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Luann, 6/19/12

Thank goodness Luann has recently made some ham-handed attempts to condemn bullying, because now we know how to recognize bullying in action. These two friends are playing a trick on someone they don’t like, which will probably leave her feeling humiliated and ashamed! Oh, wait, what’s that? The two friend characters are defined as good within the context of the strip, and the other one is defined as bad? Whoops, sorry, it’s not bullying at all, just a gal who’s too sexy having her sexy feelings turned against her! Sorry for the confusion. We hope that today’s final panel can at least inspire you with erotic feelings as well as deserved satisfaction at this harlot’s comeuppance.

Gil Thorp, 6/19/12

In today’s Gil Thorp, a cunningly placed word balloon labels a teen mom (whom other players’ parents tried to force off the team lest she inspire the other softball players to sluttery) as a MILF, which normally would be pretty horrifying but after that Luann ick it just kinda seems like good clean fun.

Apartment 3-G, 6/19/12

OK, I’ve never experienced labor myself, but my understanding is that one does not go directly from “I am feeling discomfort that could be reasonably construed as the stomach flu” to “Oh my God I am in such excruciating pain that I cannot get myself downstairs to a cab or even crawl into the hallway to alert other people in this apartment building to my plight.” Though I suppose it’s possible that Nina has long ago alienated all her neighbors with her imperious behavior and so she figures it’s better to give birth alone than to beg one of them for help. Anyway, our poor little rich girl seems to be bucking up in the final panel, which is too bad considering that she’s sitting in a rapidly spreading pool of inky blackness, which presumably heralds the arrival of whatever hell-demon is gestating in her womb.

Mark Trail, 6/19/12

“He’ll never be able to outrun us! Not with those absurdly tiny feet!”

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B.C., 6/18/12

OK, while we have yet another example of B.C. predator vs. prey antics, with implied family dynamics among eusocial insects to boot, and I’m on the record as enjoying this sort of thing in the past, I’m afraid I cannot fully approve of today’s B.C. Mostly I feel puzzled by the role in the narrative of the tree-dwelling … bear … thing. Did the bear-thing put up the fake foreclosure signs in an attempt to con the bees out of their hive and acquire the delicious honey within? Are the foreclosure signs actually meant to not be fake, and the bear-thing is an agent of the bank that holds the mortgage note on the beehive? Is this some kind of opaque political allegory about the ongoing housing crisis? Does the bear-thing have a primitive axe? When did bears start learning how to use tools? Should we be scared of an army of tool-weilding bears, come to take what’s rightfully theirs, like beehives and our foreclosed homes and who knows what else?

Funky Winkerbean, 6/18/12

“Silence, running-slave! The whole point of bringing you to this state of exhaustion was to leave you too tired to make unfunny puns or forced jokes! Looks like we’ll just have to keep going until you lose your power of speech entirely!”

Apartment 3-G, 6/18/12

“I never read What To Expect When You’re Expecting, so I literally have no idea what happens next! I know at some point I’m going to have to pay for this tiny human to go to college, but everything between now and then is a mystery. Does something come out my hoo-hoo at some point?”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/18/12

Snuffy can’t clean any of the clocks today, because he was savagely beaten over some gambling debts and is in too much pain to move.

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Spider-Man, 6/17/12

You get to a point with these Newspaper Spider-Man villains where you just give up on them ever being actually fearsome and embrace their camp value. Thus I was genuinely delighted to see that Clown-9, in addition to being a goofy dope who drives a duck car and thinks a high-powered squirt gun is threatening and has no higher ambitions of evil than disrupting a Broadway play, also thinks “not” jokes are funny.

Still, the final panel worries me, delightful as it is to see “SPIDEY: 0” written out explicitly. Is Clown-9 suddenly transforming from a lovable weirdo into something truly terrifying? Is he gaining super-strength, Hulk-style? Is he unveiling some kind of super-weapon? Is he renouncing “not” jokes, which Spidey loves almost as much as he does?

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/17/12

Whoops, sorry about the permanent injury you suffered from being dragged around by the ears, wholly innocent rabbit! I guess the lesson here is that you shouldn’t act twitchy around cops in Slylock’s thuggish police state.