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Slylock Fox, 9/2/13

Despite his unnatural skin tone, I’ve more or less accepted Count Weirdly as one of Planet Slylock’s few remaining humans. But his “cousin” Creepy seems significantly genetically divergent, and not just in superficial areas like coloring. Was Weirdly performing illegal genetic experiments not just on the animals that ended up rising up to seize control of the planet, but on his own kin? Or does he grow mutated clones of himself in rows of ghastly tanks, deep beneath his castle-lair? Creepy might suffer from physical abnormalities, but his unnaturally large head and today’s little drama implies that he may actually benefit from enhanced intelligence: he’s already packed and ready to get out of town before yet another classically pointless Weirdly caper ends in failure. “High five, cuz, we did it! I, uh, gotta go.”

Luann, 9/2/13

The huge majority of comic strips exist in “comic strip time,” in which their characters all remain the same age relative to each other for years or decades and unmoored in absolute time, which gives rise to unsettling results like Ted Forth being the same age as my dad when I was a kid but then wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt several decades later. You also have strips like Doonesbury and pre-time-freeze For Better Or For Worse in which characters would age a year for every calendar year of real time.

Then you have the strips that go through a sort of comics punctuated equilibrium, with long periods of stasis and then sudden leaps forwards. The most famous example of this is of course Funky Winkerbean and its various time jumps, but Luann seems to be in this boat as well. Luann was in junior high for the first 14 years or so of the strip’s existence, then was suddenly aged into high school in 1999. Now, another 14 years later, we learn that she’s actually starting her senior year. The question is: are we ready for a world where Luann is in college? Am I? Are you? Is she? I’m not sure any of us are.

Momma, 9/2/13

Meanwhile, one strip that has zero continuity or aging or narrative advancement for its characters is Momma, which is why today’s installment is especially bizarre, seeing as it contains a major life change for one of its characters and nothing that could be even vaguely construed as a “joke.” Will Momma suddenly be transformed into MaryLou, That Dizzy Dame Of The Skies, now that strip management has finally looked at the results of the 1973 focus group showing that flight attendants are more appealing to audiences than controlling, passive-aggressive mothers and their unlikeable children?

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Marmaduke, 9/1/13

Readers of this blog are aware that the primary theme of Marmaduke is that Marmaduke is a nightmarish demon-god who hungers for human flesh (and human souls) and keeps the populace of his sleepy suburban town in a state of constant terror. You’re probably also aware of a secondary theme: namely, that Marmaduke’s owner is Hitler. But there’s also a tertiary narrative strand that pops up very occasionally, involving terrifying space monsters who occasionally wander into the panel. Are we meant to understand today that this seemingly innocent-looking fire hydrant is secretly a space-travelling robot probe, with a mission to scan Earth and report back to its interstellar masters? Or is it just an ordinary fire hydrant that, in a desperate bid for survival, spontaneously achieved both sentience and the power of spaceflight in order to avoid being doused in Marma-urine? (Marma-urine is more corrosive than the most powerful industrial acid known to man, because, as noted, Marmaduke is a nightmarish demon-god.)

Dennis the Menace, 9/1/13

Citizens! Are you adequately terrified of looming and unspecified disasters and crises? Are you monitoring government-approved warning systems at all times? Have you and your neighbors made a plan to flee your homes forever, abandoning all your worldly possessions and leaving entire cities empty, if the “need” arises? This adorable towheaded tyke wouldn’t lie to you! The threat is real! Vague but real! Dennis’s menacing factor has increased an order of magnitude.

Wizard of Id, 9/1/13

The best panel in this strip is definitely the second in the third row. The Wiz and his treasured pet gaze at one another with the sort of pure, unembarrassed love that it seems people can only experience with animals. There’s going to be a new way for the two of them to be affectionate! Isn’t that great! Then, of course, comes the tearing flesh and the venom seeping into open wounds. And the screaming. So much screaming.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/31/13

And so this week has been bookended by strips demonstrating the confusing effect that Hootin’ Holler’s poverty and isolation have on the very language its inhabitants speak. Cliches and turns of phrase filter in from the outside world, but are based on things that most of us take for granted and yet are complete mysteries to Snuffy and his kin. And so, just as the old saying “hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk” is a confusing word-jumble to people who travel by foot on dirt paths through the woods and fields and have never seen a sidewalk, so too is the phrase “fresh as a mountain stream” meaningless to people who have no experience with indoor plumbing and who get all their water from mountain streams as a matter of course. (The stream also doubles as the town sewer, so you can see why Snuffy seems particularly puzzled by the use of “fresh” in this context.)

Momma, 8/31/13

I’m preeeeety sure Momma has been a 43-year-long exercise in establishing that our mothers are responsible for all our emotional problems, actually.