Post Content

Family Circus, 9/16/13

Check out the conversation happening in the background of this panel. Big Daddy Keane is gesticulating and going on and on in deadly earnest; his female guest has carefully composed her face and placed her hands in her lap, trying to look attentive; his male guest is settling into an ever-deepening slouch, hoping the talking will stop, soon. Is Daddy extolling the virtues of his favored candidate for the local state senate district? Pitching them on joining his Amway downline? Just not shutting up about how things were better in his day, and if we just whipped society into shape we wouldn’t have all these problems? Whatever the case, both those poor souls look like they would be seriously cheered up by a little kid walking in there and cramming more potato chips into his mouth than anyone would’ve though humanly possible.

Heathcliff, 9/16/13

These cowardly birds are giving up their greatest chance to overthrow their cat oppressor! Look at him, lying there, immobile, defenseless, the tender flesh of his face and limbs and tail exposed to attacks from revenging beaks.

Slylock Fox, 9/16/13

Enjoy your minor victory of ratiocination now, Slylock! When the newly arrived UFO aliens begin processing all of Earth’s organic matter — sapient animals, remnant humans, and plants and fungi alike — into a high-grade food slurry that will be shipped to the Proletarian Caloric Dispensaries on the capital planet of their intergalactic empire, it will all very much not matter.

Momma, 9/16/13

Relaxing and snoozing? Do the Hobbs kids know how to party or what?

Post Content

Mark Trail, 9/15/13

Did this little plant get its name from the past? That may be the case. It’s possible, sure. But isn’t it just as possible that it got its name from the future? After all, the Indian Pipe bears a strong resemblance to the 60-mile-high towers that were built in the southern foothills of the Himalayas in the late 21st century, which harvested charged particles from the ionosphere and provided the cheap energy that catapulted India’s economy to #1 in the world by 2110. Add in the successful time travel experiments conducted at the Indian Institute of Technology in the mid 2090s, and this theory is sounding more and more probable.

Family Circus, 9/15/13

Today’s Family Circus is a commentary on modern American affluence: the Keane Kids have never once in their lives had empty bellies, and can’t even conceive of anyone going hungry involuntarily, thus forcing them to recontextualize the ancient nursery rhyme. But there’s one Keane family member who knows all about want, and that’s Sam the dog. Presumably Sam’s care has been placed in the hands of the children, in an misguided attempt to teach them “responsibility,” and meals have been pretty irregular ever since. Sam would chew off all of PJ’s toes without a second thought. Sam would eat all the Keane Kids, if they would just hold still for long enough.

Shoe, 9/15/13

The comics pages that Skyler is so ostentatiously reading add a real note of poignancy to this strip. Skyler is trapped in comics time, an eternal present. He’s never going to get past the opening salvos of the sexual awakening he’s experiencing right now; and, as long as the syndicate can find artists who can more or less approximate Jeff MacNelly’s style, he will never die.

Panel from Better Half, 9/15/13

HERE IT IS EVERYBODY, THE MOST DEPRESSING BETTER HALF EVER, LET’S JUST GO HAVE A NICE LIE DOWN NOW FOR THE REST OF THE DAY

Post Content

In order to put today’s Rex Morgan, M.D., into its full delightful context, we need to backtrack to yesterday’s strip. Heather, the Morgans’ long-ago former nanny who they decided to fire because they wanted to raise their daughter themselves but then she quit before they could fire her so she could start a day school where they’d send Sarah anyway, has now decided to sell that day school so she can monitor her lunatic husband full-time instead:

Panel from Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/13/13

Aw, Happy Otter Schools! That sounds nice!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/14/13

…nice for other children, that is. Lesser children. Sarah is different and shouldn’t have her mind contaminated by some garbage Canadian McPrivateschool chain. Only the very best and most elite schools are good enough for Sarah. Sarah’s non-Morgan classmates, who have also been Heather’s beloved pupils, will not be hearing anything about this “really good” school. The name is probably in some language that poor people don’t even speak!

Hagar the Horrible, 9/14/13

Oh, look, it’s apparently complaining about double negatives week in the comics! I’ll say this for Hagar: it’s at least true that negative concord was not a feature of Old Norse. (In fact, that may be why it’s absent from Northern English dialects!) So, props for historically accurate linguistic peevery, I suppose.

In other news, Hagar the Horrible is doing the “Hagar tries and fails to cheat on his wife” thing it does every few years or so.

Mark Trail, 9/14/13

Now we know why Senator Mason is so eager to drill for oil in Lost Forest: his daughter’s boyfriend desperately needs petroleum byproducts to maintain his magnificent pompadour. Our nation’s current strategic reserves simply aren’t adequate for the task.

Blondie, 9/14/13

Welcome to today’s Blondie, where the punchline only offers that element of surprise necessary for humor to those readers who are so senile that they have no idea what month it is. Do these guys know their audience or what?