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Hi and Lois, 1/5/15

Oh, man, those knowing looks Hi and Lois are giving each other in panel one are chilling me to my very core. What erotic scenarios have played out in the Flagston household that include food and praying? Lois’s deflated expression in panel two confirms everyone’s longheld belief that the bevy of Flagston children mainly exists to get in the way of the title characters’ varied and active sex life.

Mark Trail, 1/5/15

I’ve never murdered anyone or been murdered, but just based on what I know about humans and how they operate, probably if you’re actually going to kill a few people in cold blood for money-making reasons you don’t necessarily spend a lot of time telling them about it, right? And the people who do keeping jawing on the subject maybe aren’t the most serious about the whole affair. What I’m trying to say is that, as a rule, you shouldn’t up and smack some armed dude who’s planning to kill you, but Cherry may not be completely off-base on her ability to get away with this here.

Slylock Fox, 1/5/15

Hmm, let’s just check out the solution here and “Slylock used his sense of taste” OH MY GOD HE LICKED IT, HE LICKED THE BOAT, I know he’s a fox and all but it sure reduces his Clever Detective cred now that we know he goes around licking things, right? “Used his sense of taste,” honestly.

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Spider-Man, 12/10/14

Sequels sure can be tricky! You need to build on an original story that’s beloved enough to merit a second installment and honor what people liked about it while still pushing forward into new territory. We don’t know yet exactly how the fascinating script for Marvella 2 manages to pull this off, but since this Newspaper Spider-Man plot is in fact itself a sequel to a storyline for 2006, we can get a good sense of how you should balance the old and the new. Back then, Marvella’s nemesis was being played by an older actress instead of the director’s young ingenue daughter, and she was angry about having been beat out for the title role by Mary Jane after auditioning for it, rather than actually getting the part and then being angry because she was displaced by Mary Jane when she became available. See, totally different! Similarly, I believe that, at the climax of this story, rather than being knocked unconscious with a lead pipe by a butler, Spider-Man will be bludgeoned by, let’s say, a special effects artist, using something you might find around a movie set.

Momma, 12/10/14

We already knew that Momma’s dedication to passive-aggression is intense, but she’s really taking things to the next level by having a near life-size photo of Francis in his Boy Scout uniform hanging on the wall just to serve as a prompt for her to belittle him by bringing up his past humiliations.

Slylock Fox, 12/10/14

5) Did your Comics Curmudgeon manage to successfully resist the almost overwhelming urge to Google Image Search “bats with six-foot wingspans” because he knew the results would haunt his nightmares for weeks? Answer: Very true!

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Slylock Fox, 11/5/14

In Herodotus’s Histories, the Athenian statesman Solon explains to King Croesus that to his mind Tellus of Athens was the most fortunate man who ever lived, and the brothers Kleobis and Biton are tied for second. Key to their ranking, Solon explains, is that all three not only lived lives that were universally well-regarded, but died immediately after performing their most praiseworthy deed, leaving no awkward fall from grace or aftermath to mar their reputation. (This is meant to contrast with Croesus, whose long and largely successful reign ended in conquest by the Persians, and probably with Solon himself, who lived long enough to see the political system he established in Athens overthrown.)

Our plucky fly here does not, perhaps, qualify as fortunate under Solon’s definition, as his life is about to end ignominiously in a heron’s gullet. But as a tiny insect, he really has no reputation to sully, so perhaps in assessing his life and death, we should instead focus on his inward emotional state and sense of self-worth. He is clearly on top of the world after having dodged not one but two predators and left them steaming mad in his wake. Hopefully his death will be instantaneous and he will go out on top, with that ludicrously adorable grin on his face.

Dennis the Menace, 11/5/14

Bald, tiny, spindly-legged Joey lives in constant fear of one thing: that someday someone will discover that he’s not a human boy at all, but rather an ageless goblin who has escaped his eternal home in the Deep Forest to live among us here in the Realtime Cities. Which of the Tall Ones’ terrifying devices will be the one that reveals his secret? You can never be too careful!

Apartment 3-G, 11/5/14

Guys I know I keep harping on this bizarre lunch but it keeps being flabbergasting that this was allowed to happen. There’s no wine. There’s no custard. They aren’t even sitting at a table. They are blatantly walking around in somebody’s living room. Is this a shared delusion? An aggressive Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf-style impov game, with neither party willing to blink? What is even HAPPENING heeeeeere