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Mary Worth, 5/1/14

“But … but, Wilbur … I’m not sure I’m comfortable taking on a ex-con drug addict with no restaurant experience!”

“Look, Jerry, maybe we never spoke about it aloud, but you and I both know that the ‘Best Eats’ column in the Santa Royale Courier-Intelligencer is prime real estate — prime real estate — and that there’s an admission fee to get in, one that you would have to pay eventually. Do we understand each other? Now, you pick up that phone and tell your accountant that you’ve found a better man for the job. Or your sommelier. Either one, it doesn’t matter to me, but it has to happen by the end of the day. Got it?”

Rex Morgan, M.D. 5/1/14

Anyway, long story short, this is how Sarah ended up in a specially constructed all-plastic prison cell guarded by a platoon of soldiers who don’t speak English.

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Family Circus, 4/30/14

We’ve seen the Keane kids watching anachronistic non-flat-screens before, as is to be expected in a strip that, like many legacies, is usually constructed from a comprehensive library of decades-old clip art. Today’s installment is interestingly post-modern, though, in that the very outdatedness of the art is transformed into a self-referential joke by the rewritten caption. What do you suppose the original joke here was? “Look at all those books grandma has! Is she a Communist?”

Funky Winkerbean, 4/30/14

Well, that didn’t take long at all! John Darling’s last words weren’t a defiant announcement of his devotion to his secret lover at all, but rather a weirdly phrased declaration of love for his daughter. Turns out he was secretly a good guy, to one (and only one) person, namely his infant child. I guess that solves the mystery that was bothering Jess, somehow! The rest of us can just be relieved for her sake that her father didn’t live long enough to inevitably use her beloved nickname in a cruel and degrading fashion (“Hey, whatever happened to my unrealistically proportioned little Barbie doll? Better lay off the deserts, sweetie!”).

Mary Worth, 4/30/14

Ooh, look at Wilbur, acting like a big shot, showing off his connections to Santa Royale’s rich and powerful! Meanwhile, in panel two, Jerry is practically going cross-eyed just imagining all the sandwich revenue Wilbur has generated for him over the years. What a wonderful, mutually beneficial relationship this has been!

Marvin, 4/30/14

Marvin thinks his friend’s house smells “strange” because the air isn’t thick with the stench of his own putrefying feces. That’s the entire joke of this comic strip, which is published in newspapers across the country!

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Mary Worth, 4/29/14

Good news! After being somehow hypnotized by Mary into trying to take Wilbur back, Iris is accompanying Wilbur back to Jerry’s Sandwich Shop, and she promises that the date will not end in shouting and recriminations, this time. By the way, the “crime” Wilbur refers to is not the awkward end to their last Jerry’s encounter; it’s the vicious man-on-sandwich violence he perpetrates there, lunch and dinner, every day of the week.

Heathcliff, 4/29/14

In 1993, the Butthole Surfers came played a concert in my hometown of Buffalo, and the Buffalo News (hilariously, to me) refused to print their name, referring to them only as the “B------- Surfers” throughout their review. I realize this makes me sound like an old person, but it is interesting to see the evolution of what’s considered “kid-friendly” by the print media industry. Anyway, I find this panel’s depiction of a group of children cheering as Heathcliff spray-paints “POOP” on a wall completely believable, as little kids think the word “poop” is endlessly hilarious and are also probably too young to be properly terrified by a literate cat who walks on its back legs and can operate a spray can.

Dennis the Menace, 4/29/14

“No matter what your thoughts on the matter, our marriage is inevitable!” “I’m not sexually attracted to you!” Brrr, Dennis the Menace has reached Lockhorns level of emotional menace.