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Gasoline Alley, 12/21/12

As usual, I haven’t been keeping you up on Gasoline Alley’s desultory antics, so let me just do so now very quickly: li’l Boog has been persecuted by bullies, including one nicknamed “Bear,” and they lured him out to the woods to beat the crap out of him, but then an actual bear showed up, and now we get to today where, it is revealed, Boog speaks the secret language of bears, and can command them to do his bidding. Did he learn the ursine tongue when his neglectful grandfather let a bear carry him off, years ago? Probably! But rather than satisfyingly going all 2 Kings 2:23-25 on these kids, Boog the Bearomancer just urges this vicious grizzly to make nice with his “friends”, who have been nothing but mean to him. Unless a crippling sense of shame is a crueler punishment than bloody dismemberment?

Spider-Man, 12/21/12

Do I have an unreasoning hatred of Newspaper Spider-Man? Maaayyyybe. I was all set to go on an unhinged rant about this strip’s dastardly use of “heist” as a transitive verb — a usage I had never heard before — but fortunately I looked it up first. Turns out the use of the word as a verb actually predated its use as a noun, by about 10 years! It’s a variation of “hoist,” and was first used as a slang term for shoplifting in the 1920s. So even the world’s crappiest superhero comic can still teach me things about etymologies, which are among my favorite bits of language trivia. Thanks, Newspaper Spider-Man!

Better Half, 12/21/12

Harriet’s friend is way too sleepy for sex.

B.C., 12/21/12

Having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit? Here’s a cartoon about Santa having trouble not pooping his pants!

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Wizard of Id, 12/20/12

Hey, teens, I bet you think that it’s “cool” to drink alcohol! Well, your pal Frosty is pretty hip and extreme with his backwards baseball cap and such, and he thought it would be OK to get drunk like a grown-up, and look what happened: he tore his own body apart and hurled it in gory chunks at his enemies, who presumably ran away in gibbering terror. This is what’ll happen to you if you let bad kids give you a hard lemonade at a party. Just ask for a Mountain Dew instead! You’ll thank us later!

Mary Worth, 12/20/12

The Sad Tale of Dawn’s Sadness that just concluded began way back in May, so obviously we need something wacky to cleanse our palate in its wake. But even longtime Mary Worth trufans such as myself could never have predicted how wacky things would get. Mary coaching an amateur cake designer to victory in the face of smug, sneering professionals, all in an attempt to cash in on the cake decorating TV craze of four years ago? Mary finally getting to see her many rambling philosophical diatribes transformed into pastry dioramas, wowing the world with her wisdom? YES PLEASE.

Better Half, 12/20/12

Whatever, Stanley is just going to keep on doing weird sex stuff with that remote, and he doesn’t need God or society’s approval, man.

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Marvin, 12/19/12

All week, Marvin has been expressing his thoughts via standard word balloons rather than thought bubbles, which might mean something momentous except I assumed that it was just more Marvin splapdashery, where small details change constantly because who cares. BUT today Marvin seems to have suddenly made the leap from rudimentary verbalization to full-on literacy! Naturally this is just another opportunity for him to express his insatiable greed. I might also note that, much as I celebrate and indeed depend economically on the written word, I still think that the appropriate order for gaining life skills is (1) learn to go to the bathroom in a toilet, then (2) learn to read and write.

Archie, 12/19/12

The Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000 doesn’t exactly know what noises biological lifeforms make when ingesting other biomatter for nutrition and energizing purposes, but it’s pretty sure that they’re repulsive.

Pluggers, 12/19/12

A plugger walk down memory lane is literally a walk to the grave! THIS IS THE #8 PLUGGERS OF 2012, TUNE IN OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS FOR OUR COUNTDOWN TO ULTIMATE HORROR