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Dennis the Menace, 2/7/15

It’s true: one day Dennis is going to come home from school and find that his parents have gotten tired of his antics and moved out, taking only enough clothes to fill a suitcase and leaving no forwarding address. He’ll have to move out eventually too, of course, either when the food runs out or the bank forecloses, whichever comes first.

Spider-Man, 2/7/15

Spider-Man might not put that much effort into fighting crime, but if there’s one thing he always brings his A game to, it’s moronic banter. I sincerely wish this first panel could exist in animated GIF form, so that I could watch Spidey stumble around, arms flailing, for the entire time it takes him to spell out “M-I-S-T-E-R-I-O,” then mug awkwardly as he waits for the approbation for his dumb bit of wordplay that never comes.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/7/15

Say, have you been wondering what’s been happening in Rex Morgan, M.D.? What’s been happening in Rex Morgan, M.D., has been that Rex thought he might have a little while, just a little god-damned while, where he’d get to sit quietly and do a little painting and not have to talk to anybody. But turns out he doesn’t. Turns out he never does. Fine, June, get the resumes. No, I don’t care, just get them.

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Oh hey guys it’s your week’s top comment!

“‘The Fed?’ Sam asked. ‘Yeah, the Army Corps of Engineers! They can move mountains!’ the odd little man replied. ‘Move mountains,’ Abbey said dreamily behind Sam. A few million dollars, well-spent by lobbyists, resulted in the passage of the Parker Emergency Relief Act. Now that pesky mountain that blocked Abbey’s view from the farm was gone. Gone where? Sam didn’t know. Abbey didn’t care. And Sophie, from her nearly impenetrable mountain fortress in Kansas, wasn’t taking interviews.” –Voshkod

Oh hey guys the runners up are funny too!

“Josh, you’re overlooking the exciting and welcome implication. The babies have segregated themselves from Marvin as the buffalo segregate themselves from the old and sick. What happens to the old and sick in nature? Marvin is going to be carried off by a coyote at any moment. Take heart!” –G’Quan

“I am not terribly familiar with Mary Worth, and given its prominence on this website, I thought I should familiarize myself with the basic premise. From Wikipedia: ‘For the evil spirit that is sometimes known by this name, see Bloody Mary (folklore).’ I get the sense that that alone covers things.” –absuplendous

“‘Vince, I want you to know that these guys might have guns.’ ‘No problem, check out this sweet stick I found!'” –pugfuggly

“Never mind what Hanna is saying in panel one, since the way she is holding her hands apart indicates the real reason she is eager to become Mrs. Sean Hastings. As Mary indicates with a knowing grin, ‘Wow!'” –seismic-2

“I love how Alice is looking at Henry, clearly thinking, ‘I can’t believe I married this clueless dork. It’s probably for the best that Dennis’ biological father is the UPS guy.’ I don’t love how I know their first names without even thinking about it.” –Lily Sincere

“You see, Curtis, the rappers I grew up with wrote songs about how much they liked the booty, and they dressed totally funky-fresh, and they had fly dance moves and celebrity cartoons like Hammerman. Then they played chicken with the IRS and lost. They were the ones that spoke to my generation.” –rmbalpha

“I like the guy with the mustache. He’s definitely seen it all before.” –Lisa Evans, on Facebook

“The Corp of Engineers? Is this a historically significant RV Park built on a 500 year flood plain and in need of a levee system? ‘Hello, this is the Army Corp of Engineers. What?? Really?? An RV Park?? Hang on a minute … Okay, I’ll divert a couple of D11 dozer brigades from Kabul. They should be there by lunch.’ Christ. Just give some local hick $100 to clear the place and fix the road with his Bobcat you morons. No wonder the fucking squirrel left.” –Mikey

“Francis gets a brief glimpse of the implications of quantum physics, and is slightly happier knowing that in an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of possibilities he’s outlived his mother in at least one.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid

“The sight of that plugger-child made me wonder: Is pluggerism inborn or is it a choice? Do young pluggers ever look at their elders and aspire to be something else? If they do, will they inevitably fail, like a potato that wishes it could grow up to be a rose?” –Mardou Fox

