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Beetle Bailey, 6/23/11

If you’d asked me before today, I would have sworn that nothing could be more disturbing than seeing the Halftracks attempting to spice up their erogenous life with costumed role-play. But in fact, it’s the Army shrink’s suggestion that the General cast his mind back to the very sexiest fantasies he had as a little boy that has me so very thoroughly skeeved out.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/23/11

Good thing the meddlin’ revenooers never come to Hootin’ Holler anymore, as they might inform their colleagues at the EPA about Loweezy’s plan to clear out sensitive wildlife habitat! But even though I’m a coastal elitist, I have to admit that, upon realizing that the local amphibians had begun to master human speech, my first instinct would be to wage a war of extermination against them.

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Mary Worth, 6/22/11

Today’s Mary Worth brings us a valuable lesson on how to enjoy Mary Worth — and indeed, explains one of the reasons why Mary Worth enjoys being Mary Worth. Variety is the spice of life, and thus every meddle is different. If they were all the same, what joy or texture would there be in Mary interfering in the lives of her hapless victims? No, she doesn’t know until she’s in the thick of it whether the meddlees will need to literally drink themselves into the gutter before they’re receptive to Mary’s life-molding or whether they’ll just burst into open sobbing and oversharing the minute she asks her first gingerly probing questions. Do you think Mary’s taken aback that Liza has opened up so easily? Don’t worry, Mary, I feel confident that there’s an emotional roller-coaster of insanity in your future, as Liza imprints on you as her new guru/love object and refuses let you out of her sight.

Family Circus, 6/22/11

The fact that very long-running strips reuse art and even whole gags is obviously not news. Certainly today’s Family Circus panel, which features the red-headed children dully staring at an enormous console TV that they’re way too close to has the vibe of decades-old art, although for all I know it could have been drawn last month (but surely that would have been a terrible waste of effort?). Anyway, it got me thinking about how there must be endless material to be mined from dead-eyed Keane Kids watching television and saying vaguely cute/precocious things about it, so look for this panel to appear again and again, long after most Americans have forgotten that “televisions” used to be a distinct piece of free-standing electronic equipment, rather than a series of screens built into every wall of every home, switching on and off as you moved from room to room, making sure you were never without entertainment.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/22/11

Have you ever seen a movie or TV show where somebody interacts with the main characters without speaking, even though that seems kind of off? Once an actor starts talking, they move up to a whole different pay scale, so generally there’s some financial reasoning behind it. Comic strips don’t really work on the same economic logic, though, so that doesn’t explain why Sullen McMaybepregnant here silently thrusts a note a Les before stalking off. Presumably she’s disgusted beyond words that the entire school has been inexplicably driven into a frenzy of arousal by the Les-on-Susan smooching pic that’s been making the rounds.

The Lockhorns, 6/22/11

Oh, isn’t that cute! Despite it all, Loretta still believes that Leroy will become a beautiful butterfly. I hope he does too, in the sense that I hope that his squat, misshapen husk of a body will one day split open, revealing an enormous, terrifying insect within.

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Luann, 6/21/11

Uh-oh, looks like the DeGroots are on a collision course with wackiness — TJ-flavored wackiness! So, wait, is TJ not capable of paying rent on his own? Doesn’t he have a job? Wasn’t there some whole plotline a few years back that centered on the family trying to figure out what TJ did for a living? Did they ever find out? You know, it’s times like this, when I realize that I actually don’t have some bit of Luann ancillary character trivia at my fingertips, that I realize that maybe I’m more mentally healthy than everyone says. I could just look up the answer, but it would ruin my feeling of triumph and well-being.

Anyway, the fact that TJ will be required by economic and/or narrative necessity to move back home with Brad only strengthens my suspicions that “TJ” is actually just a projection of Brad’s troubled subconscious, and that his entire family has been urged by Brad’s team of psychiatrists to play along with his delusion, a role they’ve tackled with an unsettling degree of gusto.

Apartment 3-G, 6/21/11

You know, if the A3G girls were so keen on getting a psychic reading for Lu Ann, why not just go with Margo’s mother Gabriella, who’s been known to dabble in the mystic arts herself? Of course, since Laura Lea is drawn exactly like Gabriella, that may be what they’ve done, and just asked her not to lay on the accent to so thick for a few minutes. At any rate, Margo’s sweet smile in panel one shows that she’ll always love how easy poor dumb Lu Ann is to fool.

Judge Parker, 6/21/11

Worried that the strip’s core audience of aged shut-ins might find the current storyline involving potential suicide too exciting, the Judge Parker creative team has decided to ratchet things back a notch and are now only showing Abbey and Sophie watching the situation unfold via a no doubt low-quality webcam. Still, they are narrating the action, which might cause stray amounts of dangerous drama to enter the consciousness of readers. Just to be safe, the rest of the week will consist of the two of them staring silently at the screen.