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Apartment 3-G, 5/29/08

Bless you, Margo! Bless your foul mouth and shriveled little heart! Whenever I find myself feeling down, or wishing that my life was different, I can now always cheer myself up by imagining you looking down in stunned disbelief at your naked, ringless fingers, wiggling them in mid-air as if that will magically generate a token that says you’re taken out of the ether. Bless you!

I like the fact that Lu Ann and Tommie are standing around in glum silence while Margo rants. I’m imagining that we’re coming into this diatribe at about hour three. In panel two, note that Tommie is cunningly positioning Lu Ann between Margo and herself so she can slowly back away and sneak off to the bathroom without being disemboweled.

Archie, 5/29/08

I think Archie’s interlocutor is supposed to be … Reggie, maybe? I don’t recall Reggie having any sort of characterization established other than “Reggie is an asshole,” so presumably Jennifer looks so comprehensibly miserable in the first panel because her relationship with Reggie mostly consisted of his unpleasant boasts and grabby hands, and she still feels kind of dirty. Or maybe she’s just depressed because her parents force her to dress like a waitress at all times.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/29/08

I’m not even going to hazard a guess as to what the “joke” is supposed to be in today’s Funky Winkerbean. I’m too busy being traumatized by the look of near-physical ecstasy on Bull’s face in the third panel. It’s like he’s having a chairgasm, with Les just standing right there talking to him.

Hagar the Horrible, 5/29/08

Ah, I see the legacy comics are engaging in a little UNSPEAKABLE FILTH oneupsmanship. In this case, its the addition of the duck to the scenario that really pegs the old squick-o-meter.

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Mary Worth, 5/28/08

Oh my goodness, could this Dr. Jeff-Mary battle of wills turn to violence? That’s what’s everyone’s asking, based on the weird slappy-slapping going in panel two of today’s Mary Worth. But I think the real answer is found in the good doctor’s face in that same panel. Look at him. He looks terrible. Like his will to live is gone. Like every ounce of his life force is being sucked out of his body by some kind of malevolent demon-beast. I think the energy lines radiating from the star-crossed lovers’ hands in panel two actually represent Mary resorting to her ultimate weapon: her ability, granted by her dark lord Satan, to damage and ultimately destroy a human’s soul with a mere touch. That’s what killed Donna Amalfi, all the better to create emotional carrion for Mary to swoop down and feast upon. And that’s what’s weakened Dr. Jeff to the point where all he can do is feebly deploy the “stop dwelling on the past!” defense. Jeff: GET OUT NOW. On your hands and knees if you have to, but don’t let her touch your skin if you want to live.

Beetle Bailey, 5/28/08

Blips and Buxley’s banter is nonsensical and annoying, but at least Gizmo, who’s wearing his headphones, doesn’t have to hear any of it. We should all be so lucky.

Crankshaft, 5/28/08

Phrase I would have rather gone my whole life without seeing in print: “Crankshaft’s body”.

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Judge Parker, 5/27/08

It’s good to see that, even after the sexification of the formerly dorky and prepubescent Sophie, there’s still one constant in her personality: the obvious intelligence gap between her and her parents, and the sense of disgust it instills in her. I love her look of sneering contempt in the second panel. “Jeez, my mother, the accidental dope fiend. LOOO-SER!”

Beetle Bailey, 5/27/08

Thank God World War II is over; if every movie depicting that conflict I’ve ever seen is accurate, at some point Killer would have gotten separated from his unit (presumably after sneaking off to romance some French ladies, or perhaps some French trees). Making his way back to American lines, he would have been confronted by unfamiliar infantrymen who would have demanded that he prove his Yankee status by the one surefire method available: by naming the winners of the past few World Series. The part of his brain normally dedicated to sports trivia having been long been redeployed to work on the arts of seduction, he’d be unable to answer, and would no doubt be summarily executed as a Nazi spy.

Dennis the Menace, 5/27/08

That apple is poisoned, obviously.