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Today is Mother’s Day across most of the world (British “Mum’s Day” is celebrated during Lent, in retribution for their cooking). Because of its ability to trigger a laugh riot of misunderstandings, dysfunction, and resentment, Mother’s Day is a huge deal in the comics, on a scale with Thanksgiving. Let’s see how some of our favorite families celebrate:

Edge City, 5/12/13

Obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin demands smooth sheets and an unsullied mattress, even if it means forgoing all the messy pleasures that sustain bonds of love. Husband Len submissively abets her every whim. It’s a mystery how those children got here.

Zits, 5/12/13

Jeremy Zits-Duncan promises to give his mother the tolerance and respect she most desires, but fails utterly in the execution. SPANG!

Mary Worth, 5/12/13 (panel)

Beth Kinley celebrates her mother’s special day by ditching Elinor to enjoy some incompetent afterdinner macking on new beau Tom Harpman. Hey, Tom: Beth is a real girlfriend — quit trying to inflate her.

Lockhorns, 5/12/13 (panel)

Leroy cranks up the hypocrisy to give Loretta’s mom a proper greeting. Brrrrr…

Dennis the Menace, 5/12/13 (panel)

Henry and Dennis get it right … and so, as always, does Alice. But c’mon — Dondi was more menacing than this!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/12/13 (panel)

Darin and Jessica bring flowers to the grave of somebody named Lisa Moore whose ashes weren’t scattered in New York’s Central Park the way Darin’s mom’s were.

Crankshaft, 5/12/13

Jeff Murdoch congratulates himself for overspending at the Hallmark: “Surely now my mother will love me?” Ha ha, nope!

Happy Mother’s Day — give Mom a call!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 5/11/13

After the serial failures of his high-tech missile, “hypno”-gas, and “adamantium” chains, Kingpin resorts to old-school methods of persuasion like threatening to stone-cold bash a woman’s face in. Spider-Man is quick to comply — but then, “not moving a muscle” is pretty much his core competence.

Dick Tracy, 5/11/13

So it looks like Dr. Sail here is reconstructing the actual Moon Maid (who died in a 1978 car crash), not just creating an imposter from scratch? This opens up a chance to revisit the action-packed Moon Strips of the 1960’s and 1970’s (the so-called “Dick Tracy Has Gone Totally Nuts” era). Does it also signal complications for Moon Maid’s nominal widower Junior Tracy, who got re-married (to Sparkle Plenty) after his first wife’s death?

Ha! As recently as two years ago (the “Late Bonkers” era), Dick Tracy would have resolved such petty conflicts by having a beloved character burned, crushed, blown up, brain-wiped, dismembered, or (my favorite) eaten. But how will the new Team Tracy handle it?

Perhaps the answer lies with the Moon-obsessed siblings introduced here. Stellaluna, named for a cute bat from a kids’ book, is probably OK. But I would keep an eye on Retik, ominously named for Commander Cody’s nemesis (“Retik, the Moon Menace”) in the classic 1952 serial Radar Men from the Moon. Will this new Retik re-kill a reanimated Moon Maid, saving Junior Tracy from inconvenience? Stay tuned!

Hey, Retik: if you’re short on ideas, I’m pretty sure “suffocated in the vacuum of space” and “vaporized by a meteor” are still available. Just sayin’.

Gasoline Alley, 5/11/13

Hm, Gasoline Alley supercentenarian Walt Wallet is hanging out at the “Comics Retirement Home” with characters like these from discontinued old-timey strips, leading one to think he might, I dunno, retire or something? Except that we’ve already been down this road, in 2006, and it came to nothing.

C’mon guys, it’s time to pull the trigger — this routine will only get even more embarrassing if you have to do it again in another seven years, when Walt is 120.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/11/13

Aw, look at Darin’s adorable pissy face! Do you suppose he broke his jaw trying not to smirk?

Hey, I’m subbing while Josh takes a break through Sunday May 19 — reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if you have access or comment issues. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Hey all! I’m taking next week off from the comics-mocking, but have no fear: your favorite Uncle Lumpy will be filling in with his usual hilariously avuncular stylings. So be nice to him! I shall RETURN on the 20th. But until then: you comment of the week!

“It’s a nice first try, but Ziggy hasn’t quite gotten the hang of blatant product placement yet. Here’s a quick tip: try not to make the readers imagine Ziggy having sex with the sponsor’s mascot.” –Brad

And your hilarious runners up!

“Hey, kids … did we have a nice day? Oh, sorry, and how are you, insignificant child-care provider? Did you tend to my child’s every beck and call?” –Dood

“There’s a drawer full of them … she wants to sell them! A whole drawer of horse pictures. It’s a giant flipbook, first the happy horse, but then the clouds roll in and the lightning strikes and it’s just page after page of spikes and horsemeat and rendering plants. It’s like a little horsey Guernica in that drawer. I dream about it at night, I can hear the frightened whinny of her horses. Please take her out of school and get her a DeviantArt account. Please?” –Voshkod

“We would like to remind you on this National Tea on a Propane Camp Stove Day to take time out to enjoy a nice pot of tea made on a propane camp stove. Thank you.” –Spokesman for Propane

“Inclement weather spoils another game of ‘Civil War wounded.'” –Doctor Handsome

“I’d like to imagine that the girl in front of Billy has awesome fashion sense instead of just being recycled art from who knows what era when someone thought The Kids Today were dressing like that. ‘Today,’ she said this morning. ‘I’ll push not just this podunk town’s boundaries, but America’s.’ Then she put on her Dr Bunsen Honeydew glasses, lavender polo, and red beret, smiling at the persona in the mirror. Is she French? A beatnik? Very, very old and shrinking? ‘No,’ she thought. ‘She’s an enigma.'” –Alex Blaze

“Slylock carried a magnifying glass once. However, seeing the world expanded, broken into digestible components so that no detail however seemingly meaningless was ever missed didn’t quite suit his style of hard-hitting arbitrary justice handed down from a brutal authority figure, so he elected to carry an ornate hand mirror instead and see the only font of truth necessary to convict ‘evildoers’: his own face, damning the perpetrators.” –bunivasal

“Yesterday I thought for a moment that Spider-Man, actual newspaper Spider-Man, had outplanned and outwitted and defeated a real Super-Villain. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly Doctor Doom or General Zod or something, just a fat man with lots of money who only qualifies as a Super-Villain through a loophole in the Lex Luthor Clause (and if he hypno-gas was fake, he might be disqualified entirely — I have to check the case law, but I think dicta in Gorilla Grod v. Flash is relevant here).” –Master Softheart

Apartment 3-G: “‘Fat missive from Greg’ is my new favorite euphemism.” –KreatureFeature

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