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Beetle Bailey, 1/4/05

This cartoon made me tingly, but not in a good way.

Hi and Lois, 1/4/07

Dot and Ditto seem to be adapting well to their parents’ loveless sham of a marriage.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/4/07

If someone’s physical agony is the set-up to someone else’s wistful little joke, this must be Funky Winkerbean.

Luann, 1/4/07

This disturbs me so very, very much that I’d rather see what wacky antics Puddles has gotten himself into this week. Please. Cut away to Puddles. Now. Please.

Oh, also: if you’d like to know what Dr. Jeff’s up to in the ‘Nam, faithful reader Smitty Smedlap has the answer. (Scroll down to where it says “UPDATE”.)

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Sure, Reggie Black’s wife went ballistic on the media last month, and now Judge Parker has moved on plotwise to Neddy’s sadly mom-chaperoned trip to Paris. But the electorate’s memory is notoriously short, and what with the pace of JP’s plot advancement, there’s no doubt a looooong time until the election, so I’m pretty sure Reggie can get back in this thing, provided he sticks with his core message: namely, that Randy Parker is probably a big gay. Faithful reader Wille Thompson took it upon himself to come with Reggie’s next attack ad. Bask in the glory of Wille’s cartoonish Karl Rovery!

In other JP news, you might remember my my vague rumor-mongering about the guest artisting going on in that strip this month. The Daily Cartoonist has a much more detailed explanation of the drama behind the scenes at that strip, which, to make a long story short, has a happy ending in sight, but you should check out the link for the full tale. (Thanks to a commentor for this link — I can’t find the comment that contained it, though, but if you speak up I’ll give you credit! UPDATE: The link was provided by faithful reader blase, who cleverly called the real artist “Eduardo the Unfortunate Uruguayan.” Also, a couple typos in the above graphic have been fixed.)

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Apartment 3-G, 1/3/07

So, in case you weren’t paying attention, Eric Mills broke Margo’s heart by jetting out of town mysteriously, then just as suddenly set it aflame again by showing up on Apartment 3-G’s doorstep on Christmas in a particularly pointless bit of plotting whiplash. Margo must be getting inured to the pleasures of hot monkey sex romance and such, though, because it isn’t having the same softening effect on her personality as it did a few weeks ago. I love her completely pointless outrage in panel one. “Mr. Gibbs? How dare he have a WASPy, monosyllabic last name!”

Mr. Gibbs has been nothing but avuncular and pleasant to Lu Ann throughout the long Adventure of the Haunted Studio, but that facial expression in panel three pretty much screams, “Hello ladies! Looks like all those hidden cameras I installed throughout this firetrap are about to pay for themselves after all!”

Crankshaft, 1/3/07

You know, today’s Crankshaft is a good example of the strip’s subtle but fierce misanthropy. Because at first you’re grateful that they switched the expression around and didn’t actually show you the mangled corpse of a deer embedded into the hood of this car, but then you realize that he’s implying that somewhere there’s a terribly injured animal running around, with a huge chunk of metal and glass and plastic hanging out of a bloody wound in its side … well, Crankshaft is kind of mean-spirited, is what I’m trying to say.

Mary Worth, 1/3/07

Is this the bitchiest Mary Worth ever? “Yeah, Agent Orange, terribly moved, blah blah blah … but what about MEEEEEEEE????? What about MY NEEDS????”

Who is Mary talking to, exactly? Yesterday’s omniscient narration box noted only that she was calling “Cambodia.” Perhaps she was connected directly to King Norodom Sihamoni, who, being a constitutional monarch, has little better to do with his time than to take phone calls from agitated biddies.

Slylock Fox, 1/3/07

I’m not sure what’s funnier: The cheery, innocent look on the face of the megamagnet-wielding security goon, or the expression of sheer, heart-stopping terror on the face of our innocent traveller — perhaps literally heart-stopping, as his pacemaker slams into his sternum, drawn inexorably by this fiendish device. If I had to guess about the origin of this little drama, I’d wager that a certain cartoonist had his precious collection of gels and liquids confiscated by some jackbooted thug while he was traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday. Well, you crossed the wrong gel aficionado, Mr. TSA Man! I bet you felt pretty foolish when you opened up the paper and found that you had been named and shamed in today’s Slylock Fox!

One Big Happy, 1/3/07

The countdown to Ruthie’s inevitable stabbing frenzy and subsequent trip to juvie begins … now.