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Mark Trail, 8/27/13

Welp, Rusty’s dino-dream only lasted a week and he avoided being eaten, so we’re spared any Inception-inspired musings about how if you die in a dream you die in real life or enter some weird limbo state or whatever. Still, I’m a little miffed that Mark is giving credence to his ward’s assertion here. The fevered images that Rusty’s REM sleep recycled from whatever outdated dinosaur books were available at the local library do not provide any kind of scientifically rigorous evidence about what human-dinosaur interaction would have been like! It’d be more accurate for him to say that “it probably is a good thing that humans and the burgeoning proto-sexual anxieties that my subconscious represents as terrifying beasts of yore don’t coexist.” OH WAIT WE HUMANS DO HAVE TO COEXIST WITH THOSE, RUSTY, THANKS A LOT.

Later, Rusty returns to Lost Forest and expresses his pathetic delight at whatever terrible room-temperature pizza Cherry drove an hour to get from an off-brand convenience store at the nearest highway exit. I’m kind of surprised that the pizza isn’t being depicted on panel, though? Just add some pepperoni to a pre-existing pancake drawing and boom, there you go!

Spider-Man, 8/27/13

OK, Spidey, look, we get it, you’ve voyaged to a foreign land where you don’t speak the language, it’s not ideal but lord knows many of us have done it, I certainly have. Also, you’re hanging out with a friend who, in addition to being a native speaker of the local language, is also fluent in your language. You know what bilingual people aren’t really impressed by? Monolingual people picking out occasional words in languages they don’t speak and being super self-satisfied about understanding them! I mean, if your spider-sense can’t protect you from being banged in the back of the head, why should we expect it to protect you from social embarrassment, I guess.

Pluggers, 8/27/13

Today, Pluggers takes a break from blurring the line between dog-men and actual dogs and blurs the line between bird-ladies and actual birds instead.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/26/13

Oh goodie, it’s been far too long since the main characters in Funky Winkerbean have faced an existential threat that will provide them with an opportunity to wax self-righteously! Since many of Westview’s teachers depend on these subjects’ funding for their livelihood, we should be treated to a delightful melange of “Our children won’t receive the cultural education they need” and “We will be forced to beg for change and live in a cardboard box under the elevated highway on the outskirts of town.”

Much as I support full funding for arts education, I do feel it necessary to point out that lunch is somewhat more important in the hierarchy of needs than the other subjects facing the axe. Don’t worry, teachers, they’ll be enough cash to restore your classes, once the weaker students have been strategically starved to death!

Gil Thorp, 8/26/13

Sorry I sort of dropped the ball on the end of the Gil Thorp summer wrestling storyline, everybody! Gil and Herk had their wrestling match and everyone had a good time and then as he headed out of town Herk called Gil by his real name, implying that his tragic dementia was actually just a wrestling angle and thus bringing the blurred line between artifice and reality out of the squared circle and in to everyday life. But now summer’s just about over, and two local gals are on a mission … a mission for man tip. Haha, just kidding, I’m deliberately misconstruing the dialogue in the third panel so it sounds like they’re talking about a penis, but really if you give your kid a name that is or can be shortened to “Tip” you need to be prepared for this sort of outcome.

Slylock Fox, 8/26/13

Slylock Fox has never been a more shameful and transparent shill for the universal surveillance state than it is today. Remember, everyone, evil-doers might be holding adorable penguins captive in horrifying basement freezer-prisons! That’s why the staff of utility companies need to monitor everyone’s energy usage and pass any anomalies on to meddling fox-cops and/or heavily armed SWAT teams, for freedom.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/26/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hootin’ Holler is so impoverished and isolated from mainstream American life that its residents are wholly ignorant of basic civic infrastructure that most of us take for granted!

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The Lockhorns, 8/25/13

Only one of the multiple Lockhorns panels crammed into the extra Sunday space is worthy of note today, and that’s this mysterious tale of restaurant carnage. How exactly are Leroy and Loretta managing to enrage so many put-upon Olive Garden managers across whatever suburban hellscape they haunt? I mean, usually their bad behavior is restricted to passive-aggressive sniping at one another, and if you kicked out everyone who did that, the restaurant industry would collapse. Moreover, how does Sizzler fit into this scenario? Perhaps the venerable and ailing chain of steakhouses is striking back at the new generation of casual dining franchises that usurped its place it the hearts of customers the only way it knows how: by offering enticements to people to go into the Olive Garden and make a loud, socially uncomfortable scene. Another plant sits by the door and loudly proclaims “You sure wouldn’t see this sort of boorish behavior at a Sizzler! Sizzler: Thinking fresh every day®!” as they’re kicked out. It’s sad that you actually have to go through the charade fourteen times just to get a single shitty Sizzler steak dinner, but I guess it gives Leroy and Loretta an outlet for their agressions that isn’t each other.

Archie, 8/25/13

Most horrible and depressing Archie ever? Probably! The throwaway panels, which make light of partner violence, are bad enough. Then we’re dragged through the ugly truth of Archie’s monogamy-rejecting ways, which are normally played for laughs, as we have to endure Archie and Betty’s excruciating relationship talk in which she discovers that their perceptions of the commitments they’ve made to each other are radically different. And don’t neglect to put the two narratives together: since Archie was trying to borrow money form Veronica, it stands to reason that the “girlfriend” who owes him money is yet another girl, meaning that he’s two-timing (three-timing?) both of our beloved Archie comics gals. Tune in next week when Archie has to explain to the many young women who may think of themselves as his girlfriend about all the STDs!

Heathcliff, 8/25/13

For sheer horror, though, it’s hard to top today’s Heathcliff! The erotic charge of the throwaway panels is bad enough, but then we discover that the Heathcliff has a closet where he keeps the severed and meticulously preserved heads of his defeated cartoon-cat rivals, and some days he wears these heads like a mask in a grotesque triumphalist display.

Judge Parker, 8/25/13

I have to admit, I assumed that this whole “Neddy’s friend has been kidnapped in Niger” plot was going to end in Abbey writing a check for the ransom money, not sure about the ethics of the act, or even about whether the ransom demands were real or just part of a scam Thalia was pulling. But now I’m really looking forward to Sophie leading a team of ex-special ops mercenaries into Niamey, guns blazing. Sure, she doesn’t have much combat experience or training in small unit tactics, but wars interest her, and if she’s able to go from bullied nerd to superstar cheerleader by sheer force of will, surely nothing is beyond her powers of self-fashioning.