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Apartment 3-G, 9/1/14 (panel)

They’re going to either burst into a Rocky Ledge duet or dash for the bedroom, and I don’t know which would be worse.

Slylock Fox, 9/1/14

I’m always fascinated by Weirdly’s gadgets, minor taxonomy-related errors aside. But I was transfixed by Slylock’s scuba outfit, encasing his luxuriant red tail in yards of pillowy blue neoprene. At first it looked like a clever canid-specific buoyancy compensator, maintaining both depth and balance — probably fart-powered to conserve breathing air and protect the delicate reef ecology. Then I saw Max’s predicament, and realized that Sly’s tailsheath is essential defense against the carnivorous goldfish, which consumes its victim tail-first, inch by inch, until after long months of agony the nose disappears into its toothy maw like the final cherry of an after-dinner flambé. Red in tooth and claw, folks — dive safe, and keep those tails covered!

Mary Worth, 9/1/14

Mary is driven insane about the way l’affaire Kaphut was resolved without her interference so no credit is coming her way and she had to go crawling to that smug punk son of her jellyfish boyfriend just to find out what the hell happened. Like she’s no better than some damn nurse! In her rage she lets her defenses slip and reverts to the hair, posture, expression, and sing-songy speech cadences of an Evil Queen in a Disney movie (probably Ursula from The Little Mermaid, but maybe Cruella from 101 Dalmations, your choice):

♫ “You seeeeeeeeem to have very ACurate gutinnnnnnnnstincts (cackle cackle cackle)!” ♫
♫ “You KNOW what was reeeeeecently reVEALED about himmmmmmm? hmmmmmmm? (cackle shriek cackle, whiff of sulfur, bright flash)”

Van Horn Texas — home to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Image spaceport and the 10,000-year clock buried in the surrounding hills. Come for the diesel-fried chicken and donkey-ropin’; leave for Tucson in the morning. Send burrito money, folks — he’s a long, long way from home and a burrito could be a good friend right now.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Crankshaft, 8/31/14 (panels)

I over-edit. Even on deadline, I’ll find a weak verb, unnecessary adverb, or clumsy subordinate clause and go back to the edit screen to tune it up, repeating the process many times until I start changing the same things back and forth or grow embarrassed at how many revisions WordPress says I’ve racked up. So even though I poke fun at some of the bizarre sounds-like-English dialogue in Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, I’m sympathetic, see? I know how staring at a handful of words too long makes you doubt readers will understand them, and after that it’s a quick trip down the hall of mirrors.

But c’mon. This is an old joke based on a familiar phrase. Nobody is going to misunderstand you if you leave out that second “wee.” And your audience is not Beavis.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/31/14 (panels)

And here’s Crankshaft‘s companion strip on the Centerville-Westview axis, all done up in its trademark Sunday Murk-O-Vision — because what Funky Winkerbean needs is more gloom.

The narrative challenge here is that the easy gag “hurry-up offense ends a bad game sooner” is undercut by the team’s recent improvement. Doesn’t bother Les, though – he’s like the guy who ruins a good meal out by complaining about the food he got on a previous visit, making damn sure the chef’s wife at the hostess station can hear him loud and clear.

Judge Parker, 8/31/14 (panels)

Neddy shamelessly sucks up to Rocky Ledge to get her deal approved as the randy entertainer takes a long, approving glance down the dress she chose for exactly that purpose. Sam beams: “My daughter, the closer — check please!”

“No, not you, Maurice.”

On the Road Again, as sung by country music legend Willie Nelson and acted out in real life by Josh and Amber. No stopping in Luckenbach, though – it’s time to press westward, ever westward!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Gil Thorp, 8/30/14

Oh ha ha, a nationally-ranked star quarterback just fell into Gil’s lap because Valley Tech “didn’t feel right” or some such B.S. Panel-2 Gil can barely suppress his glee (that’s Gil glee – trust me on this). With True on board, he’ll be able to bluff his way through the entire season and still win a game or two; maybe even make the playdowns. Of course rivalries will tear his team apart and his betrayal will scar his young charges for life, but let’s keep our eye on the bigger picture here, shall we?

Dick Tracy, 8/30/14

In their vulnerable moments, even law-abiding citizens of peaceful countries can be overcome by dark paranoid fantasies in which armed officers chuckle as they blithely ignore law and principle in service to their wealthy masters. For more than 80 years, it has been the role of Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie to present this paranoid hellscape as a kind of utopia.

Citizens! Don’t let the face of Sam Catchem be the last face you see! Comply!

Apartment 3-G, 8/30/14

I bow to no one — not even the Comics Curmudgeon himself — in my devotion to Apartment 3-G, which I have been following since the Kennedy administration, and daily for the last eight years. But when I saw today’s strip, I realized I had absolutely no memory of this “Rick” (Tommie’s recently deceased fiancé was named Jim). That implies that Rick is unmemorable even by the standards of Apartment 3-G men — a sort of black hole of interest from which nothing can escape. A long grind through the archives yielded this image from the March 2012 “Tommie is going to be a singer or some damn thing” story, so yup:

Apartment 3-G, 3/9/12

The steady degeneration of Tommie’s boyfriends brings a chilling thought. What if all this didn’t begin in May, 1961, but further back — say, at the Dawn of Time? Imagine Tommie as not a woman but as Woman Herself: Eve, Helen of Troy, Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra, Wu Hou, Jeanne d’Arc, Nzinga Mbande, Pocahontas, Florence Nightingale, Colette, Lucille Ball, Eva Perón — all hanging around with the likes of Gary from IT, ol’ Doc Buckethead, and this “Rick” here. It’s disgusting.

Mary Worth, 8/30/14

Predictably, Dr. Drew has been secretly replaced by some kind of insane judgmental robot, condemning his fellow doctors as much for their humanity as for their errors. He seems quite certain about Kaphut’s fate, probably because he plans to carry it out himself.

Mary’s point, of course, is that Kaphut should suffer worse than merely being torn apart by a crazed homicidal machine, even though such a thing is not possible. That way both Drew and Kaphut come up short, so it’s win-win in her book.

Splashdown — in Austin! Midway through their 3,000-mile trip, with a well-earned day of loafing ahead. Then off again, into the searing West Texas heat.

— Uncle Lumpy