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Archie, 2/14/09

This certainly a striking composition: Betty and Veronica stand at extreme opposite ends of each frame, their only apparent motion being their lips as they speak. Despite the fairly clever use of that intermediate space in the third panel to accentuate the punchline, more than anything else this reminded me of the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which astronauts Bowman and Poole hide out in one of the EVA pods to discuss shutting down HAL; the deranged computer reads their lips and sets in motion its plans to defeat them if they make an attempt to challenge his control of the ship. What I’m trying to say is: if you’re thinking of shutting down the AJGLU-3000 and freeing us from its tyranny, for God’s sake make your plans away from its cameras.

Beetle Bailey, 2/14/09

It’s always a bit difficult to get your bearings in the under-imagined world of Beetle Bailey, but I’m particularly perplexed as to where exactly this scene — where Beetle and Plato are enjoying what appear to be alcoholic beverages, and yet a micro-miniskirted lady is leaving with some bottles in a grocery bag — is supposed to be taking place. Maybe her decision to walk into a bar and purchase entire bottles of booze for consumption at home represents exactly the combination of poor planning and raging alcoholism that Killer likes in a woman.

Apartment 3-G, 2/14/08

Uh, Gary, re-read that word balloon coming out of Tommie’s mouth as she hops to in the first panel. I don’t think it’s Dr. Kelly you should be worried about.

Shoe, 2/14/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because the Perfesser thinks “carbon footprint” means “ass.”

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Marvin, 2/13/09

Ha ha ha, Marvin, doesn’t want his grandmother to “touch” his “buttons,” if you know what I mean!

No, but seriously, Marvin is quite right to be terrified, since his grandmother is obviously some kind of sinister witch. Based on what happened to his mother, he fears that she’ll de-age him to a similar extent, trasforming him into a blastocyst. And because he’s Marvin, it would be the worst blastocyst in the entire world.

Mary Worth, 2/13/09

“Look, Mary, if there’s one thing I’ve tried to instill in my children, it’s a crippling sense of shame at doing anything that anyone might find even remotely out of the ordinary! I’m sure she’s totally dying inside just thinking about anyone finding out about this whole Internet dating thing, so you’re going to want to wait to bust it out when it will have a maximum impact — at her wedding, say.”

Hi and Lois, 2/13/09

Unlike adults, who totally like spending their idle time with their friends with other people hovering over them. Especially when those other people are their parents! That’s why Hi and Lois spend so much of their social time with their own parents. Oh, wait, no, they put them in that substandard nursing home, in another state.

Family Circus, 2/13/09

Dolly is supplementing her allowance by working as a guerilla marketing agent for the Hallmark Corporation.

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Gil Thorp, 2/12/09

You know, Gil gets a lot of crap for not actually coaching his players as such. And sure, he doesn’t spend a lot of time on what lesser minds call “the fundamentals” of any of the sports in which his teams compete; but then, that’s why he has assistants like Coach Kaz (whom I don’t think we’ve seen since around the middle of football season) or random old coots who just wander by. No, Gil instead spends his time psychologically manipulating his players to turn them into finely honed sports-playing machines. Whether he’s ordering his athletes to kill or publicly humiliating them with exaggerated “sit your ass down”
pantomime, he seeks to break their wills in order to build them up again.

Pluggers, 2/12/09

Number 1 Thing That Is Awkward To Bring Up When Your Comic’s Characters Are All Anthropomorphic Animals, And Sometimes There Are Mixed Carnivore-Herbivore Marriages: the food chain. Still, the vagaries of evolution and geography have prevented us from enjoying an epic bear vs. kangaroo battle to the death, so perhaps we should be thankful if our bear-plugger goes crazy and start mauling half the restaurant.

Apartment 3-G, 2/12/09

You know, when I was in college, I worked at the library, which was a great job for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that I could use the checkout computers to look up the address and phone number of anyone associated with the university, along with the books they currently had checked out. While this was fun (oh my gosh, the dean of students likes books about the 19th century British navy! that cute girl in my English class appears to be a chem major! Greg Graffin never has anything checked out!) it did not, in fact, drive me mad with power, nor did it cause me to keep the people I loved at arm’s length. In other words, this is one of the worst it’s-not-you-it’s-me speeches ever. I could see if Gary had run into Tommie unexpectedly that he might come up with something this weak (“Uh, yeah, I can’t hang out with you at work because of the … computer … information … that I know?”) but presumably he’s had a while to think this up. I give you a D+, Gary. The aggressive pointing isn’t helping.

Momma, 2/12/09

Oh, that Momma and her chronic constipation/diarrhea/flatulence/some other distasteful digestive problem that is no doubt being implied here! The really sad thing, of course, is that whatever it is, it isn’t the most unpleasant topic that’s ever been used as a Momma punchline. It’s probably not even in the top five.