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Lockhorns, 12/12/12

A line from the movie Alien often pops into my head when I read the Lockhorns: “I admire its purity.” A lot of comics would engage in marital misanthropy laffs about leftovers being served once too often; only the Lockhorns has the nerve to portray those leftovers as a plate-sized, undifferentiated shit-colored mound. Leroy’s not just cracking wise about the vultures; this is rotting organic matter that can literally only be eaten by creatures with very specialized digestive systems.

Herb and Jamaal, 12/12/12

Man, things sure were better in the good old days, right? Athletes of an earlier, better time never got involved in gambling or cheating or drugs or any of that business. What could be the cause of all the young sports people doing bad things? Is it the rap music? Probably the rap music.

Luann, 12/12/12

“Talk about yourself!” Probably the best dating advice for teens ever? Sure!

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Dennis the Menace, 12/11/12

One of Dennis’s core menacing shticks is repeating things he doesn’t fully understand in a way that causes embarrassment to his parents, usually because it’s something insulting they’ve said about someone behind their backs. Unfortunately, Dennis has now become a self-aware menace, and he now knows that he can get a rise out of people this way; but since the whole thing revolves around him not knowing the meaning of the things he’s saying, he’s sort of blundering around in the dark, latching onto phrases he’s not familiar with in the hopes that someone will be humiliated when he spouts them off. “So it’s a doggie bag, but it’s not for the dog, right? Eh? Eh? I’m saying what everyone’s thinking? Is anyone in trouble yet?”

Pluggers, 12/11/12

The games whose outcomes were so important to pluggers in their youth — grown men, scrambling around in the dirt after a ball! — seem meaningless now. Pluggers know that there’s only one game left in town: survival. They don’t care how many pills they have to choke down, how agonizing it is to carry their creaking frame from chair to chair; the biological imperative carries a thrill all its own. Those names and faces in the obits section belong to family and friends, some of them very dearly missed, and yet in a real sense, just being alive to see the pictures and read the pocket biographies is a victory.

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Crock, 12/10/12

As if the poor colonized subjects of French North Africa don’t have enough to worry about, now they have to deal with an outbreak of sexually aggressive camels.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/10/12

Why should the men of Hootin’ Holler bother investing in machinery that will lift them out of a subsistence economy if their wives do all the manual labor?

Apartment 3-G, 12/10/12

Evan and Margo’s sexual banter is pretty much as gross as you’d expect.

Mary Worth, 12/10/12

“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.” –Albert Camus

Hi and Lois, 12/10/12

THE DOG SYMBOLIZES THE DYING NEWSPAPER COMICS INDUSTRY, EVERYBODY