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Shoe, 3/7/12

OK, I know it’s tricky to try to read the expressions bird-people, but Roz’s heavy-lidded look in panel two strikes me as quite sad; that, combined with the finality of “I never had children”, makes the strip poignant. Do you think Roz is feeling maudlin and ruminating about the family life she never had, or that she’s thinking about her theoretical child being hurled to its death because she left it on top of her car?

In other news, Roz apparently says “OMG” aloud, which, LOL.

Family Circus, 3/7/12

In the generally edgeless and saccharine world of the Keane Kompound, it can be easy to forget that, in an act of long-ago whimsy, the more popular of the Keane family dogs was given the hilariously disgusting name “Barfy.” But then you have panels like this, where the kids cheerfully talk about being constantly covered with Barfy-slobber, and suddenly it’s a fact that seems very unsettling.

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Crankshaft, 3/6/12

Despite my (too many) years of reading Crankshaft, I’ve only just at this moment realized that Keesterman, the guy whose mailbox Crankshaft is constantly destroying due to his dangerous inability to operate a schoolbus, is also one of the guys who meets Crankshaft and some other old dudes at a sad chain diner where they drink coffee and pun sullenly and probably leave stingy tips. The endless mailbox-annihilation incidents might explain why Keesterman has finally snapped, looking in panel three like he’s going to react to Crankshaft’s mild ribbing with a punch to the face, something I dearly hope we get to see over the remainder of the week, from several different angles.

Hi and Lois, 3/6/12

We’ve seen some intermittent attempts to make Hi and Lois’ marriage interesting, but frankly I think there’s much more drama to be wrung from the lives of the Flagstons’ next-door neighbors. Check out Irma’s disgruntled look in the final panel: not only is her family mired in debt, but that means that she can’t even have a nice party without it devolving into recriminations and violence, which to her is the worst indignity.

Beetle Bailey, 3/6/12

There are occasional Beetle Baileys in which our heroes (?) are fighting something called the “Red Army,” and while it’s usually clear from context that these are training exercises, it would be fun to believe that today’s strip takes place in an alternate universe where the men of Camp Swampy have been deployed into combat against the Soviet Union, and that, as you’d expect, their division has been quickly defeated and its few survivors are now being rounded up. Given the creepy fact that we see no people attached to these massive gun barrels, it’s also possible that the Red Army is a band of out-of-control military death-bots, who are making short work of their hapless biological adversaries, not least thanks to the humans’ inability to function without technology that’s controlled by the cyber-enemy.

Hagar the Horrible, 3/6/12

Lucky Eddie has blatantly stolen this joke from Groucho Marx, but I’m not going to get too upset about it because in a minute he’s going to be mauled to death by bears for his crimes.

Marvin, 3/6/12

Yesterday I praised Marvin for grappling with interesting themes and avoiding scatological content. Naturally, today’s strip features the smug hell-infant boasting that he can just shit in his pants whenever he wants.

Herb and Jamaal, 3/6/12

If you’ve enjoyed this Herb and Jamaal strip about burping, why not enjoy the four paragraphs I somehow managed to write about it, back when it first ran in 2004?

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Oh, crap, I almost forgot my beginning-of-the-month reminder to all of you that I have a social media strategy! Apologies to everyone for whom this is old hat, but I figure the beginning of the month is a good a place as any to let new and/or intermittent readers know that I have a:

I put the same material up on pretty much all of these, so really you should just pick the service you like best and subscribe to that one. Or none! I won’t be mad! (Just disappointed.) I’ll also link to new Comics Curmudgeon posts daily from each of these, so perhaps you will find them a good way to keep up with the blog? Anyway, feel free to use the comments here to describe how dumb all social network sites are.

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