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Apartment 3-G, 1/27/14

Here’s the thing about me and the soap opera strips: after years of reading them, I’ve just sort of normalized their usual low-level absurdity, and so they have to get really absurd before I sit up and take notice. So, last week, when Tommie saw a deer get hit by a car and found a little baby deer and felt bad about it, with the whole thing narrated by Tommie without us ever actually seeing either deer? Low-level absurd. Tommie bringing said baby deer, who looks a lot more like a kangaroo or something, back to her small New York City apartment, to live? VERY ABSURD. This week’s going to be great! Tommie tries to figure out what the baby deer will drink from a bottle and eventually calls La Leche League! Tommie tries to laugh off all the lacerations on her hands and face from the deer’s tiny but still sharp hooves! Tommie takes the deer for a walk, on a leash! The deer poops and pees all over the apartment, despite the fact that Tommie’s been taking it for walks! OH MY GOD MARGO OH MY GOD WHAT WILL MARGO SAY I AM SO EXCITED YOU GUYS

Mark Trail, 1/27/14

Speaking of things I’m excited about: we all know Mark Trail recycles plots from its past, sometimes directly, sometimes piecing together characters and art and plot points from multiple sources to create a dreamlike world of eternal return. Anyway, one of the first great Mark Trail storylines this blog covered, more than nine years ago (ugh, I am so old) involved Birdie, a kindly, animal-loving vet who was married to a taxidermist who was using taxidermy as a front to smuggle drugs and Mark figured it out and Birdie and her husband knocked Mark unconscious and threw him in the water where he encountered some sharks. Will bird-helping Jessica Canupp’s taxidermist boyfriend also be a drug dealer? Let’s hope!

Six Chix, 1/27/14

Can you imagine if some substance that magically restored youth were discovered, but it only existed at one place on Earth and you had to travel there to get it? As soon as word got out, thousands or millions of people would quit their jobs and jump in the car, overwhelming whatever transportation infrastructure existed in the region. But the traffic jams would just be the beginning: whoever discovered the fountain and initially tried to control access to it would immediately be overwhelmed by the influx of desperate people, greedy for eternal life; similarly, whatever government ruled the territory would struggle to simultaneously maintain order in the region and fend off neighboring states for whom the temptation to conquer this miracle land would be overwhelming. Within weeks or even days of the fountain’s discovery, global society would inevitably collapse into violent anarchy. So, yes, there’s some good world-building going on in Six Chix here, though I’m not sure what the “joke” is supposed to be per se.

Luann, 1/27/14

Oh man, I had assumed this was just a rerun of the last time the boys and the girls at Pitts High had weird, unsettling bathroom conversations, but now it appears that Knute actually has some sort of official bathroom-cleaning duties, to give the whole scenario some vague context outside someone’s very specific fetishes. Hey, remember during the 2012 Republican primaries when Newt Gingrich said that poor children should work as school janitors to make money? We should send him a copy of this cartoon and watch him weep bitter tears at the horrifying unintended consequences of his schemes.

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Spider-Man, 1/26/14

Welp, it looks like all’s well that ends sexily when it comes to Spider-Man’s super-battles! What could be a better reward for this strip’s loyal readership than a naked, oiled-up Peter Parker? We’ll let our characters get their scrub on before we start asking the tough questions, namely (a) how “super” can Peter’s costume be if it doesn’t prevent oil and other filth from soaking through, and (b) why did Peter even bother with that weeks-long battle to prevent his unmasking if his wife is going to make it blatantly obvious to all her co-workers that she’s married to Spider-Man?

Momma, 1/26/14

This might seem like just an innocent joke about how Francis is a sponge whose weak filial piety is easily overridden by his burning desire not to work, but keep in mind that this is Momma’s dream sequence and her relationship with Francis has extremely unsettling overtones. In other words, this tableau might as well be titled Francis Hobbes: Oedipal Gigolo.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/26/14

“Why, hello there! I’m the grim spectre of death! As you know, I haunt every single Funky Winkerbean strip, but there are some occasions where my presence is easier to detect! I like the silence in the last panel of today’s strip, because that way everyone can hear the eerie rustling of my robes and feel a chill run up their spines.”

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Hi and Lois, 1/25/14

The Thurstons are meant to serve as the barren, dysfunctional foils to the loving and fecund Flagstons, what with their constant arguments and cycle of alcoholism and codependency. I’m not sure which small detail in today’s strip sells this better: the plant on the credenza, which long ago withered and died from neglect but still sits out in the living room because nobody is willing to deal with it, or the framed picture of a football, hanging in a prominent spot one would normally assign to photos of one’s wedding or beloved family or something, presumably there as a defiant statement that Thirsty likes watching sports and getting bombed more than anything else in the world.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/25/14

How things have changed for the Tuttles, the couple who have come to Hootin’ Holler to grift the gullible inhabitants under the cloak of religion! Five years ago, in more optimistic times, they looked at a fancy hat as a potential moneymaking tool; now they can only see it as a cost sink.

Momma, 1/25/14

It’s pretty sad for both Francis and Momma’s crude art style is that literally the only way I could recognize this sickly figure as Momma’s younger son was the withering contempt in which the strip holds him.