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Lockhorns, 1/23/13

I don’t like to tell a cartoonist how to do their job … haha, who am I kidding, that’s literally been exactly my schtick on this blog for the past eight and a half years! Anyway, I’m all for just having Loretta telling people about how unhappy her marriage is, right in front of her husband, but maybe this panel would be a little funnier if Leroy were more obviously not paying attention to her? Like, maybe if he were looking at his phone or something. I mean, I guess you could interpret his expression as a thousand-mile stare, a sort of numb mask that settles on his face every time he thinks about how he’d rather be anywhere other than with his wife and do anything other than listen to her, but he pretty much always looks like that so I don’t think it quite drives the joke home the way it should.

Momma, 1/23/13

The first panel of this strip is by far the happiest I’ve ever seen the Hobbs family when they’re voluntarily spending time together. I do have to wonder how exactly Francis “plays” Wheel of Fortune and ruins the experience for everyone else. Does he shout out painfully wrong answers, disturbing his siblings’ and mother’s silent, maniacal grinning? Whatever the case, perhaps he can go commiserate about his banishment with his brother’s wife, who has also apparently been uninvited from Family Game Show Watching Night.

Mark Trail, 1/23/13

“I win because I use the lure that is named after me — the ‘Rod Bassy Killer’! I’m called that because I killed the real Rod Bassy and assumed his identity after selling my soul to the Devil so that he would make me the greatest fisherman alive. Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Spider-Man, 1/23/13

Just for the record, since Friday Newspaper Spider-Man has dedicated a single panel to depicting Kraven’s daring escape and 11 panels to depicting these morons standing around talking to each other.

Wizard of Id, 1/23/13

I was going to object that a witch, of all people, shouldn’t need to consult a fortune teller for a glimpse into the future, but then I remembered that I’m already on the record as doubting witchy powers, so well played, newspaper comics industry.

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Mark Trail, 1/22/13

Oh boy, you guys, we’re about to see a side of Mark we don’t usually see: Mark Trail, hard-hitting journalist! Rod Bassy is the king of the professional bass fishing circuit. Women want him; men want to be him. Mr Bassy, what’s the secret to your success? “Well, I’m a better fisherman than the others!” It seems that way! Well, I think I got what I came for, let me just take a few pictures of you in your stately home for the cover. This interview will appear in June’s Woods and Wildlife Magazine, and on our website at woodsandwildlifemagazine.biz just as soon as we can find someone who knows how to make a website.

Archie, 1/22/13

I actually find Dilton’s defensiveness in panel two kind of poignant. He’s not absent minded, OK, he’s just not physically coordinated, we can’t all be popular jocks like you Betty, OK? I relate, but he needs to check himself, because wearing the incorrect sporting equipment for a pre-planned recreational outing isn’t so much “absent minded” as “comically dumb.”

Six Chix, 1/22/13

Look, I can’t fault anyone who’s watched the economic gyrations of the past five years for being gun-shy about investing in equities, but even if you’re just going to go with an all-cash portfolio, you don’t need to physically carry it around with you at all times. Go ahead and keep it in under your mattress or in a dresser or something. It’ll be safe there! JPMorgan Chase isn’t going to turn your drawer into synthetic sock-backed derivatives and sell tranches to investors in China and the United Arab Emirates. Probably not, anyway.

Crankshaft, 1/22/13

Haha, Crankshaft is so embarrassed about his compulsive hoarding that he transparently lies about it to his own family! It’s all just about some harmless gardening supplies, though, which is how you can tell that this is the “fun” Funkyverse strip.

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Apartment 3-G, 1/21/13

Sorry everybody, I know I’ve been falling down on the job a bit when it comes to reading Apartment 3-G so you don’t have to. So, after Margo got really blotto, Greg gently dumped her into bed. But wait! Remember Evan, all dressed up in his Druid robe? He left his giant package in Margo’s closet (note: not a euphemism)! And it was apparently a pink-smoke emitting incendiary bomb? Is … is Evan secretly a villain from the Adam West Batman TV show?

Funky Winkerbean, 1/21/13

In other keeping-you-updated news, despite my initial interpretation of last Tuesday’s strip, there’s nothing wrong with Darrin’s mother, except that she’s emotionally devastated after Darrin’s father suffered a stroke. How is it that you can know your whole life that someday you’ll be gutted by something terrible that will inevitably happen to you or someone you dearly love, and yet you still aren’t prepared for it? That’s just how you manage to live your life in an universe of cruel and unending trauma, I guess!

Hagar the Horrible, 1/21/13

Oh, that Hagar, what a jokester! Obviously he doesn’t “buy” houses; he just starts living in them, after his bloodthirsty band of Viking warriors murder the owners.

Heathcliff, 1/21/13

I’m pretty sure that if I churned out a series of paintings of sexy cats sitting on piles of filth, I could get a gallery show in one of Brooklyn’s hipper neighborhoods.

Slylock Fox, 1/21/13

The solution to this puzzle, if you don’t feel like turning your head/monitor upside down, is that we know Wanda is lying because thunder doesn’t cause lightning. You know what else doesn’t cause lightning? Witches.