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Apartment 3-G, 11/27/12

There’s trouble in paradise, if by “paradise” you mean the weird workplace romance between Margo and Evan. Evan thinks that he can be cold to our gal Magee just because he’s used her sexual jealousy to steal away her clients for his aunt’s agency and has thus achieved all his goals. He’s about to learn that Margo only makes time with betas when they provide sexy massages and other benefits, and when they decide to withhold those benefits, Margo decides to withhold their paychecks and/or oxygen.

Spider-Man, 11/27/12

Spider-Man, meanwhile, is undercover in Las Vegas, trying to figure out what crimes Kraven the Hunter is plotting. His patented detective technique has mostly consisted of lurking around Kraven and sulking while Kraven practices his animal act, foils purse-nappers, and does other non-criminal things. It’s not particularly sophisticated! Thus, even though Kraven has introduced two monkey with names that make it so obvious that a third will appear soon that he might as well just call them “Monkey 1” and “Monkey 3”, we need Peter to thought-balloon this information, because otherwise we readers might worry that he’s failing to pick up on it, as he fails to pick up on most things.

One aspect of Peter being sullen about Kraven’s fantastic life in Las Vegas has been Peter being sullen about Kraven’s success with the ladies. This is kind of ironic because the very first Spider-Man storyline covered on this blog featured Kraven trying and failing to woo the one lady dumb enough to marry Peter Parker! They’re like an ourobouros of loserdom, these two. (Note from the commentary on that old post that I was still trying to grapple with just what Newspaper Spider-Man was all about back in those days.)

Dennis the Menace, 11/27/12

SUSPECT IN CHILD DISMEMBERMENT CASE ‘DEFINITELY GUILTY’ SAY NEIGHBORS

Retired Postal Worker Was A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’

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Curtis and Momma, 11/26/12

Comics artists! It is true that you are old and cranky, and that everything about the young people who don’t subscribe to the paper is annoying. Nevertheless, it is perhaps advisable for you to do a cursory bit of investigation to determine exactly how newfangled the habits and turns of phrase and cultural production of today’s youth are before you lambaste them in the comics pages as irritating novelties. For instance: auto-tune made its musical debut with Cher’s single “Believe,” which hit the airwaves in 1998! This means that it’s a musical production technique that is literally older than Curtis is, and would probably be familiar to his father already. Also, the word “awesome” in its weakened, colloquial sense of “very good” is first recorded in 1961, and was in vogue from around 1980. So have you been complaining about this usage for 30 or maybe even 50 years? Perhaps now is the time to give up on this particular fight!

Zits, 11/26/12

No, your attacks on the young should be universal and timeless. For instance, did you know that teenagers are monstrous, unthinking appetites, whose compliments cannot be taken seriously because they will vibrate ceaselessly in joy at anyone or anything that can sate their endless need?

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Shoe, 11/25/12

Since the early days of this blog, I have been complaining that the bird-people of Shoe refuse to fully acknowledge their avian natures. Today is a prominent example, in which two barfly bird-men (barbirds?) talk about birds that are hunted for sport, and then imagine a crazy, impossible world in which they were hunted, as if they weren’t birds, as if they weren’t delicious, as if their plumage wouldn’t look beautiful when draped over a taxidermy form. No, instead, the Perfesser just cracks wise about how at last call all the hot fellas are hunted, by the sexually voracious ladies, which, I hate to break it to you guys, but the lights are up and you two are the only ones in there, and nobody seems to be hunting you, for sex.

Panels from the Better Half, 11/25/12

Your Uncle Lumpy has got me reading the Better Half, of all things, and I have to say that it’s … mildly interesting? It’s sort of like a distant relative of the Lockhorns, except instead of regarding each other with murderous contempt, Harriet and Stanley seem genuinely in love but also somewhat baffled by each other, and indeed by the world at large. Nothing in the gentle marital foible-themed cartoons I’d read up till today had prepared me for this nightmare, of course. Stanley’s enthusiasm over the fact that his corpse will someday break down to its organic components (if the flesh isn’t first torn off by scavengers) can be written off as eccentric, if unsettling; but once we see him rambling angrily about about great heaps of discarded, beautiful human faces mouldering in dumpsters all over Hollywood, we know that something very, very wrong is going on inside his tiny cranium.

Family Circus, 11/25/12

The innumerable dead are not thankful for much, but they are thankful for this: they have been spared knowledge of Jeffy.