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Heart of the City, 5/14/07

Heart’s worries are all too well-founded. When I was in sixth grade, I spilled a pot of boiling chicken soup on my foot while I was stirring it and had to go to the emergency room; I ended up with bandages around my foot for some weeks. My plan was to refer to the cause of my injury as “boiling water,” but I made the mistake of telling someone the real deal and was “noodle foot” for the remainder of the school year. What I’m trying to say, Heart, is that I only wish I had hurt myself doing something cool, like cheerleading practice.

Wait, I think that might have come out wrong.

Slylock Fox, 5/14/07

Ever felonious? Try ever sextaculous! Seriously, if Slylock Fox is part of some secret long-term plan to make kids more open and accepting of the lifestyle of furry fetishists, I’d say it’s scoring another point every time Cassandra Cat appears, especially if she keeps showing up in paradoxically prim-yet-sexy outfits like the turtleneck sweater/tartan combo she’s got on here.

The amount of time our fox/mouse detective duo spend tailing (ha ha, see what I did there?) Miss Cat probably indicates their forbidden lust for her more than their desire for justice. Max Mouse’s infatuation with the sinister feline is well known, so it should come as no surprise that he’s checking out a Krazy Kat collection, since that feature revolved around a cat in love with a cruel mouse tormentor — no doubt the reversal of the real-life situation soothes his tiny besotted bowler-covered brain. Slylock’s appearance here reminds me of another episode from my misspent youth: when I was in high school, I worked in the local branch of the public library, and one day a patron appeared who was apparently notorious for exposing himself in the reading room, and I was assigned to keep an eye on him and kick him out if he did anything funny. He mostly just sat there with the newspaper in his lap, though not with the disturbing look of preternatural alertness that Slylock is sporting here.

Mary Worth, 5/14/07

I can’t even begin to explain to you what the hell is going in the second panel. Is Mary about to demand a horsey ride from Vera? A horsey ride of meddling? In panel one, Vera is following the lesson she learned from hard experience — “be ever vigilant in guarding your crotch” — so Mary may have had no choice in going for the backside attack. But since Vera appears to still be sitting on the bench, what in God’s name has Mary done with her legs?

Gil Thorp, 5/14/07

If Clambake isn’t giving down-home, country-style prostate exams by the end of the week, I for one will be very disappointed.

Ziggy, 5/14/07

Ziggy is going to die from some kind of venereal disease.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/20/07

Uh oh, it looks like June and Pete’s plan to take advantage of a man’s death and seize control of a multi-billion dollar corporation has hit a snag: Rex’s sense of right and wrong, by which we of course mean Rex’s petulant refusal to do what his wife tells him to. I note that June skips quickly from the “we need to help our dear friend in her hour of need” angle to the “insider stock price manipulation” angle.

Ziggy, 4/20/07

Yes, every day our once free nation becomes more and more of a police state by degrees, and who notices? Only Ziggy, apparently. If only more people cared about free speech and civil liberties. And about Ziggy.

The Lockhorns, 4/20/07

When I first saw this caption, I read “antidepressant” instead of “antiperspirant.” Frankly, I like my version much better.

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Spider-Man, 4/10/07

It’s official: Everyone in this strip is a screw-up. “When Kordak hits ’em, they’re done for”? Tell that to not-dead hideously ugly redheaded flattop dude! Even the corpse-dumping was marked by failure. Presumably now N-DHURFD will seek to help Spidey in order to have revenge upon his former criminal compatriots. Inevitably, he’ll botch it somehow.

Pluggers, 4/10/07

So … you’re a plugger if you’re fat? This not only represents some kind of creative nadir for the Pluggers franchise, but it insults millions of fat people everywhere. Maybe the fatness/drawstring shorts combination is the key here.

Mark Trail, 4/10/07

Wow, that angry, angry fish in panel two is the scariest thing I’ve seen in the comics — or, well, anywhere, really — in a long time. Maybe it represents Mark himself, infuriated at being used and determined to settle the score with his gaping, lipless mouth. “You want to pretend to be dead to make money, Dan? Oh, I’ll pretend for you to be dead, all right — ONLY IT WON’T BE PRETEND!”

UPDATE: Anyone who thinks panel two is mere fantastical whimsy needs to read this.

Ziggy, 4/10/07

I have to say that I find the fact that this vending machine/enigmatic monolith has a coin slot but no way to spit out whatever it is you don’t know what you’re missing profoundly unsettling. I know that the “cryptically labeled vending machine that Ziggy regards dubiously” is a common trope in Ziggy, and for obvious reasons I’m not going to subject myself to a hunt through the Ziggy archives to find out if they’re all like that, but the sight of that smooth, unbroken expanse of white whatever, unbroken by any dispensing door or slot of any kind, chills me to the bone.