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Family Circus, 9/4/10

There’s certainly a little something weirdly circular about Dolly praying for the power to pray more intently, but perhaps we ought to take this scene at face value and respect the poor girl’s fervent desire to keep her mind focused on the divine in the midst of a chaotic living situation. Her casual description of her middle brother wandering about the house muttering incomprehensible but threatening nonsense to himself is particularly harrowing.

Crock, 9/4/10

Though I once praised the poor damned souls who do the coloring for the comics, they still must be called to account when they err. Why must we buy into the beauty myth that only blondes are sexy? The Crock artist appreciates an attractive brunette, obviously, having gong to some pains to ink in the hair of Grossie’s sexy friend (since this is Crock, she’s probably just named “Sexy”). Why do you supply a blondeish nimbus that was not part of the original artistic vision, O Colorist?

B.C., 9/4/10

Ha ha, she made a real impression on him … with her enormous ass! Possibly by sitting on him! And her name is “Fanny!” And they’re, uh, ants, and probably when an ant has a distended rear thorax section like that it means something, but, uh, bugs gross me out so I don’t want to look it up. Probably it relates to breeding or something though, or feeding the young. Which casts this strip into a completely different and more disgusting light. Jeez, I think I liked B.C. better when it was just telling me I was going to hell.

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Funky Winkerbean, 9/3/10

Ho ho ho, Cayla, game, set and match! You will never defeat Susan in your battle for Les’s gloomy heart now! Only she understands that special blend of grief, narcissism, and self-importance that is the most powerful aphrodisiac for him. I’m surprised the two of them aren’t just going at it right there on the table in panel three.

Pluggers, 9/3/10

Well, well, well, coastal elitists. You may enjoy sitting around your fancy condos and talking about Russian novels and Italian cinema while drinking fine French wine, but pluggers know a little bit about something that you might have forgotten about at that fancy Ivy League school of yours: good old-fashioned American toilet paper. Advantage: pluggers, with their simple, down-home common sense and their clean buttholes.

Speaking of coast elitists, I’m heading off to New York for Labor Day weekend! Don’t worry, I’ll bring my own TP. New comics on Monday, or maybe Tuesday!

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Mark Trail, 9/2/10

You know, I was about to make fun of the idea that a caged hunt of semi-tame exotic animals could be this hideous, unpleasant man’s ticket to the governorship, but then I reflected on the mysterious ways in which the government works in the Mark Trail universe. This, after all, is a world where land use disputes and criminal investigations are handled at the same meeting of some ill-defined board, and where zoning hearings take place in dramatic trial form. So why shouldn’t the state’s chief executive be chosen in the context of shooting penned-in beasts? It makes as much sense as anything else. So you can just forget this fancy “voting” talk, Mrs. Evil Politician, because the only votes that count are the ones cast by the severed heads of majestic wildlife.

Gil Thorp, 9/2/10

I admitted on Twitter the other day that I actually enjoy seeing beloved former Gil Thorp characters pop up from year to year in this strip. This year’s returnee is Jamarr Gaddis, aka “the Ghost,” the team’s talented but self-aggrandizing egotist. I vaguely recall being amused by Jamarr’s cheerful self-promotion, so it will be good to have him back; today’s action implies that we’re going to learn about his inner struggles, or at least see how he reacts when people mock him for having a cold. Seriously, why does everyone find the fact that he’s sick so damn hilarious and/or enraging? Check out Coach Beardo in the first panel — he’s a third-in-command high school sports coach, so he’s got a lot of nerve acting so superior just because some poor kid decided to stay home with a fever instead of coming to practice and giving 110 percent right up to the point where he drops dead from exhaustion.