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Apartment 3-G, 3/28/14

God bless Lu Ann Powers and her willingness to embrace the utter ontological uncertainty of existence that most of us desperately try to keep at bay at all times. Are there towns up the Hudson from New York that sometimes exist, but then sometimes don’t? Maybe! It’s a crazy world! Object permanence is an illusion our minds create so the constant quantum flux of our universe doesn’t drive us insane! Will somebody find a “home” for a baby deer, even though nobody keeps deer as pets, because they’re wild animals who live in the woods? It could happen! She’s a very pretty deer! Or at least she seems so to me! We cannot trust the evidence of our senses!

Dennis the Menace, 3/28/14

Oh, come now, Dennis, don’t be coy! God revels in tales of carnage! Have you read the Old Testament? It’s all smiting this and plagues that and turning temples of rival gods into mass graves/public toilets. Tell him everything and spare no details!

Family Circus, 3/28/14

That’s some pretty sassy talk from an eight-year-old wearing a dress shirt and tie under a powder blue sweater, Billy.

Gil Thorp, 3/28/14

Well, it looks like we’ve hit our Spring Storyline Meet-Cute, where Lucky Haskins and Amy Lange will find true love if they don’t accidentally stab each other in the throat first. Also, did you know that wealthy people with very specific fetishes — languorous noodle-slurping, say — will pay good money to artists to “hide” images they find erotic in plain sight in newspapers across America? I brought that fact up for no particular reason.

Marvin, 3/28/14

don’t think about Marvin doing “number three” don’t think about Marvin doing “number three” DON’T THINK ABOUT MARVIN DOING “NUMBER THREE”

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Dennis the Menace, 3/27/14

You know, I make jokey-jokes about the relative menace level in various Dennis the Menace cartoons but this … this is genuinely disturbing. “Mrs. Mitchell, your son displays great leadership, to the extent that he convinces other children to do things that are in violation of school rules and that sometimes even threathen their own safety. It’s almost as if he’s been building a sort of ‘cult’ among the student body, based largely on his own personality. After a series of violent incidents, we’ve begun isolating him from other students for most of the school day, but there’s been a new unsettling development: we can’t leave an individual teacher to guard him for too long, because if we do, we eventually find them dazed and glassy-eyed, with the door open and Dennis long gone. Anyway, long story short, your son is in a cage made of a special nonconducting alloy right now, and we recommend that you neither look directly at him nor listen to him speak for more than 45 seconds or so.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 3/27/14

I know I don’t talk about Mother Goose and Grimm very often, but hey, here’s today’s Mother Goose and Grimm! It’s about how Pinocchio wants to fuck a piano.

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Gil Thorp, 3/26/14

The interminable winter Gil Thorp plot about … wardrobe malfunctions? or something? … has blessedly ground to a narratively unsatisfying halt, and now we’re getting the run-up to the spring plot, which, though it appears to be equally brain-dead, at least features one of the irritating teen characters being repeatedly and comically injured. Sadly, panel three here depicts zany and accident-prone baseball star “Lucky” Haskins being doused with root beer after suffering two self-inflicted black eyes — I say “sadly” not because I object to this humiliation (I most certainly do not) but because at first glance it might look like he’s being taken over by the sinister “black oil” virus from the X-Files, which would make for a more interesting plotline by an order of magnitude.

Mary Worth, 3/26/14

[GASP] TOMMY YOU CAN’T GO DOWNTOWN!!! DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT AWAITS YOU THERE? Mary Worth went downtown once, years ago, and barely escaped with her life! How can a vulnerable young addict, still fragile in his recovery, grapple with a hellscape like this and expect to escape with his soul intact?

Panel from Mary Worth, 8/7/05

Stay safely in the suburban zones, Tommy, if you value your life … and your sanity.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/26/14

I can’t imagine any USDA inspectors or other allies of the “revenooers” attempting to do their jobs in Hootin’ Holler, so I have to assume that the inhabitants have established their own method of agricultural regulation to make sure they don’t poison each other with the produce of their tiny, hardscrabble farms. While surely we can see the advantages to such a system, there are disadvantages too, as Loweezy is discovering. And anyway, isn’t even a local and voluntary rating system for butter a shadow of the encroaching and sinister government Leviathan? Why don’t the Smifs just fill out an IRS Form 1040 Schedule F (Profit or Loss From Farming) while they’re at it? Looks like some folk are going to have to decamp to an even less accessible holler before this whole place goes to hell.

Apartment 3-G, 3/26/14

For the record, Tommie is taking several days to describe how she tracked down a large animal vet by talking to a minor government official in a small town in Upstate New York, so, you know, don’t worry, because suspense isn’t really going to be involved in this equation.