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Slylock Fox, 11/23/10

The duck on the left is a duly sworn officer of the law, representing a distant government in whatever isolated community he rules over at his whim with an iron fist, his tin star serving as all the excuse he needs to do and take what he wants. The duck on the right is a ruthless vigilante, answering to nobody and following only his own ethical code — and his own appetites. Can you tell the difference between the two? Are the appalling acts of violence the duck-dictator on the left perpetrates in his dusty border town justified by his government commission — or are they even less defensible as a result? By setting up on his own account, is the duck on the right arrogating power to himself that doesn’t belong to him — or is he merely replicating the process by which all governments have formed, and is perhaps prepared to do a better job than the authority he’s displacing? Also, what kind of vermin is hiding under the television set, seriously, it’s creeping me out.

Marvin, 11/23/10

I’m not sure what the point of this strip is supposed to be, but since it features the entire loathsome Marvin cast staring out at the reader in gobsmacked terror, presumably looking straight into the face of total economic catastrophe, I’m just going to go ahead and declare it the greatest Marvin of all time.

The Jumble, 11/23/10

Don’t let them tell you that clowns are the heir of a long and honorable tradition of performance, or that they live only to hear the laughter of children, or any kind of bullcrap like that. They’re just in it for the money. All clowns are interested in is money.

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Mary Worth, 11/22/10

I love the way that Jeff’s cane looms monstrously in the foreground of the second panel here. In a carefully constructed work of visual narrative, this close-up would hold symbolic meaning, perhaps representing the way Jeff has come to rely on Mary to deal with crises in his own family; or the strange emphasis might indicate foreshadowing — perhaps setting the stage for the scene where a heavily armed Jill arrives at the wedding intent on gunning down everyone wearing clothes or carrying bouquets that don’t meet her aesthetic approval, and Jeff defeats her using only his cane as a weapon. But this is Mary Worth, so it’s probably there just because the artist likes drawing canes. And hey, let’s draw it leaning up against the wall at an impossible angle! Sure, why not?

I knew that the wonderful/horrible “Citizen Cane” gag had appeared in Mary Worth before, but I assumed that it had been Dr. Jeff’s joke all along, and that now it was a conversational crutch (ha!) that he used whenever it came up in conversation. “See, I’m not a decrepit, enfeebled old man! I’m wittily commenting on my own need for physical support when I walk! You kids today think you invented ironic distance, don’t you? Well, someday your knees will be in constant pain, and you won’t even be able to put your skinny jeans or your vintage-store corduroys on without popping a fistful of Advil first, and you’ll be proud if you come up with something as funny as ‘Citizen Cane.’ Hey! Get back here! I’m talking to you!”

But a little search through the archives shows me that the joke was actually used by Ella, who was briefly Mary’s rival for Charterstone meddling supremacy before she left for parts unknown. Which raises a host of worrying questions. Did Jeff kill Ella and steal her cane, believing it to be the source of her supernatural powers? Is “Jeff” secretly Ella, wearing a very clever disguise for terrifying and inscrutable reasons? Or is the cane itself the motive force here, possessing first Ella and then Jeff, forcing them to engage in unspeakably evil acts?

The Jumble, 11/22/10

I don’t know why, but I’m kind of impressed that this Jumble office scene includes one of those weird tripodal speakerphone things that are often used to set up phone conferences, or at least were often used 10 years ago, when I last regularly participated in group calls in office conference rooms. I guess I just expect any white-collar workplace scene in the comics to be 30 years out of date at the minimum. I’m so satisfied by it that I’m not even going to pursue the whole story of how to protagonist managed to horribly injure himself getting donuts.

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Archie, 11/3/10

So I think it’s important that we start asking ourselves what the deal is with Jughead and the homunculi. We all know that he keeps a tiny version of Archie, with its hands gruesomely removed, in his locker. Now we can see that a similarly stump-handed model of Jughead himself sits smiling on his bookshelf. Are these tiny figurines intended to represent the souls of Jughead and Archie? Does Jughead use them to manipulate their relationship, through ominous voodoo rituals? These are the sorts of questions that should be the root of the panic we see in Archie’s eyes in the final panel, but he appears to be more shocked that Jughead is working himself up into a frenzy by looking at hamburger porn on his laptop, when this ought not to come as a surprise to anybody.

Apartment 3-G, 11/3/10

Oh look, it’s Mrs. Bloom, aka the beloved crazy taser lady of six or eight storylines ago. Mrs. Bloom is excited about visiting her son in Florida, except she worries that she won’t be able to sneak her taser, which she’s nicknamed “Prissy,” onto the plane.

Beetle Bailey, 11/3/10

It appears that the Halftrack-bot needs a visit from the repair shop, because it’s disabled itself by humping the corner of its desk too vigorously.

Jumble, 11/3/10

As ever, I’m too lazy/dumb to actually do the Jumble, but I note that “IT’S ‘POISON'” fits nicely into the blanks of the answer and into the scene in the comic panel. Look at the ostentatiously casual way the waitress is checking out that customer out of the corner of her eye. Ha ha, that’s what you get for never leaving a tip, buddy!