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Phantom, 4/22/10

I know that there’s been an uptick in security measures at airports since 9/11, but I think sleepy Westchester County Airport’s decision to acquire anti-aircraft weaponry may be an overreaction to current threats. Where will this escalation end? Will any of us sleep soundly at night once Yonkers has nukes?

Judge Parker, 4/22/10

Kudos to new artist Mike Manley for continuing the Judge Parker tradition of having female characters vamp sexily while the usual plot tedium drones on around them. “Anxiety attacks? How erotic,” panel three Neddy is thinking, from the looks of it.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/22/10

“And anyone who doesn’t want to burn to death when I torch it for the insurance money has about three minutes to get the hell out.”

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Funky Winkerbean, 4/21/10

Funky Winkerbean’s trip to New York featured a few moments of publishing hope for long-suffering victim Les (though surely we’ll see those dreams get squashed later), but we’ve quickly moved back to familiar territory: impotent, misplaced rage. Actually, “rage” is the wrong word: the dialogue seems rage-y enough, but the slouchy body language and numb faces denote a total absence of the passion that is rage’s necessary prerequisite. I stand by the impotence, though.

And the misplacement. There are any number of greedy, amoral morons who can be blamed for our current macroeconomic state of affairs; but, assuming that Funky is maundering about the failure of the Montoni’s franchise in New York to take off, I think it’s unlikely that, even in the best of economies, crappy midwestern pizza would have been a big hit in a city well known for its many well-established and much-loved pizza vendors. It’s not like Goldman Sachs was nefariously creating synthetic CDOs based on pizza futures and then betting against them.

Beetle Bailey, 4/21/10

Towards the end of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, God is briefly depicted as an enormous flaming aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The God of Beetle Bailey is much less impressive, consisting merely of the tiny and non-fiery Name of the strip’s creator. Today, God is attempting to make Beetle sound like someone you might actually want to go on a date with, with mixed results.

Mark Trail, 4/21/10

From my long and dedicated observation of the fauna in this strip, I’ve learned that when a senator starts emitting visible sweatballs, he is on the verge of a heart attack. This is a good illustration of the moral difference between our two rival lawmakers: Senator Good Senator only suffered a cardiac event after engaging in righteous fisticuffs with some longhair, while Senator Bad Senator’s heart is going south as soon as he realizes that arrest and/or punching might be in his future.

B.C., 4/21/10

Ha ha! The bird is afraid of being killed and eaten, but the snake thinks that the bird is afraid of being sexually assaulted!

Marmaduke, 4/21/10

Yeah, so, uh, this happened. Let’s never speak of it again, shall we?

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Apartment 3-G, 4/20/10

Oh, goody, Apartment 3-G is revisiting an important plot point from Sunday that I neglected to mention, namely the “private psychiatric facility upstate” into which the so-called “sane” characters in this strip are bamboozling our poor Bobbie. The Professor, of course, was the one who was prescribing pills to Bobbie and screwing her, possibly not in that order, so he’s the most suitable candidate for disposing of her in a way that’s convenient for everyone, without the pesky police getting involved. One wonders who’s paying for this fancy private facility! Martin, with his alimony checks? The Professor, out of guilt? Actually, if my suspicions are correct, it may be the sort of institution where she can earn her keep just like Margo did.

Crock, 4/20/10

Oh, look, Crock is trying to capture that awful yet moving vibe of yesterday’s Hagar the Horrible. Unfortunately, the sort of little grace notes that made that other strip work in spite of itself are wholly missing from this one, and the details that are present are just jarring and wrong (vultures do not have teeth, for instance). But mostly a steaming, bloated corpse being picked apart by a grotesque scavenger bird just doesn’t have the same grim majesty as a good burning at the stake, I’m afraid.

Gil Thorp, 4/20/10

Against all odds and logic, teen alt-country sensation “Slim” Chance has decided to spend his spring afternoons with the losers and yahoos on the Mudlark baseball team, possibly because he hopes to use their pathetic dreams and broken lives as material for his songwriting. He’s already blowing the kids’ minds with his crazy musical stylings; I’m assuming one of the major spring plots will involve his teammates, who have grown up on a diet of the terrible rap-metal, learning about good, wholesome music, like this country standard about adultery and murder.

Marmaduke, 4/20/10

Marmaduke is the last creature one would expect to see engaging in the sort of nonviolent passive resistance that Gandhi and Martin Luther King used to effect social and political change. It’s more likely that he’s hoping to lure unwary passersby close enough for him to kill and eat.

Mary Worth, 4/20/10

Tobey is overjoyed that Mary has at last made another friend, which takes the pressure off her, and is thus trying to minimize any potential flaws Mary might see in her. “Oh, she’s a big shopper? Is that all? That’s no reason why you two shouldn’t be thick as thieves and spend all your free time together. Whoa, is it 1:30 already? Gotta go! Later Mary! Say hi to Bonnie for me!” In panel two her hand is shaking in anticipation of freedom, sweet freedom.