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Momma, 8/17/12

If you’re wondering why Francis would scurry away from the beach in terror after just looking at a nagging sign his mother made, despite the fact that she isn’t even present to enforce her insane edict … take a look at the handwriting on the sign, which Francis easily identifies as his mother’s. Now take a look at the handwriting in his thought balloon. Does it look … familiar? Can you imagine the horror of having Momma’s voice in your head, every time you think? Leaving you always wondering whether your thoughts are even yours at all? This whole beach situation is quite frankly the least of Francis’s problems right now.

Spider-Man, 8/17/12

Just to briefly catch you up on the exciting newspaper Spider-Man action: Spidey was trying to figure out where he could find Clown-9 so they could have a showdown, then he saw an ad in the paper for a circus, and he said, basically, “A circus! Clowns love circuses! He’ll be there!” This seemed like not the most air-tight sequence of reasoning, which even Spider-Man has figured out, because now he’s just going on TV to tell Clown-9 when and where to show up so the two of them can engage in violent, deadly combat. Some might think that he could have chosen any arbitrary spot as the site for their battle. “I’ve a message for Clown-9! I challenge you to a showdown tomorrow night at the old abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town!” But no, best to do it a the circus, where hundreds of innocent people, including many children, will be gathered to watch. Good planning, super-hero!

Six Chix, 8/17/12

Hey, at least bug-eyed crawling-on-the-floor lady admits that something’s wrong with her, horribly-stooped-over seriously-are-you-a-hunchback lady!

Judge Parker, 8/17/12

As we’ve seen, Avery’s negotiating strategy involves agreeing to everyone’s demands immediately and giving them as much money as possible, so yes, I’m willing to believe that people rarely say no to him.

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Family Circus, 8/16/12

There’s something I find incredibly creepy about the two twin droplets of fluid in this panel — one of them dribbling from Barfy’s tongue, the other running down the side of Jeffy’s face. The similarity between the two seems to hold some hidden meaning, beyond just “This is what a drop of liquid looks like in a cartoon.” Perhaps the key is the unsettlingly knowing look that Barfy is giving Jeffy. The dog seems to be staring straight into the child’s eyes, and assuring him that the two of them are very much alike, that everything that Jeffy has feared and hoped his whole life is true: they may look different and one sweats while the other pants and they walk on different sets of limbs, but the two of them are a genuine pack. “Jeffy, I am your true brother,” Barfy says, in Jeffy’s mind. “These humans, they will never understand you, never love you, like I can. Come, let us run away together, off into the distance. Let’s go poop on somebody’s else’s lawn. You will know true freedom.”

Dick Tracy, 8/16/12

I know I don’t cover Dick Tracy like I used to, but that’s because the new creative team has jettisoned the combination of head-scratching insanity and brutal violence that always drew me to it. Still, I do feel a need to point that they still know how to keep it real! Like, “nurse Dick back to health and then slowly drain his blood” real.

Ziggy, 8/16/12

Haha, someone at Ziggy central sure has some kind of beef with the global financial system! Call me a tool of capitalism if you will, but can’t we all agree that Ziggy is clearly incompetent to run any aspects of his life and maybe his bank should be running his finances for him?

Hi and Lois, 8/16/12

Never has so much entirely justified contempt for two whiny, hapless children been written so eloquently on a noseless, expressionless face.

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Shoe, 8/15/12

Haha, the first panel of this strip is amazing, with the Perfesser demonstrating some of the most spectacular ennui the comics pages have ever seen. The heavy lids, the eyes betraying the intense exhaustion that comes from being alive — it just goes to show how incredibly soul-wearying it must be to be a bird-man in Treetops. In panel two, the Perfesser perks up enough to lean a little towards the television (assuming that his spine isn’t just permanently warped by his self-loathing slouch) because he’s heard some intriguing news: is there another species even more depressed than he is? Let’s watch to find out!

Skyler, meanwhile, is depressed for more concrete reasons: the living room in his home only has seating for one, meaning that he has to either stand up while watching TV with the Perfesser or retire quietly to his room. It’s almost as if his uncle never wanted him to live there in the first place!

Apartment 3-G, 8/15/12

Well, I guess Evan’s family life has totally prepared him for having Margo as a boss! “Aunt Cathy, you know you’ve always been very important to me and I just want to thank you for … hello? Hello? Huh, I think she was starting to say ‘Whatever you need, my darling nephew, I’ll be there for you,’ but then we lost the connection.”