“Observe how Duchamp uses visual repetition to explore movement and time in a static medium in his minor work Dude Descending his Weltschmerz.” –Shoe Substitutes

“Look, Dagwood is wearing a hat to cover his weird haircut and a vest over the strange single button on his shirt. Back in the old days, he used to try to pass as a normal person!” –BigTed

“Could it be that everyone here is just mesmerized by the floor? ‘That weatherproofing stain really did the trick,’ they’re all thinking. ‘See how the water just beads up like that? It’s a thing of beauty!’ ’Cause that’s how characters in Mark Trail think. Even the bad guys.” –Joe Blevins

“I’m tempted to submit the Dagwood pic to seathogs.com. Everything about this photo — the briefcase in the empty seat, the arm draped territorially over same — indicates that he is NOT MOVING dammit, no matter how full the bus gets or how many standing/elderly/disabled folks glare at him. My guess: five minutes after this photo, he spread out for a nap, just like at work, with his feet on that seat and his snores blaring. Hurrah for carpooling, and the removal of this menace from our shared public spaces!” –A New Day

“Although she was not yet awake to the horror, Margo’s sickening dread suggested that her intuition finally had made the connection: every non-roommate in the universe was impossibly somehow the same woman in the same top in the same restaurant/apartment. How long before she saw through the coma, or the very real straps holding her down at the asylum?” –Little Blue Bicycle

“I just Googled ‘Les Moore’ and ’emo loser’ together and got zero results. Is everyone else too polite to point out that they are anagrams? Am I the meanest person on the internet who has heard of this character? Google is just having an off day, right?” –A Concerned Reader

“‘Doubtful, and immaterial.’ I think that Gil Thorp’s special presentation of ‘The Courtship of Mr. Spock’ is growing on me.” –Master Softheart

“It’s extremely fun to read Mary’s speech in Darth Vader’s voice today.” –Hans Peter Gertje, on Facebook

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! If you’d like to buy advertising on the site, you can do so on a CPM basis through BuySellAds. To find out more, you can go to my BuySellAds page or just click here.

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Mary Worth, 2/6/15

For a character whose whole schtick is giving advice, Mary Worth’s given some pretty bad advice over the years. There was the time one of Mary’s friends confessed she still had feelings for a now-married old flame whom she hadn’t seen in years, and Mary told her to go ahead and contact him and pretend it was all “platonic”, because what could possibly go wrong. There was also the time that she told a woman haunted by memories of being stood up at the altar that you can fix sadness by choosing to remember events differently from what actually happened. And these are just the first two instances that leapt to mind, so what I’m saying is that it’d probably be premature to call today’s strip the worst advice Mary’s ever given anyone. But still, telling someone that “this thing you’re about to do will probably anger your daughter, so rather than talking to her about it you should just do it and then she’ll have literally no choice but to accept it and your relationship is gonna be great” isn’t really a good idea, you know?

Pluggers, 2/6/15

Speaking of all-time lows, this panel can’t match the sheer awful concentrated sadness of 2006’s classic “Rhino-Man hocks his TV”, but you have to admit that “physical pain is a plugger’s constant companion, one he eventually learns to rely on for his sense of self” is pretty darn grim.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/6/15

For those of you who are fortunate enough to not be up on the terminology used by scholars of fan fiction, “Mary Sue” is a term deployed to criticize a fanfic character seen as being a poorly fleshed out and idealized stand-in for the author. I guess the point of this strip is to somehow prove that Les surely isn’t a Mary Sue character, because if he were, people would actually recognize him (“him” being either Les or Tom Batuik, I guess) in public! I’m not sure what a weird high-school-era flashback panel contributes to this message, structurally, but the important part is that total strangers feel absolutely no connection with or desire to speak to Les. None whatsoever.

Apartment 3-G, 2/6/15

At last, we’re meeting the psychic scam artist who’s gotten Margo’s mother into her clutches! Who had “vaguely dowdy brunette with boring hair wearing a pastel turtleneck” in the pool? Oh, everybody? OK!

Crankshaft, 2/6/15

Crankshaft’s been doing a pretty terrible series of Airport Indignity Laffs this week, but they, and the strip as a whole, have now ended abruptly as Crankshaft crawls into the baggage-handling mechanism and is crushed to death.