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Family Circus, 7/24/08

They say that smell is strongly associated with memories, and when she got just the faintest whiff of mimeographic fluid from the papers she kept in the chest, suddenly she was twenty-one years old again, and working as an assistant in that downtown office. There weren’t many women in business jobs in those days, but her boss, Mr. Franklin, seemed to take her opinions about things seriously. They spent a lot of time in his office, talking about sales strategies and advertising, and somehow she barely even noticed it when it became something more — something much more — than just a business relationship.

He told her he’d make her part owner of the company, told her that they’d travel around the world together, to London and Buenos Aires and China — but in the end, she couldn’t see herself living that life. Despite so badly wanting to say yes, she turned in her resignation, and Mr. Franklin accepted it, looking like a broken man. She married that boring but reliable boy from her high school class, the one that she knew would be a good provider, and would help her raise children, and grandchildren … grandchildren … moronic, melonheaded grandchildren … Jesus, what were they rambling on about over there? If she heard one more basic piece of English vocabulary mangled by one of those little genetic rejects, she swore she’d take a belt to them … anyway, the mimeograph sheets were nothing important. Some reports, about what she couldn’t even remember — they were just what she happened to be holding when she walked away from Mr. Franklin for the last time. She put them back in the box, carefully, knowing that she would inevitably come back to them again.

“Whatever they are”? Christ, usually the oldest one at least could muster something close to a pun at least. She imagined that nobody in Buenos Aires had even heard of “Ida Know” or, God help her, “Not Me.”

Crankshaft, 7/24/08

“Josh,” people ask me, “what keeps you reading comics that you obviously don’t like, day after day, for your entire life?” Well, sometimes you have to seize on to small bits of hope, no matter how unlikely they seem. For instance, I know that every day when I turn to Crankshaft, I’m probably going to see pettiness and anger and mean-spiritedness and quiet despair. But now I can say to myself, “Hey, maybe today’s the day when Crankshaft’s horrible yuppie neighbor is finally going to go on that killing spree with his hedge clipper.”

Momma, 7/24/08

This is Momma. The title character’s interaction with her children will make you profoundly uncomfortable. It’s a real comic strip, that runs in the newspaper, where everyone can see it!

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Sorry, I did not get a chance to pen my “What it’s like to be on Jeopardy!” epic today — sometime tomorrow, I promise, OK? Meanwhile, enjoy this fine comic commentary.

Mary Worth, 7/23/08

Dear creators and publishers of Mary Worth:

The following is a list of subjects that I never want to see discussed in your feature under any circumstances at any point in the future:

• Mary’s “tender bud”
• Jeff’s “dirty root”

If you must focus on an intimate part of someone’s anatomy, why not do a sequence on the ass of the gentleman walking into the Bum Boat ahead of our reunited lovebirds? You’ve featured it prominently enough, and anyone who wears jeans that color probably wouldn’t bother with pretentious, repulsive plant metaphors.

Apartment 3-G, 7/23/08

“And then — and only then — I’ll let him see me with the top button of this shirt unbuttoned.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/23/08

Haw haw! Hillbillies live surrounded by piles of their own garbage!

Marmaduke, 7/23/08

Marmaduke doesn’t consider a shoe to be a “prize” unless there’s still a human foot inside of it.

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Hagar the Horrible, 7/22/08

You know, the “joke” in this comic would have worked just as well (which is to say NOT VERY WELL AT ALL) if Lucky Eddie hadn’t been drawn to look like the Nazis in Raiders Of The Lost Ark right after they opened the Ark of the Covenant. As it is, we are left to wonder why Doctor Zook is handing out platitudes about a healthy diet to a patient who obviously either hasn’t slept in six days or has just been hit in the face with a brick.

Apartment 3-G, 7/22/08

“Ha, I knew it would be dangerous to bring my diary on this mission — why, it could have fallen into the hands of the Red Chinese! It was a stroke of genius to call my personal assistant on this landline and have her write in my diary for me, which is safely back at home in the U.S. Now the Chinese police will be none the wiser. I’d better use everyone’s full name, too, in case I forget who I was talking about years later when I look at what she wrote.”

Mary Worth, 7/22/08

As she finally resigns herself to this “human affection” thing she’s heard so much about, Mary Worth decides to try putting her head on Jeff’s shoulder, a romance technique she learned from a song on the local oldies station. A good first effort, Mary, but next time you might want to bend at the neck, not the waist.

Judge Parker, 7/22/08

You know, like Freud almost said, sometimes a golf club is just a golf club.

Not in this case, though. This strip is obviously about the fact that Sam and Abbey haven’t had sex since 1995.