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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.”

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The Lockhorns, 8/14/12

One of the twisted, dysfunctional “games” played by George and Martha, the main characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is talking about their non-existent son. They each tell stories about him, making things up as they go along to create a fuller picture of him; but, as in all improv, the rule is that each has to take the other’s story as canonical. This is a private game, though, and when Martha starts playing it in front of another couple specifically to annoy George, George retaliates by telling her their fake son died in a car crash.

This is a long way to point out that, like George and Martha, Leroy and Loretta don’t have any children either. So I suppose that whatever just happened in that big box store was some variation on George and Martha’s game — a little less creepy, perhaps, but a lot more expensive.

Curtis, 8/14/12

I’m actually really enjoying this “Curtis and Barry are trapped in an apartment with a dead lady and a bunch of cats” storyline, as it’s the strangest and more interesting thing to happen in the strip since Kwanzaa. Still, I question whether old people actually have more lightbulbs on hand than younger folks, and I also would have enjoyed seeing the Wilkins boys come up with an adult diaper-based escape plan.

Archie, 8/14/12

I’m really looking forward to violent class war breaking out in Riverdale! Which of the town’s proletarians will abandon class consciousness and side with their capitalist oppressors? Reggie? It’ll be Reggie, right?