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Better Half, 9/19/13

Boy, those sure do sound like sophisticated cockroaches! Just scuttling all over the place, their dark red chitin gleaming in the light, their awful legs somehow capable of wielding tools now, humanity’s only advantage gone in a stroke. Three forks waving about like their antenna, and yet still they can achieve a sort of rolling, lopsided locomotion with their other three legs. The forks plunge into food, into garbage, into feces, into anything even vaguely organic, because the cockroaches can eat all of it. They can eat it even faster, now that they’ve figured out how to use forks. They’re getting bigger. They’re getting stronger. They’re biding their time, but they won’t have to bide their time for much longer.

Mark Trail, 9/19/13

“Personal interest” is supposed to imply that Johnny is on the payroll of some sinister big oil conglomerate, and this implication will turn out to be true, because storytelling in Mark Trail is 100% linear and has no room for narrative feints or misdirection of any kind. But still, Johnny’s real personal interest — his personal passion — seems to lie not so much in loving oil but in hating wildlife. Stupid, stupid wildlife. In the end, he doesn’t care if fracking poisons the water table or if nuclear waste irradiates the forest or if strip mining just peels the entire ecosystem right off the face of the earth, as long as something kills a bunch of animals, and the more quickly the better.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/19/13

One way to write a story is to have all your characters be extremely unlikeable!

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Mark Trail, 9/15/13

Did this little plant get its name from the past? That may be the case. It’s possible, sure. But isn’t it just as possible that it got its name from the future? After all, the Indian Pipe bears a strong resemblance to the 60-mile-high towers that were built in the southern foothills of the Himalayas in the late 21st century, which harvested charged particles from the ionosphere and provided the cheap energy that catapulted India’s economy to #1 in the world by 2110. Add in the successful time travel experiments conducted at the Indian Institute of Technology in the mid 2090s, and this theory is sounding more and more probable.

Family Circus, 9/15/13

Today’s Family Circus is a commentary on modern American affluence: the Keane Kids have never once in their lives had empty bellies, and can’t even conceive of anyone going hungry involuntarily, thus forcing them to recontextualize the ancient nursery rhyme. But there’s one Keane family member who knows all about want, and that’s Sam the dog. Presumably Sam’s care has been placed in the hands of the children, in an misguided attempt to teach them “responsibility,” and meals have been pretty irregular ever since. Sam would chew off all of PJ’s toes without a second thought. Sam would eat all the Keane Kids, if they would just hold still for long enough.

Shoe, 9/15/13

The comics pages that Skyler is so ostentatiously reading add a real note of poignancy to this strip. Skyler is trapped in comics time, an eternal present. He’s never going to get past the opening salvos of the sexual awakening he’s experiencing right now; and, as long as the syndicate can find artists who can more or less approximate Jeff MacNelly’s style, he will never die.

Panel from Better Half, 9/15/13

HERE IT IS EVERYBODY, THE MOST DEPRESSING BETTER HALF EVER, LET’S JUST GO HAVE A NICE LIE DOWN NOW FOR THE REST OF THE DAY

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Better Half, 9/8/13

One of the things I appreciate about the Better Half is that on Sunday, instead of just cramming in a bunch of unrelated panels that could have easily stood alone as dailies like the Lockhorns does, it offers a selection united by a subtle but definite theme. Today’s theme: Stanley hates himself! He doesn’t like the way he looks; he feels like his life is a malfunctioning piece of software that he wishes he could reset back to some long ago pristine state; and he’s eager to shift the blame for his many manifest failings onto a too-permissive society. Obviously all this anxiety and self-loathing leads him to panic that Harriet will leave him, but he needn’t worry: she just doesn’t have the energy to go find anyone better!

Family Circus, 9/8/13

As usual, the Keane pets are wearing little secret smiles. They quite frankly look awfully smug for a couple of dogs who are destined for damnation in eternal hellfire.