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Hi and Lois, 5/17/10

As obsessive comics readers know, Hi and Lois have four kids, none of whom are in college, which makes their “UConn Dad/Mom” shirts kind of confusing. Is it possible that, since nobody in the family ever ages, they actually have a phantom fifth child off in Storrs, perpetually in his or her sophomore year and never mentioned ever since s/he decided to waste his/her life and the Flagstons’ money on a French lit major. It’s also possible that Hi and Lois has just experienced a Funky Winkerbean-style time jump, and that Chip is now away at school, Dot and Ditto are hitting their awkward adolescence, and Trixie is being traumatized by Sunbeam’s refusal to follow her into her windowless kindergarden classroom. This, I suppose, is the sort of disorientation that casual Funky Winkerbean readers, those who didn’t follow the trade press’s reporting on the upcoming temporal leap forward, experienced when they opened up their paper and discovered that Les and Funky and the gang were 10 years older. (The trade press did not bother to report on this event in Hi and Lois because nobody, not even people who cover the newspaper comics industry for a living, really cares all that much about Hi and Lois.)

I note also that Lois the realtor, realizing that this family of poor saps is selling off their car in order to provide a better life for their children, might be close to cashing in on the family home as well, and naturally her professional instincts are kicking in. The real estate industry: profiting from, and causing, America’s financial problems for most of the 21st century so far!

Curtis, 5/17/10

It’s 99 percent certain that this is not going to be a “Curtis and Barry find their parents’ sex tape” storyline, but this is the strip that brought us the syrup chapter, so we can’t be sure. Until all is revealed, I will merely point out for your interest that Curtis is so dedicated to hip-hop as a genre that he apparently owns a poster extolling not some specific artist but rather the abstract concept of rap.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/17/10

Due to its isolation, Hootin’ Holler is years behind most of America when it comes to pop-culture trends. For instance, streaking is only now starting to catch on there, a full 35 years after its heyday in the rest of the country.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/16/10

Oh, look, it appears that this actively offensive love triangle is moving forward, to be helped along by a healthy dose of hilarious misunderstanding. It will all end in anguish, of course, like an episode of Three’s Company where everyone dies horribly.

Panel from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/10

Elviney’s expression of simmering rage here — the narrowed eyes, the waggling finger — is probably the most harrowing thing I’ve seen in the comics in weeks. You do not want to promise this woman gossip that you cannot deliver. She will cut you.

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/16/10

“Just remember, if you don’t need it, it’s unnecessary, and if it’s unnecessary, you don’t need it! I hope this circular logic will be a comfort to you as you lie in bed alone, listening to the credit cards’ eager whispering.”

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Wizard of Id, 5/15/10

I must give reluctant kudos to the Wizard of Id for not only acknowledging its medieval setting, but using it as a springboard for an anachronistic play on words. The modern expression “fell off a truck,” a euphemism for stolen goods, would of course be meaningless to the inhabitants of Id, who are wholly ignorant the internal combustion engine, so “fell off a wagon” is the closest equivalent; but this in turn is itself a modern expression, denoting an addict whose attempts at reformation have failed. The combination of the archaic and the modern results in a commendably multilayered gag that ought by rights to be the stock in trade of these period strips.

The Wizard of Id also holds true to its milieu by depicting human beings being bought and sold like chattel.

Mary Worth, 5/15/10

Ho ho, we’ve spent all this time focusing on Bonnie’s piddling little compulsive shopping problem, and only now does she confess that she has “many bad habits”? I can’t wait to see how Mary reacts when she realizes that she’s spent all her meddling energy on a red herring. Does she have the strength left to deal with the cross-country bank robbery spree? The ketamine distribution ring? The dismembered drifters neatly packaged in Charterstone’s communal storage space?

Family Circus, 5/15/10

Soon Jeffy’s possessed demon-hand will lead to a string of gruesome stranglings. “Now, Jeffy, tell us why you did what you did,” the court-appointed social worker will ask. “I’m sorry!” he says. “It was my fingers! My fingers got away from me! My bloody, murderous fingers!” [GENTLE LAUGHTER FROM ELDERLY NEWSPAPER SUBSCRIBERS ACROSS AMERICA]