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Crock, 3/20/17

You might think this is just a typical cartoon where a lonely desert-dwelling child’s only friend is a freakish buzzard. But, not so! Check out Little Otis’s blank, pupil-less stare in the second panel. That buzzard isn’t his friend at all; it’s hypnotizing him. Imagine “How should I introduce you to my mom, Wadsworth?” spoken in an eerie monotone. The only introducing that’s going to happen will come once Otis, under Wadsworth’s mesmerizing gaze, murders his parents and “introduces” the foul carrion eater to their delicious corpses.

Slylock Fox, 3/20/17

Hey, sinister grinning bear (?) lumberjacks: instead of stealing this poor beaver’s trees, have you considered recruiting him, for a good-paying job in the lumberjack industry that apparently still exists in this animal-ruled world? Honestly, how is it that in the animal economy there’s a single lumber company that isn’t entirely beaver-staffed?

Family Circus, 3/20/17

It’s bad, in the sense that it’s supposed to be “on fleek” (and I’m 100% sure the Family Circus isn’t clever enough to intend this to be an error either on Billy’s or Big Daddy Keane’s part), and also in the sense that the Family Circus shouldn’t be doing jokes about the phrase “on fleek.” Just bad all around. Bad bad bad.

Spider-Man, 3/20/17

Given that Rocket Raccoon isn’t well known on the version of Earth that has the misfortune to be depicted in Newspaper Spider-Man, I love that the lower word balloon in the second panel ends in an exclamation point. You’d think that the cop would say “Spider-Man — and a raccoon???? [comical BOI-OI-OING sound effect],” but nope, he’s just accepting this as yet another one of life’s passing mysteries.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/19/17

I get why a new writer might want to retool a long-running strip a bit, especially when it comes to a character who, through a long series of choices that might’ve individually made sense, became an art prodigy at a prestigious private school who’s bankrolled by a mob widow and chauffeured about by said mob widow’s brutal enforcer. Still, it seems like the best approach would probably be to rip off the band-aid quickly; I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the strip that got it right was Newspaper Spider-Man, which was coerced by its corporate parent into going along with the comic book continuity’s One More Day storyline in which Peter’s marriage to MJ was erased from history by a demon (no, really), and so introduced the shift in the most half-assed way possible: by just straight-up announcing it with no further explanation beyond a wall of text telling us, “yeah, this is what we’re doing now.” Then, when it turned out everyone hated this idea, a new wall of text was like “oh, yeah it was all a dream, sorry y’all.” I’m not saying Rex Morgan should be quite that blatant about it, but honestly the more they dwell on changing up Sarah’s character, the more obvious the grinding gears are. Just send her to public school! It’ll be fine! We won’t even notice, probably!

By the way, June saying “I don’t recall you being close friends with any of those kids” is one of the coldest things I’ve ever seen a comic strip mom say to her too-smart-for-her-age socially weird daughter. That’s also big talk from someone who has exactly one friend, her erstwhile nanny, who is decamping for England after June suggested she have an affair with a household employee, so as to acquire his seed.

Marvin, 3/19/17

I don’t know if Sunday Marvin strips have always referred to its repugnant title character as “the playpen philosopher” and I’m just now noticing, or if this is a recent attempt to rebrand the hated baby. Either way, I’m disappointed that there’s no philosophy in today’s strip, though I suppose responding to your father’s unconditional affection with disgust is “philosophical” compared to, say, smugly announcing that you reek of shit and piss.

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/18/17

So Funky walked up the hill to that mysterious abandoned house and then … spent the week walking around in it eerie emptiness? And then looked at an old painting on the wall for a while. And today, in the first dialogue of the whole week, thought-balloons some stuff that I guess is supposed to be profound but is actually just a symptom of a major depressive disorder. I honestly don’t know if this is a Significant Location From Storylines Past or just a Metaphor Symbolizing Life’s Impermanence, and I also don’t know what’s supposed to be happening here, but in a larger sense I feel like I know exactly what’s happening here, you know?

Judge Parker, 3/18/17

You’ll recall that when Derek was first introduced to this strip, he was Honey Ballinger’s boyfriend but Sophie liked him she decided to steam him away, but then suddenly (and by “suddenly” I mean “four years later,” because this is Judge Parker after all) Derek was Sophie’s boyfriend and she was worried Honey Ballinger was going to steal him away from her. This could’ve all been chalked up to the silly, transient nature of teen relationships, but as today’s final panel reveals, the question of who exactly was dating whom has abruptly become extremely serious.

Mary Worth, 3/18/17

Pretty sure that this is what you’d get if you were making a movie and directed your actors to “do a bunch of cocaine and then yell whatever comes into your head about cruises as loud and as fast as you can.”