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Heathcliff, 12/2/12

Ha, what’s this? Something has gone terribly wrong with the Heathcliff coloring process — and by “terribly wrong” I mean “delightfully right,” obviously. Someone who knows more about this than me should chime in, but I’m guessing what we’re looking at is an image file that only contains some of the Photoshop layers that went into the strip. It’s totally incomprehensible and actually amazingly beautiful, as far as I’m concerned, with the pastel-y vibe and the large, unsettling white spaces on the cat’s faces. This should be hanging up in some little avant garde artspace downtown, but instead it will have probably been “corrected” online to the usual Heathcliff banality by the time you read this.

Mary Worth, 12/2/12

Gosh, whaddya know! Jim’s down at the pier and he’s not panicking or freaking out at all! I guess he managed to cure himself of being a trauma-haunted, semi-delusional control freak with years of therapy with a trained professional by just sucking it up and going down to the pier and realizing it’s not so bad. Problem solved! Now he’s going to point at a bunch of people, just to prove that, despite his missing arm, he can point with the best of them, just like any two-armed man would.

Marmaduke, 12/12/12

Marmaduke didn’t like playing cowboy so much. His task was to send humans down the infinitely deep pit to the hell-dimension that was his awful kingdom, not other dogs. Why did the dogs provoke him? Never again, he thought, as he watched the hat fall downward, ever downward, to the chamber of eternal agony. Never again.

Luann, 12/12/12

Yes, Mr. DeGroot! Burn it. Burn it all! Burn everything down.

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Heathcliff and The Family Circus, 12/1/12

Celebrate, everybody! Three and half weeks of the Holiday Season lie before us, and if these whimsical one-panel cartoons for children are any indication, they will be a singularly grim and joyless affair. Billy is rooting through his box of toys so he can make his list of gift ideas; he literally has so many geegaws that he’s in real danger of getting duplicates. His toys may be spilling out of the top of a box that comes up to his shoulders, but they can never fill his bottomless need. Dolly looks on, expressionless. Meanwhile, Heathcliff, who is a cat and therefore not a participant in human religion or holiday celebration, merely sees the hustle and bustle at the mall as another opportunity to assert his dominance. He’s disrupting a farcical Christmas tradition meant to generate more sales revenues, and neither the bored mall Santa nor the stoop-shouldered children waiting in line can work themselves up to be even slightly upset by his antics.

Archie, 12/1/12

I bet you thought that yesterday’s late-night recycling laffs were just a one-off Archie joke, but no! Morning has come and now Archie and his dad are going down to the recycling center to return … the papers … which are now pamphlets about environmentalism? Or maybe the newspapers are being turned into the pamphlets, right there, at the recycling center? Anyway, the point is that recycling’s for chumps, kids, make sure your newspapers end up in a landfill, or, to go that extra mile, find a small endangered bird and smother it with the sports section!

Herb and Jamaal, 12/1/12

Do people outside of wacky fictional settings ever do elaborately sarcastic performances like this? I mean, it’s one thing to mock your lonely, heartbroken friend by telling him he’s having a “pity party,” but it’s quite another to take off your apron and leave the room and announce that you’re going to make actual concrete preparations for such an event. I certainly hope Herb has the determination to see this thing through to the end and really go to Kinko’s to have something printed up, or at least create a Facebook event and send invites to everyone Jamaal knows.

Ziggy, 12/1/12

God, this squirrel is quite the little name-dropping asshole.

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Your comment of the week shortly, but first: don’t forget that I will be reading in New York on Tuesday and doing comedy in Baltimore on Saturday the 8th, so you should be coming to one or both of those things. But will I be funnier than this week’s COTW? Enh, probably not!

“To save time, ‘How dare you?’ should be printed on Margo’s business cards.” –Pozzo

I might just barely edge out these hilarious runners up:

“I’m sorry Jim, but your incestuous feelings for your dead sister are getting in the way of my incestuous feelings for my living father.” –liam

“Evan is pretty sassy for someone who appears to have coordinated his outfit so as to best blend in with the oddly-colored walls and furniture. Maybe it’s his defense mechanism: he planned for this epic Margo confrontation with all the cunning of a chameleon.” –Marzipan

“Stop acting like you own this agency! Just go out there and sell some real estate! … We don’t sell real estate? You’re wearing a Century 21 jacket. I just figured … So, who were these clients that you were trolling for?” –hogenmogen

“Petey Parker asks what’s going on. What’s going on is the start of Kraven the Hunter, After Dark!” –Baka Gaijin

“I must admit, Dawn’s psycho friend Jim has gestured more with his one remaining arm these past few weeks than I have with TWO arms and nearly fifty years of living. Granted, they have almost ALL been ‘I’m going to KILL you!’ gestures, but still, way to cope with your recent disability, Jim!” –mojo

“I don’t know about the students’ perspective, but I know from the teaching side of things that if my class includes Peppermint Patty, Betty Cooper, and that Russian boxer from Rocky IV, then I sure as hell don’t need to worry about my Super Ego.” –Bud

“I love the fact that Crankshaft, Decrepit Lord of All Things Unpleasant, actually seems depressed by Rose’s ranting. It’s like he’s trying to work up the willpower to die so he won’t have to hear it.” –Inkewell

“Does he bring me a strategy? No, he just brings me jewelry. Have you thought about that, son? Why not get your friends matching necklaces and earrings? And maybe some nice pink cashmere turtlenecks. I got this the last time your father ‘messed up.'” –Christopher

“When your dad messes up, he doesn’t bring me a strategy. He bring the ruckus. And he brings it all night long. Have fun in therapy, son!” –Chareth Cutestory

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