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For Better Or For Worse, 3/20/08

Indeed, Liz! Once you have that ring, you’ll have physical evidence that your sweet charms are no longer up for grabs! For instance, without a ring, if your ex-boyfriend show up at your apartment in the middle of the night, you’ll have no choice but to mewl helplessly as he claims to be still dating you and answers your phone. But if you had a sparkling diamond set into gold — one that was purchased for you by another man, one who’s staked a claim on you — why, then you’d have some leverage. For instance, you could really do some damage to your ex’s eye with it if you punch him in the face with your left hand.

Elizabeth has apparently learned her lesson after the unfortunate shouting incident: all loud and joyful expressions of exuberance are to be restricted to thought-balloon form, and all emotional conversations are to be conducted in the same tones in which one would discuss a car loan. Welcome to your new world of feelings left forever unexpressed, Mrs. Caine!

Apartment 3-G, 3/20/08

It’s not like Anthony did anything super-romantic, like briefly considering giving up his smack habit for her. Since Alan is a failure at everything he does, I’m really, really looking forward to his disastrous foray into the world of dealing drugs. If we’re lucky, he’ll have no choice but to turn to Margo for the qualities you really need to succeed in the drug trade: business acumen and propensity for violence.

Luann, 3/20/08

I don’t know what’s sadder: that Brad’s father is horrified by the thought that his twentysomething kid might finally have sex, or that Brad is puppyishly eager to replicate his parents’ hot, hot sex life.

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Cathy, 3/19/08

As you know, I take this blog’s original promise — that I would read the comics so you don’t have to — seriously. Still, sometimes it’s hard for me to read Cathy for you. Not just because I find it irritating almost beyond measure (although I do), but because it just takes so much damn time. I don’t want to sound like some kind of quasiliterate philistine, but every Cathy includes an awful lot of words, which frankly I just don’t care to deal with. And what with a newspaper that comes every day and a New Yorker that comes every week and a whole pile of books that I’m supposed to be reading — well, sometimes all that text in Cathy just kind of get glossed over, you know?

Imagine my surprise, then, when I ready today’s Cathy and found myself quite engrossed as I watched Irving squirm in silent anxiety while he mused on his fate. It made me think about how lucky I am. After all, I just have to sort of make a half-hearted stab at reading the thing once day, which takes up maybe 30 seconds of my time, tops. Irving, on the other hand, is married to Cathy, every second of every day. Not that it’s likely to get me to read Cathy more closely, but it does really sort of put the whole thing into perspective.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/19/08

Hmm, let’s see … Les is already working a demanding and no-doubt soul-crushing job as a public school teacher, and is a single dad wracked with paranoia about his teenage daughter; nevertheless, he plans to give up his weekends to start working for his best friend from high school, who’s been transformed by age, capitalism, and an insatiable and unfulfilled need for sweet, sweet liquor into an insufferable prick. Whee! Good times ahead!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/19/08

Man, June sure looks awfully pleased to be taking the dog to get her shots, doesn’t she? In panel three, we learn why: anything to get out of the house, now that yet another of Rex’s long line of male “friends” is calling to “talk.” Maybe if she shows a little skin to the vet, she can score some of those tasty animal tranquilizers — you know, the ones that keep her feelings at bay.

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Gil Thorp, 3/18/08

OK, ever since the Gil Thorp artist change, I’ve been able to accept that the vaguely flat-topped Robert Mitchum lookalike in the COACH sweatshirt is supposed to be Gil. But you will never, never convince me that the skinny, brush-cut dude in the COACH sweatshirt in panel two is Assistant Coach Kaz. Never, you hear me? Where’s the classic Heat Miser ‘do? The pearl earrings? The hairy forearms and brutish fists? This is a travesty beyond imagining.

Oh, also, Andrew and his little siblings are about to be put into foster care because “the man” says that it’s not OK for children to raise themselves. Presumably the Gil and Kaz stand-ins will cook up some web of lies that will prevent the sinister social services fascists from caring for the kids’ well-being; perhaps it will involve convincing them that Andrew’s “teenage” friends in panel three are actually his 35-year-old aunts, which from the looks of it shouldn’t be hard.

Apartment 3-G, 3/18/08

Margo is no doubt backstage chewing her single glove in rage and frustration as Lu Ann wastes her coveted Girl Talk slot by blathering on all moon-eyed about how swell her talentless junkie boyfriend is. Still, it’s really Margo’s own fault for trusting her air-headed roommate to go on TV without careful coaching. And for using Lu Ann’s embarrassing carbon monoxide poisoning as the selling point for her bland art in the first place. When things go spectacularly wrong, it’s usually a safe bet to blame it on Margo’s desperate scheming, is what I’m trying to say.

Mary Worth, 3/18/08

“For the moment, the mutant super-breath power we shared was a secret between the two of us. But we knew that someday, it would be the instrument of our revenge against a world that had been cruel to us for too long.”

Pluggers, 3/18/08

Pluggers are subject from birth to relentless propaganda and conditioning, so that by the time they’re eight, they suffer from crippling nostalgia for a world they never knew.