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Mary Worth, 4/30/13

Oh my goodness, you guys, it looks like we are about to get Mary Worth’s version of the immovable object/unstoppable force problem! You see, on the one hand, the thing that Mary likes more than anything else is seeing young people matched up into happily heteronormative couples — particularly couples like Tom and Beth, who she has selected for eternal happiness with her inscrutable Mary Powers. ON THE OTHER HAND, there is nothing Mary Worth hates more than lies and dishonesty. But what if the only way to ensure that Beth and Tom could get to know each other better, in a romantic but wholesome way, would involve Mary lying? What path will she choose? I sure hope she chooses lying, because (a) Mary lying, even in the cause of love, should be delightfully awkward, made even more so by the fact that (b) Mary, Tom, and Beth’s mom Elinor all live in the same condo complex, so there’s a good chance that the lying will take the following form:

MARY answers the door. ELINOR is standing in the hall.

ELINOR: Have you seen my daughter Beth? I’m worried that she’s whoring herself over at that man-slut Tom’s apartment.

MARY: Oh-h-h-h, of course not, Elinor! Beth is here in my apartment tonight.

ELINOR: Oh. Can I come in and see her?

MARY: No.

ELINOR: Why not?

MARY: [Stands silently, smiling, for a long time, like, a really long time, things get uncomfortable real fast but she just keeps standing there silently, forever]

Crock, 4/30/13

Well might Grossie’s Friend Whose Name I Forget (sigh, sadly “Grossie” is a name that will never, ever leave my brain) look dubious in panel three. If Grossie is so good at spotting plastic surgery from so far away, shouldn’t she notice her tablemate’s nose, pointing up at an impossibly taut angle, presumably being held in place by some kind of industrial-strength facelift technology?

Marvin, 4/30/13

This week’s “Marvin does variations on a dumb joke all week” involves the li’l scamp uploading “feet photos” onto Facebook. Can someone confirm or deny to me that this is an actual thing that people do? I tried Googling “feet photos Facebook” and got some extremely traumatizing results so I had to go take a walk and not look at the computer for a while.

(Side note: remember when CrySpace was the baby-themed social network of choice in the Marvinverse, back in 2009? I guess we can’t pretend that MySpace is relevant enough to be spoofed anymore. Not that we could pretend this in 2009 either, but you know.)

Shoe, 4/30/13

Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if they made an Indiana Jones movie in the modern day, with Harrison Ford playing the title role, even though he is an old man? Wait, what? In 2008, you say? Huh.

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/29/13

Oh, hey, it looks like it’s a long-absent father party at Funky Winkerbean! First Darrin’s bio-dad took up residence in a local motel, determined to ruin everybody’s lives by being a jerk in some ill-defined way, and now Jessica is determine to find her own dad, John Darling. SPOILER: HER DAD IS IN A CEMETERY SOMEWHERE, OR PERHAPS A COLUMBARIUM, BECAUSE HE IS DEAD. He was the main character in a Funkyverse spin-off strip drawn by Marvin creator Tom Armstrong. The title character was a hilariously clueless TV newsman, and, according to Wikipedia, when Tom Batuik got into a dispute with the syndicate over ownership rights to the character, he just had the guy stone cold murdered in the strip’s second-to-last installment! Les later solved the crime in Funky Winkerbean, and last we had heard about the whole thing was two years ago when Jessica said she was making a documentary about him. So I guess Jessica has suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be doing that? Or maybe she’s going to dig up her father’s corpse and reanimate it using dark magic and/or perverse science, so it can defeat Darrin’s bio-dad in single dad-on-dad combat.

Archie, 4/29/13

Is Unbearably Smug Archie a thing in whatever era of Newspaper Comic Strip Archie we’re in the midst of now? Anyway, Archie really is looking unbearably smug in that last panel, presumably because he’s been waiting all day to unleash this terrible pun on somebody. Or maybe multiple somebodies, as the guy in the hat in the foreground of the first panel looks like someone who just heard a terribly pun smugly delivered.

Apartment 3-G, 4/29/13

Governor Pete is determined to bed Lu Ann, so now he’s upped his game to some next-level mind trickery. “Peter, I generally find you distasteful and skeezy, so…” “Stop saying that sentence Lu Ann! What would you say if I asked you to … watch a movie with me?” “THE GOVERNOR GOES TO THE MOVIES LIKE AN ORDINARY HUMAN OH MY GOD THE IMAGE IS SO SURPRISING I LITERALLY CAN’T HOLD ANY OTHER THOUGHTS IN MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW LIKE THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW GROSS AND TRANSPARENT THE GOVERNOR IS ABOUT WANTING TO DO ME”

Spider-Man, 4/29/13

Yes, obviously the cleverest place to hide your secret lair is on a tiny island that’s also a high-profile national park visited by 1.3 million people a year! Probably the best thing you can say about Newspaper Spider-Man as a hero is that he rises to the level of competition provided by his villains.

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Rex Morgan, M.D. 4/28/13

I know that the body changes during pregnancy but I’m not really comfortable with the changes to June’s face in the final panel here. Is her mouth getting bigger? Her eyes narrower and more feral? Now that she has absolute confirmation of successful mating, will she devour Rex’s head, praying-mantis-style? Will his last words, “I can live with that,” be exceptionally ironic?

Spider-Man, 4/28/13

BREAKING: BIGAMIST HUSBAND OF FAMOUS ACTRESS MARY JANE PARKER PLANNING WEDDING TO OLD PERSON

FOLLOW-UP: FAMOUS ACTRESS MARY JANE PARKER DOESN’T UNDERSTAND “CALLER ID,” WILL JUST PICK UP PHONE AND START TALKING TO WHOEVER