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Slylock Fox, 5/9/13

Now, you might think that little Johnny falling asleep in mid-arithmetic is the sign of some serious medical condition, but just check out that menu hanging on the wall next to him. Lobster? Quail? Paté? The child’s slovenly clothes aside, this is clearly some sort of school for the ultra-wealthy, so probably this little one-percenter has just dozed off after a particularly rich lunch, served to him on butter-drenched platters brought to his mahogany table by a steady stream of manservants. The school nurses must be experts in treating gout and other diseases usually associated with bewigged 18th-century British gentry.

Spider-Man, 5/9/13

Haha, all the drama and excitement you’ve been enjoying over the past few weeks, as a mind-controlled Daredevil battled Spidey and brought him to the Kingpin, have been a fraud! Everyone was faking and nobody was ever in any danger. The main takeaway here is that Kingpin’s “Faster! Work faster!” management strategy is a failure, since it just causes your underlings to produce sham, non-functional products and then plot with your enemies to destroy you.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/4/13

Oh, man, Darrin’s bio-dad is just not going to give up on his mission of assholery, is he? I have literally no idea what he thinks is going to happen if he goes public with the knowledge that Dead Lisa had sex as a teenager and had a kid and gave it up for adoption. Will the Westview citizenry gather in the town square and ritually burn all copies of Lisa’s Story, as is the accepted fate for Whore Literature? Fools, they already bought the books, and Les already got paid! You bought the book too, Darrin-bio-dad! You bought it in hardcover!

Mary Worth, 5/4/13

Haha, awesome first date strategy, Tom. “I know how to eat better! I just didn’t bother because I didn’t care if I lived or died! I wanted to commit suicide the slowest, most passive-aggressive way possible. But after one trip to the grocery store, one awkward dinner with your mom and some random old lady in our apartment building, and 10 minutes of orange food prep, I know I want to live! You’re the only one keeping me alive, Beth! NEVER LEAVE THIS ROOM OR I’LL KILL MYSELF WITH A VEGETABLE PEELER I SWEAR TO GOD”

Herb and Jamaal, 5/4/13

Herb’s mother-in-law lives with his family and works at the soul food restaurant he runs with Jamaal, but we don’t really know much about her social life. Did she always live in this town, or did she uproot herself from her social networks to come here? Does she have a circle of friends her own age that she spends time with? Are they the ones that she apparently got hella drunk with last night?

Spider-Man, 5/4/13

I mean, we’re all imagining Kingpin speaking in a gravelly, menacing voice, dramatically stretched out over two panels, right? “Now, and only now, it’s time — to awaken Spider-Man! …in the dullest, most pedestrian way possible, by splashing him with water out of a mid-sized Rubbermaid container. HAHA, I was soaking my sore feet in this all afternoon, the water is totally gross! Take that, wall-crawler!”

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/29/13

Oh, hey, it looks like it’s a long-absent father party at Funky Winkerbean! First Darrin’s bio-dad took up residence in a local motel, determined to ruin everybody’s lives by being a jerk in some ill-defined way, and now Jessica is determine to find her own dad, John Darling. SPOILER: HER DAD IS IN A CEMETERY SOMEWHERE, OR PERHAPS A COLUMBARIUM, BECAUSE HE IS DEAD. He was the main character in a Funkyverse spin-off strip drawn by Marvin creator Tom Armstrong. The title character was a hilariously clueless TV newsman, and, according to Wikipedia, when Tom Batuik got into a dispute with the syndicate over ownership rights to the character, he just had the guy stone cold murdered in the strip’s second-to-last installment! Les later solved the crime in Funky Winkerbean, and last we had heard about the whole thing was two years ago when Jessica said she was making a documentary about him. So I guess Jessica has suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be doing that? Or maybe she’s going to dig up her father’s corpse and reanimate it using dark magic and/or perverse science, so it can defeat Darrin’s bio-dad in single dad-on-dad combat.

Archie, 4/29/13

Is Unbearably Smug Archie a thing in whatever era of Newspaper Comic Strip Archie we’re in the midst of now? Anyway, Archie really is looking unbearably smug in that last panel, presumably because he’s been waiting all day to unleash this terrible pun on somebody. Or maybe multiple somebodies, as the guy in the hat in the foreground of the first panel looks like someone who just heard a terribly pun smugly delivered.

Apartment 3-G, 4/29/13

Governor Pete is determined to bed Lu Ann, so now he’s upped his game to some next-level mind trickery. “Peter, I generally find you distasteful and skeezy, so…” “Stop saying that sentence Lu Ann! What would you say if I asked you to … watch a movie with me?” “THE GOVERNOR GOES TO THE MOVIES LIKE AN ORDINARY HUMAN OH MY GOD THE IMAGE IS SO SURPRISING I LITERALLY CAN’T HOLD ANY OTHER THOUGHTS IN MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW LIKE THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW GROSS AND TRANSPARENT THE GOVERNOR IS ABOUT WANTING TO DO ME”

Spider-Man, 4/29/13

Yes, obviously the cleverest place to hide your secret lair is on a tiny island that’s also a high-profile national park visited by 1.3 million people a year! Probably the best thing you can say about Newspaper Spider-Man as a hero is that he rises to the level of competition provided by his villains.