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Family Circus, 12/6/12

Meanwhile, at the North Pole: “Hmm, what’s this? Why, I see … a little boy who’s drawn a bell at school. Let’s take a closer look! Hmmm that … that’s the crappiest bell I’ve ever seen. Look at how weird and lumpy it is on the right side! And it’s colored a boring silver, not a festive gold. This little brat has desecrated the very concept of a bell, and bells are of course the 17th most important symbol of my holiday, Christmas. Nothing but socks and books under the tree for you this year, young man!”

Spider-Man, 12/6/12

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our irregular series, How To Be An Unlikeable Douchebag Nobody Wants To Spend Time With! Today’s lesson: “Celebrate with grotesque theatricality whenever you’re right about anything.” To keep your technique up, it’s important to do this even if nobody else is around!

Blondie, 12/6/12

I give the people who color the daily strips crap all the time for ignoring explicit in-strip cues when picking what colors to dump in via the Photoshop paintcan tool, so I have to give minor props for someone’s slightly on-the-nose decision to slather Dagwood in pine-tree green for this.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/5/12

Kudos to Rex Morgan, M.D., for having the main player in its breast cancer plot be not some chipper, beatific saint, but someone who is actually cranky and exhausted the way someone going through chemo actually would be. Today’s strip makes me hope that we’ll be getting a medical marijuana subplot in our California locale; after all, one of the reasons pot is prescribed to cancer patients is to boost their appetite (the munchies used for good, not evil!). Which side of this issue will Rex come down on? He’s actually a notorious medical-issues pinko, what with his support of single-payer health insurance and all, but on the other hand he loves feeling smug and superior to people he thinks he’s better than, which includes all nonconformists and hippies and potheads, so this should make for a hilarious internal struggle.

Mark Trail, 12/5/12

Uh oh, looks like Otto tried to kill Mark but then accidentally killed himself! No, just kidding, Mark will rescue him, of course. The real drama here: Will he immediately be converted to goodness thanks to Mark’s selfless rescue, or will he continue to plot? Will Mark eventually have to punch him, more in sorrow than in anger?

Gil Thorp, 12/5/12

In the last panel, with the bolding and the question mark, the narration box seems to have passed from disinterested observer to outraged Mudlark partisan. Or maybe it’s literally baffled by the ill-drawn tangle of limbs in panel two? “Pass interference? Wait, is Gallagher wrapping his arm around #81, or just kind of whacking at him? What’s going on?”

Dick Tracy, 12/5/12

Dick Tracy is doing some kind of “costumed vigilantes/superheroes” plot, though today it turns out that the whole thing may be a misunderstanding caused by this nice young couple’s eccentric and public sexual roleplay.

Spider-Man, 12/5/12

Over course of this plot, newspaper Spider-Man trufans have been saying, “OK, fine, we’ve had lots and lots of Peter Parker being publicly humiliated by his boss and by his rival, and he’s been literally forced to ‘pretend’ to work as a janitor in order to spy on Kraven. He’s done virtually no Web-slinging and absolutely no successful crime-fighting to speak of. But when do we get to the part of the story where he just yells at the television?” Well, today’s your lucky day, my friends.

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Mary Worth, 12/4/12

Good news, everybody! One-armed Jim didn’t just happen to wander down to the pier because he cured himself of his deep-rooted psychological problems with sheer willpower. No, he overcame his deep terror of the sea and all it represents (i.e., boat-caused amputation and/or death) especially to see Dawn, and rather than using one of the many communication methods she made available to him, he decided to just lurk down by the water until she showed up, so he could startle and unsettle her. Add this to the “I want to protect/sex you because you look like my dead sister” and “I only like you as a friend, that’s why I’m calling you and texting you and emailing you a zillion times a day” and we know that this relationship can only be healthy from here on in!

Crock, 12/4/12

Well, here you have it: what I’m pretty sure is the first Crock I’ve ever laughed at unironically. Naturally it somehow arrives more than six months after the strip stopped being published, which I don’t understand any more than you do.