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Mary Worth, 2/18/11

So, this current Mary Worth storyline: opinions differ about it! Here, for instance, is the complete text of an email I received from my mother yesterday evening:

this is the most boring Mary Worth ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I admit that it’s not the roller-coaster ride of hilarity of, say, Charley or Jill, but it has its subtle charms! I sort of love how Wilbur’s been getting more and more exasperated as Mary continues to not get the awesomeness of Twitter. I mean, he doesn’t even really care for it that much, but since he’s showing Mary how it works, he wants her to be at least a little intrigued.

It’s also fun if you imagine that, in the second panel, they’re talking about Wilbur’s penis.

Anyway, if you want to try to purge that image from your mind, you might want to check out today’s Mary Worth-themed Shortpacked!

Mark Trail, 2/18/11

Mark Trail, meanwhile, continues to entertain in a more straightforward fashion. I’d like to believe that the third panel is taking place in that Coast Guard helicopter’s spacious stateroom, and the red-haired figure in the foreground is the vessel’s commanding officer. He’s watching his bumbling underlings bicker and wrestle over the diamond-less tackle box, and thinking about whether it would save time on paperwork to just “accidentally” shove Ben Smith out the door in mid-flight.

Judge Parker, 2/18/11

The title character from Judge Parker may not get as much time in the spotlight as Sam Driver, but in panel three he proves that he can be just as smug. Remember, kids, the coddled and the privileged start out with an unrealistically high opinion of themselves, so the only way to really stroke their egos is to frame your ass-kissing as “brutal honesty.”

Spider-Man, 2/18/11

So she used to be your finacée … uh huh … and now she is again … right, right … loves you in spite of your past … sure, makes sense … WAIT YOU’RE GOING TO GET MARRIED? OH DEAR GOD!!!!

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Apartment 3-G, 2/17/11

Uh oh, there’s trouble in paradise already! Margo has decided to make nice, but Margo being nice is not what Trey’s interested in, and he rather snippily demands that the abuse resume. Don’t top from the bottom, Trey! No good will come of it!

By the way, I would dearly love it if someone could explain the terrifying non-Euclidian geometry that governs the spatial relationships between Margo and Trey’s chairs.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/17/11

Wait, Mr. Amato, I’m a little confused — are you Dave’s friend, or his cousin? And I’m not sure I remember exactly who AHHHH AHHHH AHHHH AHHHH WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/16/11

I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen Jughaid’s haid without his omnipresent coonskin hat, and what a disturbing sight it is! Horror aside, though, this comic implies that perhaps I’ve been too hard on the residents of Hootin’ Holler over the years; after all, that shallow brainpan and those protruding brow ridges indicate that the town is populated by a lost tribe of Homo habilis, and frankly rather than criticizing their primitive lifestyle we ought to be impressed by how close their civilization comes to the one created by anatomically modern humans.

Shoe, 2/16/11

I’ve become something of a connoisseur of Shoe’s trademarked Goggle Eyes Of Horror, and today’s double-whammy is particularly intriguing to me. One expects to see them on whatever bird-man is the butt of the joke, as our stranger is here; however, the fact that the Perfesser is also sporting them seems significant. It’s as if he’s realized to his shock that Shoe is right, King is the name of his dog, but he was talking to the other man about a real king, and he forgets, sometimes, which is which. It’s the look of panic a man has in a moment of lucidity as he realizes he’s slipping into senility or going insane, and as such is a thousand times more harrowing than some mild consternation at almost ordering a sub-par meal.

Apartment 3-G, 2/16/11

Good gracious, why does Iris keep falling asleep in the car? Is she like a baby, and the sound of wheels on pavement just lulls her to sleep more or less immediately? I’ve been assuming that this is just a jaunt of a few hours or less, but perhaps I’m wrong; perhaps they’ve been driving aimlessly around Upstate New York for days, and Iris has been passing out from exhaustion whenever she has a few minutes. Trey and Margo have stayed awake the whole time, since they’re high on love and/or cocaine.