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Spider-Man, 2/12/08

Say, have you ever wondered what it would have been like if Casablanca ended not with Rick shooting Major Strasser and Captain Renault covering up for it, but with Rick hitting him in the back of the head and barely knocking him unconscious, after which the two of them just jauntily walk off to enjoy their last few hours of freedom before being sent to a concentration camp? Well, today’s Spider-Man is for you, sort of!

This is not to say that Spider-Man is a Nazi, as my scenario would imply. The Nazis may have been the most evil regime in history, but at least they did stuff. If all Hitler did was sit around watching TV and complaining about the Jews and their terrible sitcoms, the world would be a much better place.

Marmaduke, 2/12/08

Since there’s no way an actual plunger could be holding a bone in place like that, I’m going to guess that the problem found by Aace Plumbing is that Marmaduke’s family’s “plunger” is actually a ghastly trophy made out of a human femur. Possibly the femur of the last plumber who got too nosy.

Gil Thorp, 2/12/08

Well, now we know: Andrew Gregory is Tyler Jay with a longer head. The spit-curl resemblance is really uncanny; perhaps this is the haircut assigned to all new mentally unbalanced Gil Thorp characters. In panel two, the A-Train actually appears to be literally unbalanced as well, covering up his inability to stand up straight with his usual demented patter.

Judger Parker, 2/12/08

For those of you not following along with Judge Parker at home (and really, who could blame you if you aren’t), Gloria is giving Sam a more or less accurate recap of the story of How Steve Lost His Legs, as told to her by Steve in detail, which recounting we saw in this very comic strip mere days ago. I look forward to seeing Sam tell Abbey next week, who’ll tell Biff Dickens, who’ll tell his wife, and so an and so forth. It’ll be like a game of telephone, only this is Judge Parker, so it’ll be a boring game where the information doesn’t get changed in the retelling.

Garfield, 2/12/08

Comics in which Garfield drolly remarks on his sodomization by ice-cold thermometers = comedy gold. I’m totally serious about this.

Mark Trail, 2/12/08

yes bears bears bears bears RISE UP AND DEVOUR YOUR HUMAN OPPRESSOR, MY URSINE FRIEND

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Ziggy, 2/11/08

Every once in a while, something deeply strange and more than a little bit wonderful peeks out at you from the cracks in the tired old surface of a long-running comic strip. Today, Ziggy, having long failed in his quest to make human friends, and routinely mocked and derided by his own pets, is searching for companionship from a machine, which, he sadly believes, will be able to soothe his loneliness. But he’s not satisfied with the run-of-the-mill answering machines that merely record phone messages and play them back at the touch of a button; instead, he’s searching for an advanced model with basic decision-making abilities. In so doing, he touches on a philosophical dilemma that has troubled great thinkers for centuries: can truly rewarding affection come from an entity lacking free will? If Ziggy’s answering machine is forced by its programming to love him, can what it feels truly be said to be “love” at all, rather than mere slavish devotion? But, on the other hand, if the answering machine is allowed to decide on its own what to feel about Ziggy, won’t it respond with the same mixture of pity and disgust universally held by the service employees, animals, and newspaper readers who encounter him daily?

Dick Tracy, 2/11/08

I was going to laugh mightily at Dick Tracy’s decision to make up, and then explain in a footnote, a completely nonexistent slang term for being nefariously rendered unconscious by a baddie with a roofie and/or a dart gun, but then I consulted Urban Dictionary and found that “smacked” can mean getting high from smoking marijuana or taking Ecstasy. While this doesn’t necessarily conflict with the narrator-supplied definition of “foreign substance in system,” it obviously puts an entirely different spin on the scenario: the problem is not so much a stealthy, sinister baddie willing to do anything to kidnap the Chief, but rather an out-of-control drug problem that’s affected even the police force’s most elite officers. Fortunately, once Chief Liz has been recovered, Dick Tracy will deal with the hippie slacker responsible, probably with the butt of his pistol.

Gil Thorp, 2/11/08

OH SWEET SWEET SWEET lunging out of the mental hospital and into the third panel at a bizarre, inexplicable angle: it’s self-bashing Tyler! Who, uh, looks actually pretty much exactly like Andrew Gregory. Really, is there a Valley Conference rule that says that one spit-curled player must be on the court at all times?

Spider-Man, 2/11/08

Oh, man, no matter how often Spider-Man is felled by getting hit in the back of a head with a lead pipe with absolutely no warning from his spider-sense, it never gets old. Never.

Mary Worth, 2/11/08

do it Drew do it just turn the wheel a little to the left LIFE’S NOT WORTH LIVING do it do it do it

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Panels from Apartment 3-G, 2/10/08

Margo knows that a big crowd is best primed to appreciate fine art when it’s very, very drunk.

Panels from Curtis, 2/10/08

Actual conversation I had just moments ago with my wife, who went to a Quaker college:

Me: Hey, sweetie, did you know that Curtis learned about Quakers in school today?

Her: Why was Curtis in school today? It’s the weekend.

Me: [Sound of mind being completely blown]

Panel from Spider-Man, 2/10/08

THIS JUST IN: Spider-Man is not, in fact, an elephant.