she lives across the street from a fence. As soon as the stolen goods are recovered, Max is moving on, leaving a tiny broken heart in his wake.

For Better Or For Worse, 1/15/07

In my policy of trying to find the bright side of everything, I’m really enjoying Liz’s verbal humiliation at the hands of her Mtigwakian supposed friends. As I’ve noted earlier, the Noble Natives of the North may have been intended as a heavy-handed bit of ethnography, but they have ended up being the only people in Foobonia allowed to frankly call Liz on her crap. Not that I endorse the overarching “stick with your own kind” message here, but wrapping up “Girl, she stole your man! Snap!” in some kind of mystical “spirit journey” hokum is pretty hilarious to me.

I think we all know that Liz doesn’t have to worry about guidance. Her journey is like a cruise missile, zeroing in on The Mustache at an unstoppable rate.

Antifoobitarianism is spreading to the Webocmic world, by the way. Check out these recent offerings from Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break and Shortpacked!

Dick Tracy, 1/15/07

Boy, Dick Tracy is getting soft. Dick actually looks kind of concerned that he may have accidentally destroyed a man’s mind while engaging in pointless plot-stalling exposition. It takes mustachioed industrialist Diet Smith to supply the appropriate level of callousness. “Now, Tracy, this man is my employee, and when he signed his contract, he waived his right to sue or press charges over accidental brain erasure. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the empty shell of his body is disposed of with some degree of dignity.”

The phrase “he spilled his thought beans” makes me uncomfortable on a number of levels.

Mary Worth, 12/15/07

Not only is Mary Worth honest-to-God going to Vietnam, but she’s managed to go from decision to airborne in less than a week. Meanwhile, she’s still having disturbing dreams. I’m guessing that “Hanoi … Peace Village” has something to do with this, but it’d be so much cooler if it were actually the site of the Communist mind-control lab where Mary was brainwashed forty years ago. It’d play out like The Manchurian Candidate, with Mary playing the part of both Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury.

At first I was jealous that Mary was flying in some kind of magical airplane with wide, comfortable seats and several inches of elbow room between neighbors, but then I realized where that extra space came from: there doesn’t appear to be any aisle. Presumably once the plane reaches Vietnamese airspace, the bottom of the plane will open up and the passengers will be dropped onto their destination.

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Apartment 3-G, 1/3/07

So, in case you weren’t paying attention, Eric Mills broke Margo’s heart by jetting out of town mysteriously, then just as suddenly set it aflame again by showing up on Apartment 3-G’s doorstep on Christmas in a particularly pointless bit of plotting whiplash. Margo must be getting inured to the pleasures of hot monkey sex romance and such, though, because it isn’t having the same softening effect on her personality as it did a few weeks ago. I love her completely pointless outrage in panel one. “Mr. Gibbs? How dare he have a WASPy, monosyllabic last name!”

Mr. Gibbs has been nothing but avuncular and pleasant to Lu Ann throughout the long Adventure of the Haunted Studio, but that facial expression in panel three pretty much screams, “Hello ladies! Looks like all those hidden cameras I installed throughout this firetrap are about to pay for themselves after all!”

Crankshaft, 1/3/07

You know, today’s Crankshaft is a good example of the strip’s subtle but fierce misanthropy. Because at first you’re grateful that they switched the expression around and didn’t actually show you the mangled corpse of a deer embedded into the hood of this car, but then you realize that he’s implying that somewhere there’s a terribly injured animal running around, with a huge chunk of metal and glass and plastic hanging out of a bloody wound in its side … well, Crankshaft is kind of mean-spirited, is what I’m trying to say.

Mary Worth, 1/3/07

Is this the bitchiest Mary Worth ever? “Yeah, Agent Orange, terribly moved, blah blah blah … but what about MEEEEEEEE????? What about MY NEEDS????”

Who is Mary talking to, exactly? Yesterday’s omniscient narration box noted only that she was calling “Cambodia.” Perhaps she was connected directly to King Norodom Sihamoni, who, being a constitutional monarch, has little better to do with his time than to take phone calls from agitated biddies.

Slylock Fox, 1/3/07

I’m not sure what’s funnier: The cheery, innocent look on the face of the megamagnet-wielding security goon, or the expression of sheer, heart-stopping terror on the face of our innocent traveller — perhaps literally heart-stopping, as his pacemaker slams into his sternum, drawn inexorably by this fiendish device. If I had to guess about the origin of this little drama, I’d wager that a certain cartoonist had his precious collection of gels and liquids confiscated by some jackbooted thug while he was traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday. Well, you crossed the wrong gel aficionado, Mr. TSA Man! I bet you felt pretty foolish when you opened up the paper and found that you had been named and shamed in today’s Slylock Fox!

One Big Happy, 1/3/07

The countdown to Ruthie’s inevitable stabbing frenzy and subsequent trip to juvie begins … now.