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Mary Worth, 10/14/12

Jim Romenesko’s media blog has already covered the unusually flush finances of Woods and Wildlife magazine, but has been neglecting the turmoil on the feature pages of the Santa Royale Gazette-Whatever. Wilbur Weston is fully focused on his new survivors column, “I Shouldn’t Be ALive,” leaving Mary to keep noodling along with “Ask Wendy.” Absent any editorial supervision, she has quite clearly gone completely insane. Having long ago forgotten that the “Ask” in the name indicates that she’s supposed to be responding to reader letters, she now just unloads her philosophy on her readers in long, stream-of-consciousness rants. “None of us can solve the problem of evil! The ever-changing nature of the universe and the self has bedeviled humanity since the age of Heraclitus! Only through immediate action, directed by my iron will, can life have any meaning! OBEY ME, READERS! OBEY WENDY! OBEY!”

Blondie, 10/14/12

Over the course of most of this comic, I found it charming that Dagwood was imagining that he had a hooting, rowdy audience for the latest instance of his thrice-daily sandwich-building ritual. But when I realized it was actually Elmo providing the audience reactions, it suddenly got a lot more pathetic.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 10/14/12

Oh, nothing much in today’s Slylock Fox, just Reeky Rat and his punk friends sneaking a extremely filthy double entendre of a band name into comics pages across America.

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Judge Parker, 10/13/12

Dear Judge Parker: I’m sorry I ignored you for, like, months while you winded your way through a boring fishing/vague hints of marijuana badness plotline! I’m not sure how we’re going to get from “horrifying, bloody chainsaw murder” to “our heroes will be handed a large pile of money and/or adulation that they didn’t deserve,” but I’m very interested in finding out and will be paying close attention from now on!

Crankshaft, 10/13/12

Wow, it looks like Crankshaft is even more death-haunted than yesterday’s strip led us to believe! The end is closer than it appears … much closer. Will Crankshaft die, say, tomorrow? Leaving entropy to slowly and silently advance in each subsequent strip, until we reach the heat death of the Funkyverse?

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Your comment of the week momentarily, but first: enjoy this scan from a Faithful Reader! The Halifax Chronicle-Herald is one of those newspapers that banishes one of its comics (the Family Circus, in this case) to the Classified section. Specifically, they put the Family Circus near the “Business Personals,” which means … well, check out what it means. Heh.

And now, your comments of the week!

“The font for Hi & Lois is so obviously computer generated — somewhere near Comic Sans without being as terrible — that it is hard to read the dialog as if it were spoken by actual human beings. A perfect unity of form and function, is what I’m saying.” –stinkfoot

And your runners up! Very funny!

“Sadly, the Gil Thorp team couldn’t fit another speech balloon in the third panel, otherwise they could have put in the cry of ‘Fiddle-dee-dee Potatoes!’ in case anyone didn’t get the message.” –Atticus Dogsbody

“I’d never thought about wrapping a noose around Hagar’s neck and tossing him in a peat bog as a way of getting him off the comics page, but whatever works.” –pastordan, snark late shift

“Shouldn’t he have his belt unbuckled and his hand down his pants by now?” –Calvin’s Cardboard Box

‘Look out! A tiger!’ MJ exclaimed, not knowing what to do with her protruding forearm flippers.” –sporknpork

“I love the idea that Mark Trail is set in some kind of non-digital universe. Let’s call it ‘logpunk’. Characters wear either suits or work uniforms, neatly pressed and tucked. Everyone travels everywhere by boat, bushplane or strangely absurd motor vehicles like the Volga truck from the last arc. Recreational fishing is the primary activity in logpunk, with occasional hunting. Bears and dogs are essentially sentient beings and all communication occurs via bakelite telephones.” –geekwhisperer

“As a guy in the printed news industry, the thing I find the most interesting about Mark Trail is the disconnect between how much editors actually make as opposed to how much Jack Elrod seems to think they do. ‘My editor has use of the company yacht,’ Mark says loftily, unaware that it is actually an old tire surrounding a piece of styrofoam.” –Tophat

“I’m calling it now: somewhere at the start of a half-assed battle, Kraven the Hunter will shout something like, ‘Now I’m going to hunt the most DANGEROUS game: SPIDER-MAN!’ This will be an inaccurate statement.” –Dagger

“I like the way Cayla facetiously announces she’s pregnant without changing her now-permanent expression of world-weary despair. That look will serve her well during the wedding and even better as a corpse in Les’ basement.” –Esther Blodgett

“I can’t wait until we see this strip recycled again in a few years, only with smartphones and tablets. The dog will be changed to a hamburger.” –Chareth Cutestory

“Les must stoop in the second panel because of Funky’s large, self-pitying balloon. If only Funky added another sentence or two of loathing, Les would be laid out flat! WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF” –Greg

I must thanks to all who put some cash into my tip jar! And we must give thanks to our advertisers:

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