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Mary Worth, 10/10/13

So Shelly is getting an award for her work volunteering at the homeless shelter (the Nobel Peace Prize? probably!) and who else is she going to thank other than the person who was most responsible for all the good work she’s done over the years: Mary! After all, what’s the more selfless and grueling task: working every day without pay to serve New York City’s vulnerable and sometimes difficult homeless population, or casually telling someone else to do it? The second one, right? It’s only just that Shelly thank Mary in her award speech, but shouldn’t the award just be going directly to Mary? Shouldn’t the homeless carry Mary about the streets of Manhattan on their shoulders, then raise her up and set her on a makeshift altar in an abandoned subway tunnel, worshipping her as their dread Goddess and Mistress?

Shoe, 10/10/13

“Pain in the neck” is pretty clearly a back-formed euphemism for “pain in the ass,” and it’s very rare for anyone to use either phrase to describe actual discomfort in the specified body part, unless they’re being cute; it always refers to someone who’s annoying. The only way this joke works at all, it seems to me, is if the guy dressed as a wizard were an actual doctor making a medical inquiry. But he’s not! Not that you’d have any reason to know this unless, like me, you’re a damned soul/frequent Shoe reader, but the guy dressed like a wizard is the local computer repair guy. Ha ha, because computers are confusing and fixing them is like dark magic! Anyway, long story short, I’m pretty sure the Perfesser is a robot.

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Shoe, 10/9/13

So it looks like my earlier theory — that the Perfesser has covered his floor in newspapers because he’s a bird, and shitting on newspapers on the floor of their home is what birds do — was something of a reach. It turns out that he’s just a hoarder whose home has reached such a state of chaos that he’s desperate to escape it. If you’re want an insight into his increasingly glum mental state, note that in the months since that cartoon linked above, he’s devolved from eating chips to picking from a bag of mysterious “SNAX,” presumably because he self-loathingly thinks that a guy with empty pizza boxes and tires strewn around his living room doesn’t deserve better than ambiguous snack-like foodstuffs to eat.

Momma, 10/9/13

I’m not sure what this comic is supposed to be getting at in the context of Momma’s usual themes — maybe that the fly mistook Francis for a fellow loathsome pest? My preferred reading is that we’re being reminded that all creatures have a sense of self and will to survive, and that we perpetrate a thousand murderous tragedies a day without even realizing it.

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Six Chix, 10/8/13

Oh, you really expect us to believe this is only “one day” at the Louvre, Six Chix? If you posit that inanimate statues are capable of thought but not movement or communication, then the Venus de Milo has been has been silently screaming about her missing arms for centuries. If only her head had fallen off during all those years underground! Then at least the thinking, the useless, awful, endless thinking, would be over and done with! Or maybe statues don’t think with their heads. Maybe being headless would only render her unable to see or hear, an unmoored mind whirling forever within cold, lifeless stone. Anyway, I know my next trip to the museum just got a lot more depressing!

Speaking of museums, Six Chix seems to have taken advantage Rex Morgan’s discovery that you can put naked butts in the comics as long as it’s fancy art, and has gone one step further and shown us some full-on boobs. If only certain other strips had the nerve to push the envelope!

Mary Worth, 10/8/13

Haha, remember when Mary was determined to spend more time with Jeff? Well, that plan is off if it involves going with him to gross third world countries, apparently! “I too am going on a trip … to … somewhere not infested with giant insects, and where I can get a nice dinner that won’t confuse and terrify me? Yes, let’s say that.”

Spider-Man, 10/8/13

Sure, El Condor’s regime is a brutal dictatorship, but he doesn’t only use his iron fist to crush all political dissent! He also uses it to enforce sensible modern building safety codes.