Post Content

Marvin, 6/3/11

With this, I dearly hope that Marvin has reached the lowest point it can with the bathroom humor. In fact, I’m not sure this can be defined as “humor” at all. It’s just all “That dog has a name that sounds like ‘pee,’ because he urinates everywhere.” I guess if this were a spoken conversation (or, as is the case here, a telepathic conversation between a baby and a dog) there’d be a vague pun in that you’d think the name is spelled “Peabody” but really it’s “Peebody” because he likes to “pee” on things. But seeing it written out means that you know there’s nothing but piss jokes coming in panel two, so hang onto your hat (because otherwise Peebody the dog will urinate on it).

I suppose “bladder control issues” was some kind of syndicate-imposed euphemism, but it does add an extra bit of awfulness because it implies that Peebody’s peeing is involuntary, and probably causes him great shame.

Apartment 3-G, 6/3/11

Oh, hey, Aunt Iris has departed abruptly and now Mrs. Bloom is back from Florida, whither she decamped a few months ago, apparently for extensive cosmetic surgery. Don’t anger her any further, Tommie, she’ll taser the crap out of you.

You know, Iris has vaguely intimated that her friends and family don’t approve of her “gypsy lifestyle.” Naturally I’ve always assumed that this was because the squares in the A3Giverse are easily shocked by any even vaguely out-of-the-ordinary behavior, but maybe it’s because she always just picks up and leaves town without saying goodbye to anyone, like a jerk.

Post Content

Slylock Fox, 6/2/11

This is definitely one of the more aggressively bonkers things we’ve seen in the Island of Dr. Moreau meets Encyclopedia Brown world of Slylock Fox in some time. One of the strip’s lower-level police-dogs has harnessed an elephant with an S&M collar and is using him to drag a shark in a tank up to a motley gaggle of animals. I’m not exactly whether the beasts at the right end of the panel are supposed to be sentient or not, but they look extremely dubious about the presence of this shark, probably assuming that one or more of them is about to become its food. I’m guessing that before the editors forced a last-minute change to this “letter T” business, the original question was “What the fuck is going on here, exactly? Anyone?”

Funky Winkerbean, 6/2/11

The second of Les’s paramours has declared love for him in as many weeks, and in both cases Les responded as any man would: with emotionless silence. Cayla, of course, is the more together of his two hapless not-girlfriends, so all she did was dump him and stalk off in a huff. Since Susan tried to kill herself the last time Les rejected her love (back when she was his student, in high school), the next two days should be extra-cheery, as Les watches the carnage in detached befuddlement. “Unring a bell” is generally used in legal contexts, when jurors learn information that should not have come out in a trial, so hopefully this presages a killing spree to come.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/2/11

It appears that the Vikings have plundered the coasts of Britain and the Frankish Kingdom so throughly as to have snuffed out the brief Carolingian Renaissance, and their depredations have now brought them to the Mediterranean, where they’ve been savagely destroying the last remains of classical civilization. The legacy of Roman literacy must have already been wiped out by the time Hagar’s war-band got to Italy, presumably by terrifying fires that mindlessly consumed the libraries and monasteries, so he had to settle for just enslaving one of the locals.

Apartment 3-G, 6/2/11

This Tommie plot has meandered along aimlessly for way too long, but I’ll be willing to forgive a lot if it ends with Margo gradually teaching Tommie about hard drugs.

Post Content

Apartment 3-G, 6/1/11

When Scarlett O’Hara wistfully announced that “tomorrow is another day,” the great love of her life had just walked out on her, and she was trying to figure out how she would win him back. When Tommie says it, it’s because she failed to deliver a CD to her aunt. She could probably try to just slip it through the mail slot, but then what would she do for excitement tomorrow?

Judge Parker, 6/1/11

Oh, hey, have you been wondering how Judge Parker Emeritus’s attempts to talk a defense contractrix out of suicide are going? Apparently he’s decided that the best way to get her to step back from the ledge is to describe how empty and meaningless his own life is. He’s thinking outside the box!

Luann, 6/1/11

I’ve never been an exchange student, but I’m reasonably sure that they know pretty far in advance when they’re going to return to their home country. Do Australians do things differently? Does the government in Canberra have the right to call young men home for national service at a moment’s notice, for emergency shrimp-on-the-barbie placement or something?

Beetle Bailey, 6/1/11

“Are you ticklish?”

“No.”

“Would you be unsettled if my head started spinning around on my neck like the demon-girl from the Exorcist?“