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Archie, 4/26/16

I normally only mention the anonymous toilers who add color to the daily strips when they egregiously screw up, so let’s give big props to whoever had the job of dealing with today’s Archie. Not only did they notice the severed foot laying casually atop the debris that Jughead has layered on his floor to block his parents’ access to his room/slaughter chamber, but they chose the perfect off-pink color to represent human flesh that’s just begun to putrefy.

Shoe, 4/26/16

The city of Treetops consists of habitations scattered across the tops of trees, as the name and also just about every Shoe strip published in the last 39 years demonstrate. Rubber comes from trees, and Treetops is inhabited entirely by bird-people. Thus, this is a news item about a rapacious corporation that is going to stop destroying the townsfolk’s homes and will now move on to literally extracting profits from their bodies.

Mark Trail, 4/26/16

Mark and his fellow cave-captives have spent the last week wandering around this cavern marveling at the miracles of nature that created these gorgeous, enormous crystals. Today they figure they should get a mining corporation in here and make a quick buck. Everybody needs sheetrock!

Pluggers, 4/26/16

OH MY GOD

PLUGGER LINGERE IS ADULT DIAPERS

BECAUSE PLUGGERS DON’T DRESS SEXILY, AND ALSO ARE INCONTINENT

IF I HAD TRIED TO COME UP WITH A VICIOUSLY CRUEL PARODY OF PLUGGERS, I NEVER WOULD HAVE COME CLOSE TO THIS

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/25/16

The novel I finished last year, The Enthusiast, is about, among other things, surreptitious marketing — marketing that doesn’t look like marketing, things that come together behind the scenes, things that look like coincidences but are secretly orchestrated by cunning agents working to push their clients’ wares. So, for instance, in the world of The Enthusiast, the fact that a beloved soap opera strip character is suddenly selling her book right around the time that I’m trying to sell my book, which has an entire plot about soap opera comic strips, would be no accident, but would’ve been carefully orchestrated in secret. In real life, of course, it’s a total coincidence. Do you think we’d be talking about Sarah’s dumb horsey book and not neighborhood pinhead Franco Wallace if I had that kind of pull? Come on now.

But, since the topic has been presented to us, I might as well talk a little about book marketing. Namely, my book was funded by a Kickstarter and I don’t really have a marketing team! Sarah and Dolly Pierpont don’t have a traditional marketing team either, of course, just a network of thuggish mob enforcers wandering into museums everywhere and noting idly that this new horsey book is available and would be real good seller if it were displayed prominently in the gift shop and it would be a shame if someone accidentally soaked all those Dutch Masters hanging in the east wing in kerosene and set them on fire. My only mob enforcers are you, my faithful readers, and I implore you to spread the word about The Enthusiast not with violence, but with enthusiasm! Tell your book club! Post the link on your Facebook wall! Have me on your podcast, or radio show, or daytime television program! I promise I’m pretty funny and personable. And come to my book tour, if you’re in Washington, D.C., (tomorrow!) or Baltimore (Thursday!) or New York City (next Monday!) or Buffalo (next Wednesday!), and bring a friend or three! Let’s show these gangsters the right (i.e., significantly less profitable) way to market a book.

The Lockhorns, 4/25/16

Oh, don’t worry, Loretta, he meant it in a weird “alone together in a featureless void where time has no meaning and your very corporeal form begins to bleed into nothingness around the edges but your soul remains eternally locked in a hateful relationship with your spouse who you can never leave or avoid or be apart from for a single moment” way!

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Family Circus, 4/24/16

Animals definitely pick up on the social mores of the humans they live with. Why else would Barfy be dreaming of scaring off this filthy, bearded intruder? Clearly he’s seen Ma Keane clutching her purse closer to her body every time she passes by a man who doesn’t have the decency to shave.

Panels from Judge Parker, 4/24/16

Hey, have you guys heard of Skitter? It’s just like Twitter, except the name makes you think about diarrhea.