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Gasoline Alley, 3/14/14

Well thank goodness the violent chaos is over in Gasoline Alley! Now we can get back to the strip’s stock in trade: long, drawn-out hyperrealism that hammers home the ennui of middle-class American life. Look forward to the next six weeks of “There’s a problem with Sheezix’s tickets,” which ought to rival the mannered intensity of 2012’s “Sheezix tries to return a DVD player” and 2011’s “Sheezix tries to fix his washing machine.”

Mary Worth, 3/14/14

Wow, this strip is suddenly leaning pretty hard on the “Tommy’s salvation is a post office job” thing. Are potential employees so afraid that the financially troubled agency will collapse that it’s being forced to woo the unemployable to apply for jobs with paid storylines in Mary Worth? “Ex-con? Ex-drug addict? Career opportunities in the U.S. Postal Service await you! If you can make mail-related puns in your mind, we want you!”

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Mark Trail, 3/13/14

Haha, so, obviously I was right about Marlin being a terrible nogoodnik, and since he’s a Mark Trail villain he’s also a moron, keeping meticulous photographic records of him and his buddies doing illegal things. It seems Jessica isn’t implicated in the nefariousness, though; presumably this sinister, silent army of pelicans that she’s nursed back to health has been trained to obey her every command and will unleash hell on the boyfriend who betrayed her trust.

Heathcliff, 3/13/14

Wow, so Heathcliff’s dad isn’t the only one in the family who’s an actual convicted felon! It actually minimizes my respect of Heathcliff as a notorious badass that he feels like he needs to kiss his parole officer’s ass like this. Look how badly he’s sweating! Is he afraid he’s going to fail his drug test?

Slylock Fox, 3/13/14

The relationship between sapient predator and prey animals in this strip is not, in my opinion, adequately explored, though today’s Six Differences offers some tantalizing hints. Based on that wolf’s facial experession, I’m guessing he’s watching some kind of sleazy porn for carnivores. “Oh, my,” says the pig, as he slowly unbuttons his tuxedo, “I certainly am feeling plump, juicy, and succulent today.”

Dennis the Menace, 3/13/14

Wow, congrats, Dennis, you’ve actually summoned up a fairly disturbing scenario I hadn’t contemplated before! If I had to guess, I’d imagine something like this?

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Oh my goodness, it’s a new site design! Your eyes do not deceive you: I’ve tweaked the design of the site, by which I mean that the amazing Adam Norwood tweaked the design of the site, after I gave him vague and sometimes contradictory instructions on how to do it. In addition to a refreshed look that features fewer ads per page, the site also has a couple minor functionality improvements. When you want to check out older posts by date, either using the menus at the top of the page or on the advanced archives page, there are now separate menus for month and year, so you don’t have to hunt through an enormous 120-entry drop-down list. And comments on older posts are now visible! (I had turned off the ability to comment on posts older than ten days, because I was getting waves and waves of comment spam there, but that had the negative side effect of hiding the old comments from view; now you can glory in comments from yesteryear once again.)

Anyway, if the site looks weird or jumbled on your screen, it may be because your browser has cached the old version of the site; please hold down the shift key and reload the page a few times, and if that doesn’t work, try deleting your browser’s cache. If you’re still having problems, email me at bio at jfruh dot com, and be sure to send a screenshot and tell me what browser and operating system you’re using.

OK! Now: comics!

Mary Worth, 3/12/14

Look, just because I haven’t been featuring the current Mary Worth Tommy storyline on this blog daily doesn’t mean I don’t wake up every morning and give thanks for it to Karen Moy, Joe Giella, the Hearst Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiary King Features Syndicate, Inc., and whatever God(s) may be responsible for any of the previously mentioned entities. Today we have Tommy returning to the art form that is truly his métier: the unnecessary thought balloon. Remember when he got arrested and thought-ballooned “groan”, presumably keeping silent so as not to further antagonize the enraged populace? Well, today, he’s willing to get a little petulant about his mother’s overbearing attempts to make Wilbur his personal headhunter, but he won’t cross the line into full-on sass and say “sheesh” aloud.

Spider-Man, 3/12/14

It’s obviously not at all surprising that J. Jonah Jameson has become drunk with power and is now glorying in his new supervillain/hero status. But turning his back on photography and print media to bask in the adoration of TV news? That’s just cold. That’s a betrayal of his own embattled industry. At least he’s not clicking through slide after slide of the “Iron Jonah Foils Tank Heist” slideshow on the local Patch site.

Heathcliff, 3/12/14

Heathcliff’s word-helmets are getting increasingly abstract.