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Dennis the Menace, 10/4/10

The Mitchells’ pastor ought to be concerned about young Dennis’ decision to turn away from the Christian God and instead offer his worship to Skynet, the superintelligent computer network that will soon destroy us all.

Jumble, 10/4/10

As usual, I’m too dumb to actually solve the Jumble, but I do want to point out that “vomiting” would fit into the solution blanks nicely.

Luann, 10/4/10

After setting this foolproof plan in motion, TJ will head off to his job as a master cat burglar/puppeteer.

Mary Worth, 10/4/10

Let’s hope Jill Black at the hospital has some knife fighting experience, if that oh no nobody’s horning in on MY meddle expression on Mary’s face in panel two foreshadows things to come (and please, please, let it foreshadow things to come).

Slylock Fox, 10/4/10

Shady’s new membership in the Bloods is about to be revoked with extreme prejudice after the other gang members find out he obsessively hoards golden kitty-kat figurines.

Crankshaft, 10/4/10

“Also, we might occasionally be allowed to experience joy!”

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Cathy, 10/3/10

Being America’s #1 Newspaper Comics Blogger is in fact a pretty sweet gig, but sometimes there are heavy responsibilities that go along with it. For instance, you are expected to have opinions about things that you don’t really want to have opinions about, like the end of Cathy! Readers of this blog know that my feelings about the strip range, depending on the day and the punchline, from disinterest to irritation to occasional mild but shameful amusement. In Cathy’s very first mention on this blog, I openly rooted for the Cathy-Irving marriage to herald the demise of the strip; probably if it had wrapped up back then, in the summer of 2004, I wouldn’t have felt a need to weigh in.

It is important to remember that when Cathy launched in 1976, it was actively new and exciting and, in the grand scheme of things, good for a newspaper comic to focus on a lady who was unmarried and had a job. Sally Forth mined some of the same novelty (minus the unmarried part) when it launched a few years later; but Sally was always a more or less fully functional human being, whereas Cathy is a nightmare bundle of neuroses. The fact that the character always seemed to take every negative stereotype about women and extend them to cringe-inducing extremes made it hard to celebrate it as a feminist achievement.

But still, there is one thing we can really thank the strip for, and that is only revealing Cathy’s successful insemination in the final strip, rather than subjecting us to God knows how many months of strips about morning sickness. And maternity clothes! Good lord, can you imagine all the strips with Cathy trying on maternity clothes? Sparing all of us this was a true act of mercy.

Apartment 3-G, 10/3/10

Meanwhile, in happier news, the predicted Tommie-ignoring is proceeding apace! “I had always dreamed of having a huge wedding party, but really, other than the two of you, who else is there?”

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Mark Trail, 10/2/10

So it turns out the Joe has, in fact, refused to participate in any and all cage-hunting activities, and has quit his job with Future Governor Frank in disgust. Presumably he was permitted to sleep out in the horse stables as part of his compensation, because now he’s celebrated quitting by simply cramming his worldly possessions into a rucksack and walking out into the woods to see where life will take him. As you would expect for someone who would regard such a course of action as totally normal, Joe is good friends with local nature weirdo Mark Trail, whose idea of a good time is bellowing out greetings from behind bushes.

I sort of assumed that Joe’s baby blue work shirt and matching hat were a workman’s uniform of some sort, but apparently he chooses to wear them on his own accord. Certainly had they been assigned to him by his previous employer, he would have been forced to hand them over to his hopefully more compliant successor.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/2/10

Believe it or not, we’re only seeing two-thirds of Loweezy and Elviney’s emotional roller-coaster ride. First they think their husbands are ogling other gals; then they realize they’re just assessing some photos of pack animals, in a bit of healthy backwoods fun. But take a good look at the picture of the “horse” on the back of that magazine: it has prominent buttons on its chest, indicating that it’s actually two (or more?) people wearing a horse suit, and that “Horse Trader Weekly” is a very, very different kind of magazine than you might expect.