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Funky Winkerbean, 9/21/07

Lisa’s friends have decided to poison her as an act of mercy, and if they kill Les in the process, it won’t really bother them that much.

Pluggers, 9/21/07

Pluggers don’t have health insurance, so they take their kids to the vet.

For Better Or For Worse, 9/21/07

Michael’s daughter has some sort of remotely operated mind-control chip installed in her brain.

B.C., 9/21/07

If you’re an ant, and half the people you’re at a party with suddenly get eaten alive, it’s not that big a deal, I guess.

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Mary Worth, 9/20/07

Well, the slapping seems to be over (for now), but Dawn continues to give Dr. Drew the tongue-lashing of his life (and not in a good way). While Dawn may be the younger of the two ladies vying for Dr. Drew’s affections, this co-ed definitely has an edge over her competitor when it comes to brains: she’s keeping up a blistering stream of accusatory rage while spoiled rich girl Vera is still scratching her chin in total befuddlement. (“Wait … does this girl … know Drew somehow? There’s something fishy going on here … but what?”)

Dawn’s invective is so powerful that she doesn’t even need to waggle her fingers to add quote marks around the key terms. The significance of the quotes around “working” is obvious enough, but I’m a little puzzled about “new girlfriend.” I mean, Vera is Drew’s new girlfriend, right? If only there were some kind of quote-mark expert we could consult to parse the meaning…

Well … now … you don’t have any proof of that, Margo! Jeez, that girl’s totally out of hand.

Mark Trail, 9/20/07

I don’t pretend to understand what exactly this trio of boneheaded duck-lovers is doing in the third panel — building an elaborate system of dikes around Shirley’s nest? Trying to bail out the entire swamp? Nor do I know exactly how we went from “Shirley must be protected from sinister, heartless developers” to “Shirley must be protected from an entirely natural flood that would have washed away her nest whether the mall was under construction or not.” But I do know who’s pulling the strings here. It’s not Shirley herself, as I had guessed earlier, as she’s proven herself to be about as smart as you’d expect an animal with a walnut-sized brain to be. No, take a good look at Mark’s smug bastard of an editor in panel one. He’s realized that the mouth-breathing reading public is eating this duck drama up, and as long as he can drag out the drama, his magazine for outdoorsmen will be flying off of the supermarket racks faster than all the celebrity gossip rags combined. Look for him to give Mark a series of increasingly bizarre and improbable orders to keep the story going. (“OK, I think you should carry the eggs over to the food court. No, not inside the Ruby Tuesdays! Are you insane?”)

Beetle Bailey, 9/20/07

I, uh…

I thought today’s Beetle Bailey was pretty funny.

Ha! They all had to go to the bathroom!

What?

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Marvin, 9/19/07

At some point between my childhood, when I read and disliked Marvin, and my decision a few years ago start reading and disliking Marvin again, the strip expanded somewhat from its initial emphasis on infant-related humor. In these days of shrinking newspaper circulation, this may be because babies very rarely actually read the comics. Anyway, Marvin now also features thought-ballooning-animals (who don’t read the paper but who have been repeatedly demonstrated to appeal to those who do) and cranky old people, who do definitely read the paper (boy, do they ever). Fairly typical of the Marvin old people schtick is today’s comic, which features two sick, angry old men, their body language transparently demonstrating their mutual dislike, sitting together (because they have nobody else to spend time with, except their even more hated wives) at the mall (because they have nowhere else to go).

By the way, Roy’s “I hear you” isn’t a way of showing solidarity or agreement or anything like that; it’s part of this duo’s continuous game of mutual oneupmanship, and he’s just boasting that he hasn’t gone completely deaf yet.

Family Circus, 9/19/07

“Actually, Jeffy, after years of horrifying mistakes and experimental subjects that had to be put down as an act of mercy, Grandma determined that it’s best to go with leathery, bat-like wings. She’ll be forming them out of the skin from your thighs, since you won’t be using your legs anymore. Oh, also, you’ll be living in her basement from now on, OK?”

Archie, 9/19/07

Haw haw! It’s like men are from Mars, and women are from Venus, am I right, everybody? Like two different planets entirely! Haw! Also, it’s like women will believe completely bogus statements and men are high all the time! Haw haw!

Pluggers, 9/19/07

Pluggers are both unbearably cheap and completely thoughtless.

Oh, and confidential to everyone who couldn’t get enough of yesterday’s slap-happy Mary Worth action: thanks to faithful reader Dingo, you can get in on it!