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Better Half, 10/12/14

Like the Lockhorns, the Better Half just churns out a bunch of individual panels to fill its extra allotment of Sunday space. Unlike the Lockhorns, the Better Half attempts to link the panels together; they never create any coherent storyline, but rather present disconnected moments that circle around a few linked themes like some kind of avant garde non-narrative film. The sense of psychic dislocation this produces is really ramped up today, as all the jokes center on teeth, and dirty teeth, and tiny magical beings who come to you in the dead of night while your spouse is asleep and want to take your teeth.

Mark Trail, 10/12/14

“There are thousands of kinds of snakes, they are everywhere, and lots of them are poisonous and one kind can just straight up strangle a crocodile, as depicted in this nightmarish drawing. Also, about a third of people have this weird, irrational fear of them for some reason!”

Momma, 10/12/14

Welp, looks like the Hobbes family is about to be conquered and enslaved, assuming they survive the devastating diseases against which they have no immunity! Everyone is right to look horrified, in other words.

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Mary Worth, 10/11/14

So it seems that Ian never confronted Hanna afte all, which explains why poor Toby was on the receiving end of his grabby, sweaty vitriol. I’m trying to focus on how glowing and ecstatic Mary looks in panel two on being given official permission to meddle in Hanna’s life (by someone who doesn’t really know and isn’t authorized to speak for Hanna, but whatever), but to be honest I’m terribly disturbed by the quote marks Toby’s put around “talk”. I guess we should just think of Ian and Mary as engaged in a long-term game of good cop/bad cop with the outside world, with the thought of Ian’s chinbearded visage twisted in rage being enough to get you to conform to Mary’s vision of how your life should be.

Pluggers, 10/11/14

Longtime Pluggers watchers know Reed Hoover as the strip’s most prolific contributor, who once got a whole week all to himself with his folksy down-home ideas for drawings of mutant beast-men. (This 2006 Dallas Morning News article serves as Reed Hoover: Origins, and also the final paragraph is amazing, so please read all the way to the end.) This is all well and good, of course, but I’m a little disturbed that Reed’s name has worked its way into the panel itself, which apparently features the Pluggers chicken-lady actually reading Pluggers in her daily newspaper. Probably the best thing about pluggers is what I’ve always assumed to be their instinctive disgust towards post-modern self-referential narrative, and now even this has been taken away from me.

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Everybody! Or everyone in or near Los Angeles, anyway! This is your final reminder that I will be doing standup at Tao Comedy Studio at 7466 Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles tomorrow (Saturday) night at 8:30 pm! Check out the Facebook event, won’t you?

And with that business out of the way, how about … a comment of the week?

“Tommie! You’re home at last!! And … oh, you’re wearing a turtleneck. Despite the fact that it’s clearly polo collar day. So much for pretending you haven’t been living in a barn, then.” –Dan

And how about some hilarious runners up?

“Momma‘s kids find each other so repugnant that they’ve arranged themselves in a such a way that they don’t have to look at each other’s faces. Momma has decided to take it a step further by eliminating any light sources.” –pugfuggly

“Sweet! Both Apartment 3-G and Momma are in fluorescent colors today! Welp, time to print these out, pin them to the wall, turn on the black light, and drop acid! Best. Sunday. Ever.” –made of wince

“Apartment 3-G, The Happiness Falls Fiasco: What really happened.

Frank: I’m not drawing that fucking deer anymore, Margaret!
Margaret: You have to! It’s in your contract!
Frank: I don’t give a fuck! I ain’t doing it! You won’t see Margo for months if I have to draw that little fucker again!
Margaret: Well, we’ll just see who outlasts who!
Frank: You’re on, Honey!” –Mikey

“With all three wearing matching colored tops, the 3G cult is back together. Margo is obviously the Jim Jones of this apartment.” –Ranger

“No seatbelt, Ian? Looks like you’ll be able to give Hanna her dressing-down from the passenger compartment of her own car once you launch through both windshields.” –James Dowd, on Facebook

“Man, Ian’s beard is pissed. It’s already starting to detach from his face to wreak havoc. If they find that ding-dong’s body, cause of death will be asphyxiation by beard.” –Voshkod

“Stanley’s plan to evade taxes via atrocious health habits and an attendant early death is already going perfectly. He’s only 32 years old, and he’s in intensive care so often that now he just wears a hospital gown as his everyday outfit. He’s thinking of getting his monogrammed and everything.” –Joe Blevins

“Ian’s pretty angry for a man who just won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.” –C. Sandy Cyst

“And congratulations to Mr. Giella for his masterful rendering of Toby as one who’s been strung out all night, waiting for the taste Ian said he’d bring to her.” –Chyron HR

“Oh lordy. Hanna Dingdon? Get it, because she keeps dinging cars? Come on, Mary Worth, this is Mark Trail-level naming. Well, actually, no. If this was Mark Trail-level, she’d have the nickname ‘Car Accident’. But still.” –Enlong

“Toby is an artist who paints and sells miniatures. Oh God, I can’t believe I know that. Suddenly I realize why I am unemployable.” –Gabacho

“AT LAST we see why Toby has bound herself to the rotting flesh of Ian Cameron. She and her entire race must constantly feed on human rage and bile if they are to live. A shrunken, wizened shell of herself when she opens the door, by the second panel she is aglow with youth and energy, basking in the rays of Chinbeard’s sweet, sweet fury. By choosing such a life mate/symbiotic host, she has guaranteed herself a near-inexhaustible source of life. Well played, alien life-form Toby!” –boojum

“That ‘leg-out-of-bed’ pose could mean that she’s arriving, but I prefer to think that she’s leaving: ‘By the way, happy anniversary and adios, loser.’ Or she’s farting.” –handsome Harry Backstayge, idol of a million other women

“Come on, Les. This isn’t that hard. Just mark it on your calendar: right after the Lisa’s Legacy Run is the anniversary of your marriage to Not-Lisa.” –Digger

“Sorry teacher, Dennis refuses to recognize Abkhazian Independence day. Try your anti-American brainwashing on some less menacing kid!” –Dr. Dread

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