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Mark Trail’s fists are considered “essential services”

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Mark Trail, 10/1/13

Happy U.S. government shutdown day, everybody! In keeping with his tendency to say vaguely nice things to everybody and let his underlings take all the controversial stands, Senator Mason has decided that Washington, D.C., is an extremely unpleasant place right now and that he’d much rather head off on a little vacation. As a federal employee, Dusty Rhodes is now officially furloughed, but that’s OK; instead of being forced to tell the senator about all the stuff he’s not supposed to do on federal land, he can join Mark and the gang in shooting as many animals as they want, digging for oil at random, and burning down huge swaths of forest, for kicks. Who’s gonna stop them? The government? Hahahaha!

Heathcliff, 10/1/13

I don’t want to alarm you but it appears that the Garbage Ape has started to attract notice even beyond the readership of this blog. I’m all for Heathcliff’s brand of off-putting surrealism finding a wider audience, but I think creating a Robin to the Garbage Ape’s Batman in an attempt to cash in on the character’s growing renown is too precious by half.

Momma, 10/1/13

You can tell I’ve been reading Momma for far too long because what mainly irritated me about today’s strip on first read was the weird, awkward way Francis just looks at Momma in silence for two panels and not, say, the unspeakable Oedipal horror.

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Old people Monday

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Momma, 9/30/13

To “render” a judgment just means “to pronounce, declare, or state the decision of the court in a particular case.” Which doesn’t seem like it’d be very rewarding for someone like Momma, who isn’t a lawyer and doesn’t even live in Washington, D.C., so you can understand why she looks so world-weary as she explains this in panel two. (Is that sheet of paper she’s looking at a Supreme Court verdict he’s going to have to render soon?) But since they’ve heard her rendering judgements for the Court for most of their lives, Francis and MaryLou probably just assume that she’s the one literally laying down the law on America. After all, if there’s one thing reading this strip for years has taught us about these two, it’s that they’ve very dumb.

Beetle Bailey, 9/30/13

Super excited that Beetle Bailey has decided to discard any pretense of offering gentle military-themed humor and is now all about sex with robots and the characters’ crippling alcoholism. General Halftrack’s booze problem used to be limited to weekends, but now it’s spread to pretty much any day of the week as his downward spiral into substance abuse gathers speed!

Crankshaft, 9/30/13

“It’s homicidal rage! Really, he’s a complete monster!”

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TOMMY THE TWEAKER 2: THE TWEAKENING

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Mary Worth, 9/29/13

OH MY GOD YES YES YES TOMMY THE TWEAKER’S COMING BACK, EVERYBODY! Tommy was the very first great Mary Worth character I got to cover in this blog’s history. He referred to drugs as “stuff” and smoked weed where Mary could smell it and dreamed of having his very own meth lab and tried to sell meth to some college kid but the meth didn’t work and an angry mob smacked him around but the cops rescued him and then he thought-ballooned hilariously. Later, he went to jail and found Jesus by reading a tiny, tiny bible. Obviously hilarious hijinks are in store for us now that our rotating-door prison system has dumped this hardened criminal back on the streets of Santa Rosa after a mere nine years in stir. Iris is right to push Wilbur out of her life right now! He’s already terribly addicted to delicious sammiches, so who even knows what’d happen if he got hold of the hard stuff.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 9/29/13

Oh, isn’t this cute! A bunch of anthropomorphic animals sitting around telling stories about how humans treated one another, in the Before Time. Isn’t it funny how humans had this thing called presumption of innocence? That they didn’t just throw you in a jail cell forever because some fox decided you were guilty? Might explain a lot about why they aren’t in charge anymore. Animals, they don’t worry about niceties. Animals get things done.

Beetle Bailey, 9/29/13

Oh my god, look at Zero’s face in the next to last panel, the sinister glint in his eyes as he imagines enveloping the enemy, cutting off all means of retreat, and methodically pounding them to bits with artillery. Their attempts to surrender are met only with sinister laughter. Testimony about this moment will feature heavily in his war crimes trial.