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Crock, 1/25/11

Today we have an excellent demonstration of the inner workings of the underimagined hell-world that is Crock. Our action involves Figowitz, who is always slouched despondently against the exterior wall of the Foreign Legion’s fort, and Captain Preppie, who for dramatic reasons should be shown sitting jauntily with his legs crossed. Except: there is no furniture upon which the good captain can place his shapely buttocks in Figowitz’s blasted desert sitting-spot! What to do? Summon a vaguely cuboid sitting-box out of nowhere, of course. Once Preppie gets up to stroll away, this mysterious plinth can simply vanish into the ether of narrative convenience out of which it emerged.

On a surely totally unrelated note, the chunk missing from Preppie’s right elbow in panel one is no doubt of aesthetic significance too sublime to be understood by a ruffian such as myself; we certainly shouldn’t assume that this particular drawing of the handsome captain has been carelessly cut and pasted from an earlier strip.

Apartment 3-G, 1/25/11

Normally when your new boyfriend drives you to a creepy abandoned house somewhere in New Jersey, that’s a sign of very bad news to come. But Paul drives a huge, pearly white Hummer! He must be a classy guy!

Marvin, 1/25/11

The WikiLeaks saga, combining as it does political intrigue, cloak-and-dagger spy drama, philosophical debates about the merits of openness vs. secrecy in different realms, and accusations of sexual assault, has enough inherent drama to serve as a the foundation for a whole series of fascinating novels. Or, if you’re Marvin, you could use it as the basis for a pun about pissing yourself!

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Mary Worth, 1/24/11

Attention, manufacturers of electronic gadgets and gizmos! Have you saturated all conventional media with ads for your iPad/Kindle/Nook/whatever? Are you wondering how to reach that lucrative 65-and-older shut-in demographic? There’s no way to get more value for your marketing dollar than to purchase product placement in Mary Worth. Oldsters everywhere will soon be using your product to read their favorite old-timey books once they see their hip comic contemporaries, like Mary Worth’s Dr. Jeff, extol the virtue of your reader on the funny pages. The conversation beginning today is guaranteed to last weeks, and all generic references to “that reading device” can be changed to your product name as soon as your check clears.

Marmaduke, 1/24/11

Don’t worry, Marmaduke’s owners! The Pied Piper led away rats to be killed and then stole children to sell them into slavery. Marmaduke isn’t doing anything like that! He’s merely enlisting a hellish menagerie of beasts into his demon army, the better to overthrow the humans and establish his awful nightmare reign here on earth.

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Beetle Bailey, 1/23/11

This is, without doubt, the saddest Beetle Bailey I’ve ever seen, sadder than all the “Beetle and Sarge have a forbidden love for one another” strips combined. Never mind the fact that Beetle’s family lives in some kind of bygone day when hand-written letters constitute the only means of communication at a distance; Beetle’s brother’s speculation that the soldier no longer loves his family is all the more heartbreaking for being so matter-of-fact. But the real emotional gut punch comes in the final panel. Little Chigger is young or stupid enough to think that the mere receipt of a letter is enough to maintain the emotional ties within the Bailey family; but the expressions on the faces of his parents show how devastated they are by Beetle’s affectless, demanding letter. They’ll send the money — if that’s the only way they can keep the thin thread between themselves and their son in place, they’ll do it — but something inside them has been snuffed out.

As a side note: Beetle’s brother is named “Chigger”? Really? As you may or may not know, Hi and Lois‘s Lois is Beetle’s sister, so we have to wonder what her real name was — Ladybug? — before she got married and fled this sad, creepy family for good.

Crankshaft, 1/23/11

Oh, look, it’s another cheery day in the Funkyverse. Today, we learn that you can either be driven mad by the horrible scratching of the vermin that live in your walls, or you can turn up the TV and be deafened with awful news about our nation’s economic crisis. Those are your choices!

Panel from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/23/11

Here’s the question I want to ask, doctor: why are you having Loweezy lower Li’l Tater into that enormous pie shell? How many more infants will you need to complete your monstrous baby pie, and who will be eating it?

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 1/23/11

Ah, the narcotic of television sedates unruly children and elders alike, putting them into a trance-like state so that they won’t bother you with their irritating opinions or desires. I preserve the first panel here mainly to note that Dennis the Menace has finally caught up to 1999, with unsettling results.

Hagar the Horrible, 1/23/11

Ha ha, it’s funny because spending time doing things with your wife that she enjoys is worse than the most heinous physical torture!

Hi and Lois, 1/23/11

Ha ha, it’s funny because an open and honest relationship with your wife will be seen by your male friends as a betrayal!