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Beetle Bailey, 1/10/13

Every long-running comic strip that isn’t Gasoline Alley, Doonesbury, or pre-time-freeze For Better or For Worse has a problem: its characters remain the same age, more or less, but it tries to keep cultural references current, which means that everyone’s personal chronology is unmoored from the universal progression of time. What is their strange existence like? Today’s Beetle Bailey provides a horrifying insight. Everything that’s ever happened to the damned inhabitants of Camp Swampy over the last 50 years of our time — every terrible pun, every downed shot, every golf game, every act of egregious sexual harassment, every long march, every horrible meal, every vicious beating — has taken place over the course of a single, eternally long day. Time cannot heal the physical and psychic wounds its characters suffer, because time simply does not pass for them. This strip is more harrowing than I ever imagined.

Luann, 1/10/13

We interrupt my longrunning and deliberate policy of ignoring Luann to bring you today’s incredibly disappointing Luann. Yeah, TJ and Anne Eiffel made out, for, like, a second, before TJ stormed off in a high dudgeon, proving that TJ was never as hilarious and unmoored as he seemed. He was apparently just dicking around at Weenie World, recording Anne saying mean things and being extremely low-level unethical, because he was bored and wanted to get her fired, but he was never really committed to the idea. Because you know who could really ruin Anne’s life, TJ? Her boyfriend, that’s who! What’s the matter, aren’t you serious about this? Aren’t you willing to sacrifice? What are you, chicken?

Spider-Man, 1/10/13

So, to review: Spider-Man tried to save a lady who was falling off an elephant, but then he got kicked unconscious by the elephant instead, and the lady was rescued by the ostensible villain. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!

Apartment 3-G, 1/10/13

Sure you want to leave, Ari? It appears that Margo and Greg have reached the “We will use literally any pretext to get drunker” stage of evening.

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YOU GUYS, every year when I come back from my Christmastime voyage I’m all like “I’m just going to quickly look over the continuity strips from the past week to make sure I didn’t miss the 45 seconds of Judge Parker strip-time in which something happens,” but then every year I end up finding a slate of delightful nonsense that I feel compelled to share with you all. So before I get to today’s strips (in another post), here’s what you might have missed if, like me, you took a comics vacation over the past ten days or so.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/24/12

Greg Cooper, the next actor to play James Bond and thus one of the most visible and famous movie stars in the world, got dissed on Christmas by his own mom.

Family Circus, 12/25/12

Over at the Keane Kompound, unto us an extremely smug savior was born.

Panel from Mark Trail, 12/26/12

Otto decided not to take Mark and Bill Ellis’s ransom money, but will instead force Mark to lobby on his pirate kingdom’s behalf, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Panel from Spider-Man, 12/26/12

Spider-Man, a superhero with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals, was disabled with a quick blow to the back of the head, something that’s happened to him on multiple occasions.

Panels from Gil Thorp, 12/28/12

Oh, yeah, there’s a Gil Thorp basketball-season plot happening, I guess! It involves this basketball player, Scott, who is sad (and therefore not as good at basketball as he should be, which is the most important thing, obviously) because his little brother “Jay-Bird” died of leukemia. I had a brief hope that the horrible noise in this final panel was little Jay-Bird bursting out of his grave to feast on living flesh, but instead it was just a mysterious peacock that only Scott can see, which may in fact be Jay-Bird’s soul, which has come back to this mortal realm in bird form to feast on living flesh.

Panels from Funky Winkerbean, 12/29/12

Cayla and Les are already pretty sick of each other’s company, to nobody’s surprise.

Panels from Judge Parker, 12/30/12

In Judge Parker, Sam Driver shows that he knows the golden rule of lawyering: snitches get stitches.

Panel from Apartment 3-G, 12/31/12

Back in Apartment 3-G, Evan has finally revealed himself for what he truly is! …which appears to be a member of some kind of medieval craft guild, I guess?

Panel from Mary Worth, 12/31/12

John Dill’s entry has been accepted into the Santa Royale cake contest, and the excitement appears to have caused a massive stroke event.

Curtis, 1/1/13

Oh, right, Kwanzaa! This year’s nutty Curtis Kwanzaa tale involves an African village where an evil never-seen witch makes all the handsome young men mysteriously disappear when they reach marriageable age. Our hero, Maya, awakes in her lair only to discover that, despite evil witch stereotypes, she’s actually pretty sexy. “Well, uh, you’re not rich!” says Maya, but then she demonstrates that she has piles of gold and an elephant servant. “Hmm, tell me more,” says Maya.

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Panel from Spider-Man, 1/1/13

Hello, everyone! I’m back from my voyaging, and having looked at exactly zero comics since December 23rd, so I feel a little like this panel, which I saw gloriously devoid of context just now (as if any panel of Newspaper Spider-Man is improved by “context” or whatever). Real comics and commentary thereupon will arrive sometime Wednesday, maybe late afternoon-ish, as I have a week’s worth of strips to catch up on, but I wanted to put this post up to (a) assure you I was still alive and (b) let you know that you only have a few more days to vote in the most important Mary Worth-themed awards competition of the season, the Worthy Awards, produced by the always excellent Mary Worth and Me blog. Go forth and choose your faves!

I hope you all had pleasant holidays and a happy new year’s celebration! I’m making the same pledge I make every new year on this blog: To keep doing the same thing I’ve been doing for years, because I love it. Hope you do too! See you tomorrow with real comics mockery!