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Lockhorns, 8/8/12
The Lockhorns isn’t just another comic panel; it’s one of the grimmest and most unsparing glimpses into the ways that the absence of love can wear you down into a sense of misery that’s so all-pervasive that you don’t even realize anything else is possible. I love how dead everyone looks in this panel. Leroy is so far gone he can’t even imagine how pathetic and small his request makes him look in front of a stranger; Loretta is dying of embarrassment but can’t summon up the words to explain why; and the pizza delivery kid, slouched over and numb, gets another glimpse of what appears to be the universal soul-crushing awfulness of adulthood, and is getting a crappy tip to boot.
Curtis, 8/8/12
Just a little whimsy in Curtis, where the Wilkins boys help out an old cat lady with some chores and then she drops dead! The facial expressions in the final panel are so great that I feel comfortable forgiving future Weekend at Bernie’s-style zaniness in advance.
Pluggers, 8/8/12
You’re a plugger if you remember when you used to eat at actual restaurants that served recognizable food, but a fried chicken dinner at one of those places cost like $9 plus tip, whereas you can get a 10-piece Chicken Nugget meal for $6, and sure it’s not “chicken” so much as “processed reformed chicken meat” but you get more of it plus it’s a lot faster and you can order right from your car, what does anyone expect you to do, what do you look like, some kind of big city elitist?
Ziggy, 8/8/12
Ha ha, it’s funny because Ziggy has finally realized he’s a slave to global capital!
Marvin, 8/7/12
So Marvin is celebrating its 30th anniversary by having baby Marvin travel to his own future with his 30-year-old grown-up self. The time-travel process caused baby Marvin to spontaneously become 30 years old himself, despite the fact that travelling back in time didn’t turn 30-year-old Marvin into a baby, and if there’s one thing that offends me almost as much as constantly gleeful poop jokes, it’s inconsistent rules for time travel within a fictional universe.
Also, if you’re curious, the next thirty years will be an unending grind of economic malaise, and babies born today will never have the financial independence that generations of Americans have taken for granted! I’m kind of missing the poop jokes now, actually.
Mark Trail, 8/7/12
In a shockingly non-predictable development, Rusty was not captured by the sheep killers, who will now presumably menace the entire Mark-less Trail clan with their sinister, looming foreheads. I was going to say that the worry that Rusty would head right to some prison warden to show off his pictures is kind of bizarre, but you know what, it’s not like the kid has any friends his own age, paling around with some mid-level bureaucrat in the local Department of Corrections makes as much sense as anything else.
Mary Worth, 8/7/12
A lifetime of disappointments has trained Wilbur to set his expectations very, very low. “Well, this vacation didn’t end in our deaths! I guess we can call it … mostly enjoyable?”
Funky Winkerbean, 8/7/12
Haw haw, ladies sure be hatin’ their bodies, amiright fellas