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Panel from One Big Happy, 8/7/08

Now, here’s a little detail that your eyes might gloss over when you’re reading the comics at 2 a.m. like I was this morning. Funeral services for me and, I’m guessing, faithful reader willethompson will take place at Our Lady Of Perpetual Meddling this Sunday at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, we ask that donations be given to Eric Mills, who needs to spring his brother from a Chinese jail and buy his intended a freakishly huge diamond.

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Pluggers, 8/7/08

Far be it for me as an elitist non-plugger to point out when Pluggers loses the thread, but, well, it appears that someone has to. Hey, Pluggers! The primary reaction of a plugger upon encountering modern-day movie theater concession stands should be goggle-eyed horror at the high prices. Suggested joke: “A plugger remembers when the most expensive thing at the movies was the ticket to the movies.”

On the other hand, having the plugger devour the entire bucket of popcorn while still standing at the concession counter is pretty much spot on.

Popeye, 8/7/08

Generally speaking, I only bring Popeye to your attention when it crosses the border into completely deranged, like when Olive Oyl cheerfully threatens suicide or the strip makes genocide jokes. The current storyline, in which Sweet Pea is bonked on the head and gains puppet-master-like power over the of others, is somewhat derivative of that terrifying Twilight Zone episode with the little kid who can kill with his mind; still, it clearly is going to go down the road of pleasing perversity, as you can see here.

Mary Worth, 8/7/08

Phishing, everybody! Phishing! That’s what the build-up is all about. Mary Worth is going to advise its perhaps not-so-tech-savvy audience (median age: 68) about the dangers that lurk in fake spam emails from online merchants; so as not to anger the oldsters, it’s Charterstone’s resident thirtysomething trophy wife who will be defrauded and humiliated for the edification of others.

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Mary Worth, 8/6/08

Most scientists agree that today’s Mary Worth — in which Toby completes an e-commerce transaction with a click of the F10 button, then contemplates checking her e-mail — contains the least amount of action that can possibly sustain two panels. However, based on observations from the past few installments of this strip, tomorrow’s Mary Worth will almost certainly contain even less of interest, causing the local time continuum to ground to a halt. Friday’s strip will then take place on Wednesday, as the timeflow begins to unspool in reverse. It’s unclear what the cosmic consequences for this violation of the rules of nature will be, but it can’t be good.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/6/08

The second and third panels of this strip contain a delightful study in contrasts. In panel two, June’s manic grin is wholly inappropriate for someone proposing to spend a painful week alone with her surly, disinterested husband; in panel three, Rex reacts to the suggestion with a stone-faced mask that barely conceals mounting panic, as if — oh, I don’t know, his wife had walked in on him having sex with another guy in the laundry room, to pick a random example out of thin air for no reason.

It’s worth noting that this blog’s murky opening days covered the tail end of a Rex Morgan, M.D., storyline that involved our medical couple going on a disastrous white-water rafting trip. I’m pretty sure that this was for fun (meeting my definition of a “vacation,” anyway) and Sarah was very much alive at that point, as Rex and June decided to fire their nanny during the drive home.

Curtis, 8/6/08

Good Lord! It’s so hot that Ms. Honeystump has been emblackened!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/6/08

dear God WHERE ARE THEY GOING TO PUT THAT TRANSMITTER