Post Content

Mary Worth 7/13/14

Little Olive Taylor is a sensitive spirit-child who fears water, sees fairies, takes instruction from angels, and indulges in a little routine precognition. So it’s fair to say she inhabits that uncanny halfspace between the spirit world and our own, is it not? That was a rhetorical question; of course she does.

So she knows she’s in a world of hurt. Consider:

• The little cyst on her torso may prove to be, as a surgeon once delicately explained to me, “the type of cyst that tends to reoccur.” Thus the doctor’s routine torsopsy may indicate the need for a torsotomy — or even a full-scale torsectomy, leaving poor Olive a stunted freak with legs emerging from her neck, and an arm from each ear. And what then, if the contagion spreads to her lap, or heaven forbid her nape?
• Don’t her parents seem just a liiiiitle too invested in a medical resolution to what seems like a family-dynamics problem? (“But Olive, you told us you always wanted a little cyster!”) No doubt they are in a rush to foist her back off on Mary so they can resume their casual neglect and nonstop rutting.
• Finally, with her gift of second sight, Olive can instantly recognize the chillingly named “Dr. Kapuht” as none other than the risen demon-stalker Kelrast, come to exact terrible revenge on any whom his Mary does not spurn.

Am I wrong? I don’t think I’m wrong:

Aldo always said that when one door closes, you just knock incessantly on another one until some fool tells you to come in. Run, Olive!

Slylock Fox (panel), 7/13/14

Ms. Mayfair, before going all-in with your fascist animal oppressors, consider that the entirety of your mating options consists of a) Count Weirdly, and b) this guy. Think it through, girl.

Prince Valiant, 7/13/14

Oh my gosh look you guys it’s Prince Valiant! Val and Aleta with family and friends set sail on the Island Queen for the Misty Isles, but in a great storm and with the crew distracted by a mystic bewitching siren song the ship is caught between massive rocks and a great whirlpool and ripped apart! Val is captured by a band of Sirens and forced to battle a Cyclops, whom he defeats by luring to the edge of a cliff.

But the Cyclops is revealed to be a mere man, “enchanted” beasts mere house pets, and goddess-queen Calypso a nutjob with anger issues. In short, the story starts like The Odyssey but ends like pretty much every episode of Scooby Doo ever.

Ruh-roh!

— Uncle Lumpy

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 6/23/14

OK, sorry, yes, Patty Opossum put her ring in the soup, blah blah, but I really can’t get past the fact that Patty wants her soup in … a bag? I mean, I get what the implication is, but all I can visualize is the snooty French waiter-dog just straight-up pouring that whole bowl into a paper bag and making a sloshy, oozy, mess, which will soon burst open, leaving a huge soup-puddle, and a diamond ring sitting right in the middle of it. Slylock and Max know what’s coming, and are leaning forward is silent anticipation.

Better Half, 6/23/14

Better Half update: Stanley’s descent into madness continues as he takes the phrase “you’re your own worst enemy” far too literally.

Family Circus, 6/23/14

Ha ha, Billy, your mom is just throwing some generic “Flakies” at you before she gets in her car and drives away forever. Do you really think there’ going to be a lunch? Sucker!

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 6/9/14

Do it, Max, Sly said to Max, silently, with his eyes. Do what you have to do. The irony was palpable: he was, after all, a fox, and there was a time when everyone knew that foxes had to be free, and the awful truth that they would chew through their own flesh and bone to escape a trap became a cliche. Slylock, who like all his anthropomorphic brethren had no memory of the Before Times, couldn’t appreciate the little joke, but presumably Count Weirdly could, presumably that was why he had set up this macabre little scene in the first place, why he had shackled Sly up in a room with a mouse-sized open window, left that saw out where Max could find it. In fact, the more you thought about it, the more obvous the many layers of irony Weirdly had baked into this sick little scenario became: the sudden Emergence of Earth’s animal life into sapience had nearly wiped out the human race, and forced poor holdouts like Weirdly into inaccessible fortresses, but Slylock now had too much cognitive power to free himself from a trap the way his kin could before, too much ability to understand the consequences of his own actions, to foresee the agony and the blood, to bring himself to do it. But he knew that if he remained in Weirdly’s captivity, worse would happen, much worse. So he had no choice but ask his best friend to do the unthinkable, to place the the sharp steel against his flesh and begin to … oh, wait, what? The eye hook is made of some different material? Haha, yeah, sure, that’d work too. That Count Weirdly, always forgetting some crucial detail! Ha!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/14

The whole underlying point of this endless Rex Morgan, M.D., Sarah plot is that Sarah is a frighteningly precocious adult-child and everyone around her is in a state of mortal terror at all times. They’re so terrified, in fact, that they never actually call her on any of her shenanigans, which is why the pushback she’s suddenly getting is completely fascinating to me. Either she’s going to shatter at the first sign of direct confrontation in her life, or this young man’s going to be a smear of gore with a few bits of blond crewcut in a manner of minutes.

Spider-Man, 6/9/14

YES, Dock Ock! It’s not enough that Spidey be shown up, he must also be MERCILESSLY HUMILIATED! More taunts, I say!