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Mary Worth, 12/21/13

Oh my goodness you guys, in a totally unforeseeable development Ken Kensington has fallen for Mary Worth! Just another moth of a certain age drawn helplessly to her flame, soon to discover that it gives off light but no emotional warmth. In panel two, though, we can see that he’s still holding out hope, and is closing his eyes tightly and concentrating intently in an attempt to make her fall in love with him with his mind. Probably won’t work, but kudos for trying?

Gil Thorp, 12/21/13

I can’t tell you how much the narration box in panel three bothers me. Clearly it should be either “Meanwhile” or “In the meantime”, right? But I guess that would add between one and six characters, and we simply don’t have time for that, since we need to get to this gripping thrill-ride plot where some guy we may or may not have met before looks up things on the Internet that he acknowledges most people know already.

Marvin, 12/21/13

Marvin’s cousin has always served as a tightly controlled and regimented foil to Marvin’s slovenly, loosey-goosey ways, if you get what I’m talking about. (If you don’t, I’m talking about their personality, and also, in a Freudian sense, about pooping.) Anyway, today’s installment furthers the strip’s blatant pro-pants-crapping agenda by showing the terrible price of not being a complete gross slob: constant anxiety about your subconscious being monitored for virtue by mysterious figures with the power to reward and punish.

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Santa surely would regard this week’s top comment as … nice!

“If I am holding a pistol, ready to fire, and a large adult male approaches me to take my pistol, my first option will not be ‘somehow kick his head, even though it’s more than four feet above me, landing the kick so hard that my hat flies off.’ TL;DR: I have a lot of facial hair and am prepared to shoot Mark Trail center mass.” –Ed Dravecky

And there’s nothing naughty about these runners up!

“Doc Holliday? ‘List’ as an architectural term? Hoes? Billy is clearly a 70-year-old man trapped in a 7-year-old body, so if drawing atrocious puns can numb his anguish for just one Sunday, I say let him.” –Izzy

“Go ahead and mock FC’s terrible puns while you still can: Billy didn’t acquire a nuclear weapon to use as a lawn ornament.” –Nekrotzar

“That panel looks like the prelude to Heathcliff finally snapping and murdering the family. ‘Soon, cupcake. Soon it will be only us!'” –WCjobber

“The way that Ken is holding the slice of pizza in panel two suggests to me that he’s sliding it across his bearded face. Being a professional mugger interrupter, Ken knows that red smears around his mouth will strike fear into the hearts of New York City’s criminals. And and and, Mary really likes this pizza so it also ups the chances that she’ll rub her mouth near his mouth.” –Chareth Cutestory

“Having baited the fireplace with a cupcake and lit a fire, Heathcliff waits. Soon, it won’t matter who is or isn’t on the Naughty List.” –Robot Quasar

“Is there any way a New Yorker asks ‘how’s the pizza in X?’ that isn’t pompous and condescending? Is the next question going to be ‘How high is the architecturally necessary peak of the tallest building in Santa Royale?'” –Nekrotzar

“‘Food an’ drink’ seems about what you’d expect Loweezy to ask for (personally, I’d just be relieved it wasn’t ‘room an’ board’), but Elviney seems crestfallen, as though she expected the answer to be, ‘meaningful female companionship, an’ perhaps forbidden physical intimacy.'” –Doctor Handsome

“My going theory is that Santa is working up a Jughead-themed ventriloquist act and has had his elves build a tiny wooden vent figure called ‘Souphead’ to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. (Jughaid v. Jughead is languishing in the courts after many decades of litigation.) You have to admit, this strip is written just like a ventriloquist act, with Santa dutifully feeding straight lines to a hideous little wise-cracking homunculus on his lap.” –Joe Blevins

“When I read this strip, I just assumed Santa had decided to start slinging insults at the kiddies. ‘Have you been a good boy all year, Souphead?’ ‘What would you like me to bring you, Numbnuts?’ ‘Hey, Snotbreath, did you see my reindeer parked outside?'” –Dr. Mabuse

Judge Parker: “I don’t know what to make of this strip. Half the time is seems to be nothing but rich people drinking wine and having differences of opinion over legal matters and literature, and then BAM! Suddenly we’re driving around in military-grade amour-plated cars. I had to look up what a 50 BMG was, and I’m dismayed to report that it’s a large cartridge for a heavy machine gun or a high-powered sniper rifle. Not that the Parkers have to know what that is, they just know that money means safety and security and they can leave the acronyms to the people throwing themselves in front of the machine-gun fire.” –pugfuggly

Luann: “I like to think the other girls talk to Luann only to confirm what college she’s going to, and then to make sure they don’t go to that college.” –S. Stout

“His newest elf will be named Jeffy, if by ‘Santa’ you mean the Malaysian textile manufacturer I’m selling you to.” –Voshkod

Thanks to everyone who put some scratch in my tip jar! To find out more about how you could be thanked in this spot, and more about sponsoring this site’s RSS feed, click here.

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Heathcliff, 12/20/13

Why did humanity learn to fly? “To expand our knowledge,” you might say, or “For the joy of exploration, or the visceral thrill of taking to the air.” And maybe you’re right, when it comes to the early inventors and tinkerers who built the first primitive aircraft. But forgive me for being a cynical materialist and pointing out that the infrastructure of flight we have today was built for less noble reasons. Investors and entrepreneurs knew that travelling at hundreds of miles an hour to get to far-off desinations in hours instead of days is something that many of us would pay for, and so all those airliners and airports were built to separate us from our money, money that buys nice things for the families of the pilots and the executives and the stockholders. Then there are the military applications of flight, and while of course we always trump up some noble reason for war, when it comes right down to it we fight and kill and die to better control various resources. And so the once miraculous power of flight is commonplace today thanks to capitalism’s alternately charming and remorseless logic, because it’s making money for people, and if we follow the hierarchy of needs down to their base, what is “making money” other than an effort to make sure that one is well fed?

The question of how exactly we should think about an anthropomorphic animal in comic strip is a tricky one, and varies from comic to comic and from character to character, but I think one thing that’s common to all of them is that they’re closer to their animalistic nature than we are, even if they walk on two legs and wear safety helmets when they’re hang-gliding. So, the answer to the question “Why did Heathcliff learn to fly” also involves food. But there are fewer steps you have to take to get to that point.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/20/13

Based on previous signs, we’re meant to presume that Doris has been getting increasingly blotto over the course of this meal and finally just passed out drunk, but I appreciate the fact that everyone is tiptoeing around it and claiming she “fell asleep,” like that’s a totally normal thing that happens in the middle of dinner conversation. Still, I guess we can’t rule out the possibility that June is a super boring conversationalist and Doris was in the middle of listening to one of her dull long-ass sentences and thought, “You know what? I don’t see the point of holding on for the end of this.”