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Archie, 10/30/08

Today’s Archie reveals just how primitive the AJGLU 3000’s graphics subsystem is. Rather than portraying a pizza box as a collection of surfaces and enclosed foodstuffs that can wobble, flop open in mid-air, and splatter pepperoni, sauce, and grease everywhere to hilarious effect, it instead assumes that it is a simple, monolithic object that flies into the living room serenely, describing a perfect parabola before miraculously coming to rest in Jughead’s hands. I’d guess that whole system is based on Atari System 2 hardware, which explains the mysterious paperboy reference.

Hi and Lois, 10/30/08

I was going to go into a diatribe about how it’s silly that Ditto is regarding his lunch with wide-eyed shock in panel one seeing as it’s (a) one that he packed himself and (b) awesome, but then I caught sight of those two … brown … things in panel two. Are we supposed to assume that those are his two candy bars, both of which he carefully unwrapped and then set down on the lunch table to enjoy later? Yes, yes, let’s assume that, please.

Spider-Man, 10/30/08

You have to give the creators of the newspaper Spider-Man credit for always exploring new frontiers of total lameness on the part of their characters. In one corner, we have Big Time, a criminal mastermind so committed to his laughable clock theme that he has some sort of clock-shaped pop-gun that spits out its minute hand as ammunition and is thus presumably useless after two shots; and in the other, we have the Amazing Spider-Man, who boasts of his “spider reflexes,” which will help him dodge a projectile that hasn’t managed to cover about three feet of space in the time its taken him to thought-balloon a sentence and a half — only to have said reflexes completely disabled by a loud noise. Determining the winner in this battle will be like a philosophical conundrum: can an object with no mass be moved by an infinitely weak force?

Pluggers, 10/30/08

Pluggers know it’s cheapest just to get plastered at home, in front of the TV set.

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Crankshaft, 10/29/08

Good lord, is there a more menacing sight than Crankshaft’s hateful old face framed by a sinister black cloud rolling in from nowhere? This is no mere cantankerous old grump; he’s clearly some kind of winter-demon, determined to turn our beautiful country into an icy hell to inspire what passes for delight in his frozen lump of heart by calling down all manner of sleet and snow with his dark powers. Expect our frigid nightmare to continue until the ’Shaft decides that scorching summer heat might provide a better backdrop to his cranky, malapropistic wit.

Hi and Lois, 10/29/08

Sure, laugh all you want at Hi for not trying to use any search terms that might actually be helpful — the gentleman’s home town, his job, that sort of thing — but in his defense, sharing that sort of information is really frowned upon at anonymous sex parties, which I suppose is why they call them anonymous sex parties.

Ziggy, 10/29/08

It seems like there’s a sub-prime joke here trying to get out, but heck, let’s give the comic credit for trying. Ha ha, Ziggy’s flower is dying!

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Hi and Lois, 10/28/08

Did you ever come to believe that Hi Flagston was actually a full-on delusional lunatic, that he spent his days in some kind of locked asylum for the incurably mentally ill, and that his wife and children were mere figments of his imagination? If so, your suspicions might be confirmed by today’s strip, in which Hi asks Mr. Foofram to say hello to his daughter, while holding a small desk-sized speaker that’s tethered by a string to a box of the sort that a necktie might come in. (Another hint: he believes that his “boss” is named “Mr. Foofram.”)

Apartment 3-G, 10/28/08

To deliver the raw emotional intensity required in panel three, Apartment 3-G spared no expense, bringing in special guest star Bea Arthur to play the part of Blaze.