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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/23/08

I’ve talked before about the Rex Morgan problem, which causes me to lose interest in the adventures of our dashing doctor at the moment at which they ostensibly become exciting. My favorite bits are always the moments of calm and barely concealed passive aggression before the storm, not in the gunplay and car chases and what have you. Today is a perfect example of the seething psychodrama that underlies this strip, as Rex, having whined about always being asked to help man Lenore’s regatta entry, is now about to start whining about not being asked. Presumably he’ll do some amateur sluething to discover why he’s been snubbed and discover skullduggery and intrigue, thus proving that dickishness is the universe’s most powerful force for good.

Family Circus, 8/23/08

Dolly, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with anyone touching his or her command module. It’s perfectly natural and healthy. If mommy and daddy had spent more time touching their command modules, there probably wouldn’t be so many of you terrible melonheads running around.

Archie, 8/23/08

Ho ho ho! The AGJLU 3000 knows that there’s nothing the humans find more amusing than jokes about geometery.

Shoe, 8/23/08

“Now I’m dying of heart disease and skin cancer! Damn the slow, painstaking march of science!”

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For Better Or For Worse, 8/22/08

A lot of my readers have been appalled by Ellie and Phil yukking it up as their father lies dying, but I think you’re missing some vital context here. This is For Better Or For Worse, where all emotions are expressed over three to five panels in the form of puns and wordplay. Making a little verbal jest, as our worried siblings do here, is the highest form of concern that anyone can express in this universe’s culture.

Ha ha, just kidding, they’re obviously terrible heartless monsters. Phil would probably be angry, but as his eyes in the final panel indicate, he’s completely baked. It’s a good thing he had time to freshen up his mustache wax before he got there.

Gil Thorp, 8/22/08

I feel like every time we see Jimmy (like here and here), he’s impossibly wide-eyed, intoxicated by either absolute power or angel dust. Today is no exception, and this comes after sitting through Elmer’s attempt to produce some kind of interminable Midwestern tribute to the work of Bela Tarr. The only way he should look like that after seeing nine hours of roadsides is if this is the kind of “roadsides” we’re talking about, and even then only because of the chafing.

The payoff here — that Jimmy will go to college because an older has-been never-was also went to college before embarking on a poverty-level semi-professional sports career — makes absolutely no sense, and is therefore the perfect capper to yet another Gil Thorp plot.

Mary Worth, 8/22/08

You may ask yourself: Why would a sexy, naturally hirsute man like Ian Cameron go through the discomfort and expense of waxing his prodigious belly so it’s all ultra-smooth? So that his wife can rub her be-swimcapped head all over it, naturally! These kids like to get freaky.

The only way my brain can accommodate the sentence “It’s never boring with you around, Ian” without exploding is to imagine that Toby is saying it an extremely sarcastic tone of voice. Or perhaps she’s pretending that she’s talking to someone interesting named Ian, like Booker Prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan or deceased Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis.

Archie, 8/22/08

Though the dialogue is ludicrous, I think the Riverdale gang’s expressions of stunned horror pretty accurately display the reaction you’d get if you brought a severed human head into a beloved teen hangout.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/22/08

This comic didn’t make me want to gouge out my own eyes at all, right up until the part where I saw the look of coquettish satisfaction on the cow’s face.

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Apartment 3-G, 8/21/08

Wow, I had always assumed that the Professor was a Professor of some squishy liberal arts discipline, but apparently it turns out that he’s a psychologist or something? And, naturally, now that he’s seeing patients again, it’s important that he cut that beard back to a goatee and bust out the Just For Men, because the last thing you need is a therapist who’s a shaggy old greyhair.

In panel two, the part of Ruby will be played by the severed head of Bette Davis.

Blondie, 8/21/08

“Hey, Dad, wanna hear another crazy idea? Maybe we should move the TV closer to the sofa so I don’t have to watch the Olympics sitting on the God-damned ottoman.”

Gil Thorp, 8/21/08

So, as near as I can tell, the lesson to this Gil Thorp storyline is going to be: “Minor league baseball, with its need for bus rides and farm-seeing, is all well and good if your only other choice is being deported to (gasp!) Mexico, but white kids should totally go to college instead.”

Herb and Jamaal, 8/21/08

Um … did Herb’s wife turn off the kinky as soon as they go hitched? That’s about the only interpretation of this I can come up with. That or she stopped supplying him with heroin.