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Mary Worth, 11/8/13

I think we really need to start wondering if Mary Worth has reached its logical end state: with Mary in some kind of fugue state, possibly full of drugs on her deathbed, just fantasizing about people praising her. She’s not even imagining herself doing anything praiseworthy anymore; she’s just being lavished with praise for things she may or may not have done in the distant past. This is why Mary is looking so ecstatic in panel two: this is her dreamscape, so she can hear Shelly’s very thoughts, and knows that for her entire speech Sheylly will just be smiling beatifically and saying “Mary … Mary … thank you Mary … Mary … thank you … Mary …” for two or three hours.

Spider-Man, 11/8/13

Spider-Man’s thought balloons, meanwhile, are pretty much par for the course in terms of his general unlikeability. “Yeah, it’s such a burden seeing my wife’s hit play, the success of which is making her happy and supporting me financially. I can’t believe I have to keep doing this. Hey, someone just praised me, all right!”

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Spider-Man, 11/7/13

I mean … yes, he is? Everyone saw him? J. Jonah Jameson, you old rascal, I think you’ve finally found away to defeat Spider-Man: by just asking absurd counterfactual questions whenever anyone defends him. “In case you didn’t notice, there hasn’t been anyone reporting that their children have been kidnapped, so Spider-Man is innocent of your charge that he’s eaten thousands of New York City babies!” “But is he, Robbie? Is he??”

Dennis the Menace, 11/7/13

Dennis’s mounting anxiety over his future dreamscape combines with his mother’s crafty expression to make this panel one of the most chilling things I’ve seen today. We can never know exactly what she said to him during storytime tonight, but we now know that Alice wears the Mitchell family menacing crown.

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Here is a brief unpaid, unsolicited endorsement: Conor Lastowka, who writes for Rifftrax and co-curates the [Citation Needed] Tumblr with me and is generally hilarious, has, (unlike certain [Citation Needed] Tumblr co-curators who are still wrangling with book-length prose) finished a novel! It’s called Gone Whalin’ is about whaling, and time travel, and other exciting topics. You can check out the webpage or download the first three chapters or watch the book trailer or just buy it already!

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Apartment 3-G, 11/4/13

Oddball misfit Marty sure is learning some stuff about how to be a bad girl from her bad girl friend Tori! For instance, she’s learning how to make the jerk-off gesture when talking (or, in this case, thinking) about jerk-offs like her dad. She hasn’t quite gotten all the nuances down yet — for instance, you should do it sort off to the side while sneering, rather than right in front of your face while you look like you’re about to cry — but it’s nice to see her trying new things!

Slylock Fox, 11/4/13

I originally thought the solution to this puzzle was going to involve the boxer shorts that Count Weirdly hadn’t taken off yet, thanks to his last shred of human decency. But no, it’s based on the fact that your hair and nails are already dead! I’m not sure what’s more unsettling, the image of a man invisible except for his hair and nails, or the thought that we’re all covered with corpse-bits that spout out of our very flesh.

Spider-Man, 11/4/13

You’d think that Peter Parker’s own extremely non-lucrative journalism career would give him a little more sympathy for the sad souls who pissed their editors off enough to be exiled to the Spider-Man beat for their various publications. But nope, being Spider-Man means you can just be a stone-cold dick to whoever you want!

Heathcliff, 11/4/13

I love how unimpressed and aggravated Heathcliff’s owner is here. What good is it even to have a cat that uses his terrifying control over the forces of darkness to manipulate matter and cancel out gravity if you still have mice?