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Beetle Bailey, 8/23/09

While there’s a long and noble history of enlisted men holding their superior officers in scarcely disguised contempt, I’m a bit concerned about the next to last panel here, in which the men of Camp Swampy visualize the country they’ve sworn to protect as a smoldering ruin, barely held together by primitive bandages. Has the rampant incompetence so frequently on display in Beetle Bailey infected the rest of the military, leading to a successful invasion? Or do Beetle and his platoonmates simply hate America?

The ruined United States in the thought balloon is also horribly misdrawn, with northern New England lopped off, half of Mexico annexed, and the Great Lakes reduced to a greenish blob, but since Americans are notoriously ignorant of geography, this is simply par for the course.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/23/09

The content of today’s Funky Winkerbean, in which Les demands that Summer listen to a terrible joke that serves as a very thin layer over his pain over her mother’s death, still raw more than a decade later, is pretty depressing. Still, things may be looking up, as this little father-daughter moment appears to be illuminated by the bright glow of some all-consuming fire. Perhaps a nuclear attack on Westview will finally release the damned inhabitants from their misery.

Marvin, 8/23/09

Since this is Marvin we’re talking about, for “college” we should read “prison,” obviously.

Panels from Apartment 3-G, 8/23/09

HEY, EVERYONE, MARGO IS TALKING ABOUT HER LADY BITS RIGHT THERE IN THE SUNDAY PAPER OH MY GOODNESS

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Archie, 8/22/09

Friends, Romans, comics-lovers, I come to praise the AJGLU-3000 today, not to bury it in scorn! I admit to feeling a frisson of compassion for Mr. Lodge, as his anxious loathing of Archie has reached such a level of intensity as to somehow create some sort of psychic link between the amiable everyteen and Riverdale’s richest man. Just as Harry Potter’s scar surges with pain when his evil nemesis Lord Voldemort is plotting something, so too does Mr. Lodge break out into an anxious sweat whenever the Andrews boy approaches his palatial compound, the route the lad is taking towards shameless moochery off the Lodge fortune burning brightly in his mind. He’s so distracted that he can’t even focus on the financial news, which includes a feature on how the current financial crisis has ruined fellow cartoon plutocrat Rich Uncle Pennybags.

For my money, though, the most intriguing aspect of this cartoon is the way that the Lodge manservant (this is Archie, home of the most painfully obvious nomenclature in English-language literature outside of Pilgrim’s Progress, so I’m pretty sure his name is Jeeves) is lurking half-heartedly in the third panel. I’m not sure if he’s supposed to be hiding himself at the edge of the doorway so as to leap out and bludgeon his employer’s teenage tormentor to death at an opportune moment, or if he’s just realized that he needs to lean over a bit to be visible in the frame, so it doesn’t look like Mr. Lodge is rambling insanely to nobody in particular.

Curtis, 8/22/09

If you were going to start running Curtis in your newspaper and felt like you needed to offer a quick primer on the feature to your readers, you could hardly do better than today’s installment. About two-thirds of the strip’s themes — Curtis doesn’t want his dad to smoke, Curtis likes a girl who can’t stand him, Curtis is emotionally manipulative, Curtis wants money — are packed into just four panels. Add “Barry is even more manipulative” and “Every Kwanzaa the strip goes on a delightfully entertaining two-week long mescaline binge” and you’re all set.

Mark Trail, 8/22/09

So, after investigating environmental misdeeds, witnessing an attempted murder, and then tracking down an assassin, vigilante-style, Mark has turned matters over to … the Department of Homeland Security? Sure, why not. I was going to smugly go on about how ludicrous this was, but DHS is such a huge, baffling catch-all bureaucracy that it may in fact have some kind of division responsible for organized crime intimidation related to illegal disposal of toxic waste for all I know.

I’m sort of impressed by the way the Sheriff Whosit’s word balloon emerges from more or less the same spot in both panels, even though the second is the usual Mark Trail extreme critter close-up. It’s as if the first panel were shot through some sort of x-ray telephoto lens, and then the second was taken after the camera zoomed all the way out but remained otherwise stationary.

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Apartment 3-G, 8/21/09

Oh, Margo, I know that talking about the good times helps the healing process along, but describing your and Eric’s sex life in vivid terms will only serve to make everyone uncomfortable.

Ballard Street, 8/21/09

As a rule, I only mention Ballard Street, which generally depicts lunatics doing inscrutable things, when it’s particularly insane, and I certainly think that today’s installment, in which the McCullys are apparently eating their dog, qualifies.

Marmaduke, 8/21/09

In an attempt to put a stop to the damage that Marmaduke is doing to His creation, God Himself is attempting to melt the demon-hound with His divine radiance, with only partial success.

Ziggy, 8/21/09

This chef is attempting to get Ziggy high, on Robitussin.