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Mary Worth, 6/28/12

Wow, so the letters that people write into Wilbur’s Ask Wendy advice column are … kind of abstract? I mean, usually people send notes to advice columnists with very specific questions, like “How can I convince my son to get a job and move out of the house?” or “What’s a polite way to tell my mother-in-law that how I cook isn’t any of her business?” or (scroll down to the second letter, which is the greatest letter to Dear Abby ever written) “My husband wants too much sex, should I let one of my horny friends sleep with him to take the pressure off me?” But if the letter we’re getting a glimpse of here is representative, Wilbur’s fans just write long, rambling diatribes about their overpowering ennui, full of sweeping, nonspecific complaints about our fallen age, and lacking any particular question or request for advice per se. Are these mopey types attracted to Ask Wendy because Wilbur himself is full of quiet but very deep despair, which radiates out on a frequency only other depressives can detect? Or do we have things the wrong way round — has Wilbur in fact been driven to the slough of despond by the incessant soul-crushing letters Wendy receives? You can see that Mary herself, normally indefatigable and chipper, is already buckling under the weight of sadness in panel one.

Wizard of Id, 6/28/12

In much cheerier news, the Black Death has arrived in Id, striking terror into the hearts of its inhabitants. If historical averages hold, the plague will kill a third to two-thirds of the characters in the strip, but we can always hope for more.

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Wizard of Id, 5/8/12

It’s really kind of sad that this fearsome, powerful wizard, heir to a long tradition of human beings who have managed to pierce through the barrier separating our mundane world from the realm of magic, having just used his unspeakable powers to bring a poor mortal back from the brink of death, feels a need to make a terrible and barely coherent joke relating to Apple’s electronic gizmos. It ought to be just as sad that cartoonists working on long-established strips that run in hundreds of newspapers around the world also feel the need to make terrible and barely coherent jokes relating to Apple’s electronic gizmos, but, you know, that ship sailed long ago, so it’s hard to feel more than just mild disgust about it at this point.

Family Circus, 5/8/12

Aw, look at that, the name of the mall the Keanes have descended upon sounds like “Bless ’em all,” isn’t that nice? For my money there are not nearly enough mall/all puns out there in the world. For a while, when I lived in Oakland, there was this truck from Lavine’s Heating & Cooling that was often parked near my apartment that featured prominently the company’s URL, kingofthemall.com, meant, I assumed, to indicate that Lavine’s was King of Them All, with “them all” referring to all the HVAC contractors out there (or who knows, maybe it meant all of humanity, but the on-truck marketing copy didn’t seem that grandiose otherwise). I always saw that and thought “Boy, the King of the Mall must be pissed that he didn’t grab that URL when he had the chance.” Anyway, I’m curious as to whether an encounter with the horror of a litter of Keane Kids will make Blessem Mall’s management regret being so universal with their blessings.

Apartment 3-G, 5/8/12

Haha, this some high-quality amateur Freudianism going on right here! Nina’s mother died giving birth to her, so now she’s ambivalent about having a baby because she … never had a mother to love her? Or maybe because she did have a mother, and then that mother died horribly while giving birth to a baby. Just a thought!

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Curtis, 3/2/12

Wow, so this is the moment when Gunk’s Flyspeck Island powers go from irritating to terrifying. “Have you ever seen dozens of feral cats devour a human being before, Curtis? They aren’t fast and mindless like piraña. The whole process is quite messy, but, ultimately, very thorough. We needn’t stick around for the entire thing.”

Apartment 3-G, 3/2/12

God damn it, Nina, you’ve made it quite clear to anyone who would listen that you don’t really care that much about having a baby, so when are you going to start caring about having a baby? Look at the way you’re dressed! Is that collar supposed to be ironic? Your baby won’t appreciate your hipster New York affectations when s/he’s an adult and looking at pictures of you when you’re pregnant! You’re dressing for two, now, so get used to us not caring about your opinions!

Gil Thorp, 3/2/12

Oh, thank God, Gil’s latest dumb moral crusade has finally hit the point where he gets to make a principled moral stand that achieves nothing other than irritating everybody and screwing up a potential championship. This is pretty much what he lives for, so presumably we’ve just hit the season’s climax. Personally, I’m more interested in those sheets of loose-leaf paper that seem to be giving Marty Moon his half-assed inside scoop. I’m guessing they’re what Marty gets when he demands “a printout of some of those internet blogs with the rumors” from whatever poor journalism student at the local community college drew the short straw and has to serve as his intern this semester.

Wizard of Id, 3/2/12

Ha ha, the drunken court jester used to have a dog that he loved, but now it’s dead! It’s his heartbreaking sigh in the first panel that really sells the hilarity here.