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Hagar the Horrible, 10/15/12

“Maybe I shouldn’t have spent the night before I led my men into a brutal, hand-to-hand combat, during which they must either kill or be killed, filling their heads with tales of damned souls, wandering the earth as dim spectres, mere shadows of their former selves. Which thought do you think is more likely to jump into their heads unbidden it the midst of this violent melee: that they themselves will be felled in battle and their shade will live on, with the wounds and terror they feel now continuing for eternity? Or that, for the rest of their lives, every time they feel a prickling on the back of their neck or an unseasonably icy wind across their face, they’ll suspect that it’s the vengeful spirit of a man they cut down, haunting them until they succumb to madness and terror?”

Hi and Lois, 10/15/12

Ha, and if Hi’s face is any indication, he sure has earned the right to use the word “boring”! If Hi’s face is any indication, today was the day when his capacity to feel joy or pain or anything at all really was finally snuffed out by the intense ennui of mindless, soulless corporate dronery. Get used to that face, kids, it’s the only one he can make now!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/12

In order for the Slylockian world anthropomorphic animals to exist, there must be some kind of apocalyptic event in our future and their past, during which the lower beasts achieved sentience and most of the human population was wiped out, presumably violently. Normally I don’t take this personally, but something about today’s strip, in which we learn that these horror-monsters are riding our subway to our Brooklyn, makes me angry. You didn’t build that, hippo-thing! Neither did you, shirt-wearing cat! The thought of the Museum of Natural History, presumably now retooled and dedicated to the animals’ triumph over the now exterminated human race, particularly sickens me.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/12

Oh my goodness, I sure hope that “the party business” is the euphemism for prostitution that the writer of Rex Morgan and King Features Syndicate agreed on after several tortuous weeks of negotiations! Junior knows, and so does that cheery looking couple sitting on the bench. “That Junior, he runs the best brothel in San Diego County, doesn’t he, Martha?” “You can say that again, dear!”

B.C., 10/15/12

Hey! I just flew Southwest yesterday, and as usual the flight and service were excellent, and not once did anyone attempt to feed me something that they barfed and/or shat out (sorry, I’ve already grossed myself out enough just thinking about this, not going to look up how gizzards actually work, I’m afraid there’ll be pictures).

Spider-Man, 10/15/12

You know, the modern, Internet-savvy newsroom is a high-pressure, 24/7 operation, so it’s nice to see that J. Jonah Jameson still takes time to humiliate his employees with elaborate, improvised, and extremely sarcastic little skits.

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Spider-Man, 10/11/12

OH MY GOD YES YOU GUYS KRAVEN THE HUNTER!!! Kraven was the villain in the very first Spider-Man plot I covered in this blog. Back then I was charmed by his outfit but eventually enraged by the plotline’s stunning lack of superheroics, which caused me to vent thusly:

When I did my first Spider-Man comic, almost a month ago now, I said, “Presumably the ass-kicking will begin in due time.” Oh, how naive I was! How, bitterly, bitterly wrong I have been proved to be! In that time we’ve had marital spats, a little aimless Web slinging, a press conference to announce the opening of new theme restaurant, and the firing of an incompetent waiter.

Haha, little did I know at the time that this represented more or less the most excitement the Spider-Man strip would ever offer. Now that I’m more in tune with the true nature of this strip, I’m really looking forward to Kraven’s wacky, camptastic antics.

Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft, 10/11/12

Never let it be said that the Funkyverse strips can’t cut loose and have some fun now and then! My only complaint about today’s Funky Winkerbean is that the colorists have once again failed to pick up on obvious textual cues, because I’d really like to see Les go chalk white in terror — proof that, despite the smug facade he presents as a defense against relentless tragedy, life still has the capacity to scare him to death. Crankshaft, meanwhile, is confronting the most depressing notion that modern science can muster — that the universe will end not with a bang or a cataclysm, but rather with a slow fading out to emptiness, with no life and no light. It’s almost a relief that Crankshaft greets this prospect with the exact same attitude of semi-informed grievance that he has about everything else.

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Spider-Man, 10/8/12

I know there are like thirty-seven wildly differing versions of the Spider-Man mythos occurring across various forms of media at any particular moment, but in the newspaper strip (surely the iteration that’s earning the least for Marvel Entertainment, LLC, and its corporate parent, The Walt Disney Corporation), this is the deal with Spidey and MJ’s living situation: they have an apartment in New York, probably Manhattan, which is implied to be small and crappy even though of course as drawn it’s significantly larger than any New York City apartment not owned by a hedge fund manager. I’ve assumed that this is all they can afford because MJ’s mid-range movie/Broadway star money and whatever spare change Peter earns as a freelance newspaper photographer pretty much cancel each other out.

But! Apparently I’ve been wrong and MJ’s painfully unfunny play made her tons of money and they’re leaving the overcrowded hellhole of New York behind them for some ghastly neo-neo-Georgian mansion just off the LIE, where Peter can wander around the corridors in his tatty bathrobe, complaining not just about how much less he makes than his wife but also about how long it takes for him to commute into the city to get yelled at by J. Jonah Jameson. Really, getting eaten by a tiger would probably be a blessing for both of them at this point.

Hi and Lois, 10/8/12

“We can get totally blotto in front of the kids and they’ll be none the wiser! I mean, I’m high all the time and you don’t ever notice, so it should be easy to fool them. Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Funky Winkerbean, 10/8/12

Oh, were you worried that, what with his impending remarriage, Les was no longer haunted by the spectre of his dead wife? Don’t worry, he is super duper extra haunted by the spectre of his dead wife.