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Marmaduke, 2/2/11

You know, there are some jokes that I feel like I do to death a bit on my blog, and I begin to think, “Oh, I’m really blowing what I see in this comic way out of proportion.” Among those jokes are my two main Marmaduke tropes: that Marmaduke is a flesh-eating hell-demon, and that his owner is Adolf Hitler. But then I see a panel like this and I feel entirely justified. I mean, look at the guy in the Lost and Found window! Does he look like someone mildly put out because a dog has somehow wandered into his workspace and the dog’s owner is making a little joke? No, he’s quavering in abject terror. The sweat, the grimace of pure panic — that’s how someone looks when confronted with a terrifying, slavering monster who’s stashed a dozen eviscerated corpses that it’s “found” all over the furniture, and is gazing with big-eyed affection at history’s most notorious mass murderer.

Ziggy, 2/2/11

Ha ha, that J.K. Rowling, what a money-grubber, am I right? Not like Ziggy, a franchise that’s all about artistic dignity, and that will wrap itself up with grace once Ziggy kills Voldemort or whatever. Boy, somebody’s bitter about something, I tell you what.

Mary Worth, 2/2/11

Oh my God, Dawn is addicted to the Internet! This is what happens when you let vicious technology pusher Jeff Corey interact with your daughters. Only a mature, strong-willed man can grapple with the info-beast that is the Internet and expect to come out a whole person.

Crock, 2/2/11

Is this … is this about porn? The soldier from the fort wants to check out porn, but is wearing a bag over his head because he’s embarrassed, and also the porn is already checked out? It’s interesting to discover that my impulse to force comics into making some kind of sense is more powerful than my preference to not under any circumstances think about the characters from Crock as sexual beings.

Family Circus, 2/2/11

“Mommy also told me I’m not a groundhog, so that’s got me bummed out.”

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Luann, 1/15/10

Toni is happy now to leave Shannon with Luann and “Billy the Bookworm,” but will she be prepared to deal with the inevitable PTSD that will result when Shannon actually sees Billy in all his worm-cocked glory?

The Lockhorns, 1/15/10

The Lockhorns are spending the weekend indulging in the one pastime for which they still share an abiding passion: huffing paint thinner.

Blondie, 1/15/10

Ha ha! It’s funny because Dagwood’s dream was crushed!

Ziggy, 1/15/10

Ziggy is racist against squirrels.

(Psst! I’m off on a trip for the long weekend — Sunday and Monday strips will go up Monday evening.)

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Ziggy, 1/13/11

Ziggy is always hilariously cruel, but I find the cruelty in today’s panel not just hilarious but particularly poignant. Ziggy of all people is being told that his standards are too high? Ziggy, who is poor and hungry, who soils himself on park benches, who gets insulted by random passers by, who’s worth more dead than alive — Ziggy needs to calibrate his expectations for life downward? Is Universal Press Syndicate ready for the waves of suicide that will be set off by a new, even more depressing Ziggy?

Apartment 3-G, 1/13/11

What’s really awkward, of course, is listening to a woman talk all night about her dead fiance, like Trey’s done, and then trying to kiss her. This is true among ordinary humans, anyway, which is why Margo really needs to take the initiative, and capture and enslave her own mates.