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I have a pet theory that newspaper comic strip characters are dimly aware of who and what they are, and more than a little embarrassed about it. Sometimes they just flat-out admit it:

Rrrhymes with Orrrange, 9/19/10

Frankly lady, with the fashion choices, urban landscapes, and body styles on display here I wouldn’t go hatin’ on the tag.

Other strips are up front about wanting to be something — dear God anything — else:

Funky Winkerrrbean, 9/19/10

This is one of those unsettling Sunday insertions of Funky Winkerbean characters into the comic-book settings the artist would plainly rather draw. Other than Mr. Potato Head® in the big collar there, it’s a nice rendition of D.C. Comics’ Deadman volume 1 number 7 cover from November 1985. Of course, Deadman was happy about his resurrection, but then he didn’t have to go back to Westview.

You can ignore the prattle at the lower right: just another catalog of the characters’ ailments. But hey, “dead man’s singles” isn’t a real thing, so what’s it doing there in the punchline? I’m guessing it was dialed back from “sudden death” — and if I’m right, we’ve just seen something judged too bleak even for Funky Winkerbean. Cormac McCarthy, the field is yours alone!

But for real nightmare fuel, imagine coming back to life as newspaper Spider-Man:

Spiderrr-Man (panels), 9/19/10

Spidey, self-awareness is not a path you want to go down. Trust me on this one.

Avast, me hearties — happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day from the Comics Currrmudgeon!

— Cap’n Lumpy

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/7/10

In all my years of reading the strip, I have encountered few scenes in Snuffy Smith more harrowing than panel two here. Lureen looks rightly terrified at the slavering mob of women who have assembled at the Gossip Fence, the traditional gathering place for female-oriented rituals in Hootin’ Holler. Little does she know that any woman who manages to successfully bed the hamlet’s most eligible bachelor is by iron custom torn to bits and devoured by all the other women in the town. This is how the community maintains its uniform hideousness: by weeding all the even vaguely attractive people out of the gene pool.

Archie, 9/7/10

Mr. Weatherbee, with his black shirt and white jacket, always seems to be waiting for an ’80s fashion revival that never arrives; today, he’s really attempting to force the issue by donning a piano tie. GIVE IT UP, MR. WEATHERBEE. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Spider-Man, 9/7/10

I love the fact that Spider-Man, true to his intense laziness, just automatically associates computers with video games and nothing else. “Wait, you can use the keyboard-television for things that aren’t Farmville?”

Pluggers, 9/7/10

Seriously, pluggers are shockingly lazy and just straight up don’t give a rat’s ass about what you think.

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Mary Worth, 8/29/10

At last we get to this storyline’s dramatic turn: Dr. Mike will learn what a sucker he was to turn away from Jenna, because of the advice from his revenge-haunted drunk old dad, towards whom up to this point Mike has felt nothing but hate. But whatever! Mike will almost certainly now invite Jenna over for some hot sexing, right after he proposes. “What’s all that shouting from upstairs?” Jenna will ask? “Oh, it’s nothing, just my dad going through the DTs. Maybe I should loosen the straps holding him onto the bed?”

Of course, once Jenna learns that Mike has turned forever away from the booze, she’ll have to work overtime to hide her own drink the pain away habit. Oh, but wait, she’s a woman in Mary Worth who’s about to discover true love, so obviously she’ll never be sad again.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/29/10

Ha ha, the looks on Susan and Cayla’s faces in the next to last panel, as they prepare to hear about what they probably imagine will be Les’s plan for a mopey polygamous marriage, are priceless. Silly ladies, did you think your relationships with Les were about you, somehow? No, they’re about Les. They’re always about Les.

Spider-Man, 8/29/10

“I pretty much assumed I would choke to death on a Dorito while watching television, or maybe break my neck falling down a flight of stairs. This is actually kind of exciting!”