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Phantom, 5/3/13

I don’t expect any of you to understand what’s happening in this strip, seeing as I read the Phantom daily and can barely tell you what’s going on. But I am super charmed by the fact that pilot Ted West (who is flying jet airplanes for drug dealers, I think?) has a card in his wallet with a picture of an old-timey balloon on it where he refers to himself as an “aviation professional.” I guess sinister African drug lords really appreciate whimsy!

Judge Parker, 5/3/13

Say, remember when Sophie was a lilac pantsuit wearing spookily adult-like child-nerd, but then cheerleaders were mean to her and so she decided to become a cheerleader, as revenge? Well, as Uncle Lumpy once demonstrated, strip time flows extremely slowly in the Parkerverse, but that all happened like four or five years ago in real time, so we’re pretty much right on schedule for her to have flowered into a designer sunglasses-wearing, road-raging mean girl. I love Sam’s “OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I CREATED” look in panel three.

Marmaduke, 5/3/13

Aww, isn’t that cute! These kids think that if they find a little toddler and sacrifice him to Marmaduke, he won’t devour them too! (He is totally going to devour them.)

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Mark Trail, 5/2/13

Sorry for not keeping you up to date on what’s up in Mark Trail! The short version is that Mark and Wes flew off to go look at some sheep but then they crashed and Wes broke his foot and now they’re trapped and will no doubt resort to cannibalism soon enough. That leaves the ladies to chill back at the campsite! Don’t panic, Shelly, those wolves are perfectly harmless, not like the villainous wolves of several storylines ago. You should be more concerned about this mysterious pink mist that’s rising out of the river and filling up your tent and campsite, quite honestly. Is a mid-’80s glam-metal concert about to break out?

Dick Tracy, 5/2/13

Sorry for not keeping you up to date on what’s up in Dick Tracy! The new creative team has been pretty relentless in bringing back characters and plotlines from the strip’s storied past, and are now apparently moving on to the extremely wacky late ’60s period where Dick went to the moon repeatedly and Mysta, the daughter of the Governor of the Moon (no, really), married Dick’s son. Later she was blown up by by a car bomb, but now has apparently been … “recreated”? Except for her face? Whatever, any excuse to have a character say “No! I’ve had enough of your world! I want to take my family to my real home. Back on the moon!” is a good excuse as far as I’m concerned.

Beetle Bailey, 5/2/13

I’m a pretty big dummy about military stuff but there isn’t a single vehicle in the U.S. arsenal, past or present, that looks remotely like whatever Beetle and Plato are driving, right? Like, a mid-sized hatchback with big tires and double gun turret on top and some other guns randomly sticking out windows? That’s not a thing, right? Also, this town probably doesn’t have any trouble with parking because it appears to be one vast, featureless parking lot, though predictably it does have a lot of trouble with traffic flow.

Heathcliff, 5/2/13

So Heathcliff’s “pickup lines” are so effective that he has nine lady cats following him around in a neat formation, waiting in still, eerie silence for him to sex them up, individually or perhaps together? I’m not sure what it would take to make this joke funny, but adding a whole bit where he asks a lawyer for intellectual property advice isn’t it.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/2/13

Just leaving this here to remind you that Les’s creative endeavors have failed humiliatingly before, so there’s hope that they will again! Actually, the success of Lisa’s Story must gall Jessica more than it does the rest of us. “Hey, sorry my book about your dead dad was a flop! Did you hear that my book about my dead wife was a big success? I guess we know whose dead relative is better, huh?”

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Better Half, 5/1/13

Let’s check in with Stanley and Harriet, everybody’s favorite sad, disoriented comics couple! Today we learn the shocking truth: Are Stanley and Harriet sad and disoriented because they’re blotto on prescription meds, all the time? All the pill bottles stacked up on the kitchen counter imply that the answer is yes! Stanley peers through the pharmaceutical haze and remembers that there was a simpler, better time in his life when he didn’t feel this way, though his drug-addled brain can’t express this thought in any coherent way.

Shoe, 5/1/13

Biz, on the other hand, has chosen not to turn his golden years into a dim, druggy twilight. Though he suffers the aches and pains of old age, his mind and vision are clear, and he intends to confront death in his own way. (That way involves screaming in terror.)

Ziggy, 5/1/13

Is there significance to the fact that “Dr. Bobo” looks exactly like Ziggy? Or, for that matter, that the “real” doctor looks more or less like Ziggy as well? Is this all happening inside Ziggy’s sad, spherical noggin?

Dennis the Menace, 5/1/13

Sorry, Dennis, that’s not anywhere near cute enough to merit a post on Mom’s blog, and those Google AdSense payments are all that are standing between you and community college, so we’re going to stay here until you say something blogworthy if it takes all day, do you understand?