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Slylock Fox, 5/27/07

Ah, that sexy Cassandra Cat! With her skin-tight wetsuit and her … pale … pasty fur … totally different from the tawny coloring established in her previous appearances … like a three-day-old corpse … seriously, what the hell happened to her? Is this what a cat looks like after it’s spent some time in the water? It’s creeping me out.

Speaking of things that creep me out, the first iteration of the firefighter in the “how to draw” section at the lower left is missing not only his nose and mouth, but also most of his brainpan. It makes it very difficult to look at the completed drawing without imagining that big hat resting on the flat surface of his impossibly truncated head.

Back to Cassie’s grift: I do appreciate that various genres of news media are here to cover this sexy, sexy story: the big-haired dog from the local TV news, the eager beaver writing up the story for the newspaper’s morning edition, and the pelican, who’ll deliver the tale to an eager audience via half-eaten fish.

Dennis the Menace, 5/27/07

Good lord, just when I think Dennis can’t get any less menacing, he swings into action with his actively anti-menacing “stop smoking!” message. I suppose it’s possible that our young menace is being transformed into such a goody-goody that he becomes a menace through his cloying, annoying crusading, a symbol of the intrusive nanny state, though that doesn’t really match up with his traditional oeuvre of more straightforward menacing, like property destruction and nap disruption. It’s also possible that he wants to keep Mr. Wilson alive as long as possible so as to harass him further. “I’m not going to let the sweet embrace of cancer take you away from my persecution, old man!”

I’ve said it before, but there are few visual conventions in this strip that I find more unsettling than the “single bead of sweat coming down Mr. Wilson’s forehead,” a good example of which can be found in the rightmost panel of the second row. Really, the only thing it says to me is “WARNING! KILLING SPREE IMMINENT!”

Family Circus, 5/27/07

The Family Circus, on the other hand, does have a whiff of menace today. If this strip has an underlying message other than “drugs are awesome,” I’d love to hear it.

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They’ll Do It Every Time, 5/26/07

For many, TDIET is a glimpse into a kinder, gentler past, when doctors and nurses wore bright white starched uniforms and little kids of both genders wore plaid vests and inevitably responded to obscenity with a hearty “Oh, what you sa-a-a-a-i-d.” But today’s installment for me offers a look into the future — specifically, my future wearing dentures. Who knew that this seemingly innocuous prosthetic device came with its own elaborate code of shame? Who knew that breaking your dentures while eating is somehow socially acceptable to explain to a licensed dental professional, but that breaking your dentures while brushing them is not? I think I’ll redouble my flossing efforts so as to avoid ever having to navigate this complex sea of lies.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/26/07

Yes, isn’t it odd that people are willing to idly pass the time discussing potentially untrue things written in a modern publication, but aren’t willing to wholeheartedly base their moral code and belief system about how the universe works on the exact wording of a series of books written between three thousand and seventeen hundred years ago and painstakingly copied by hand by semiliterates over and over again in the intervening centuries? I sure see exactly how this might confuse you.

On another note, I dare you to brightly say the following to one of your friends: “Wow, check out the latest on the hotel socialite! The stuff they say about her really makes you think, doesn’t it?” I’m pretty sure you’ll soon find yourself in an interrogation room at CIA headquarters, since obviously the only person who would construct such a sentence would be a sinister robot scouting out our planet and reporting back to an alien invasion fleet.

Pluggers, 5/26/07

Wow, I was really torn between saying “Pluggers are almost unfathomably lazy” and “Pluggers really don’t understand how this stuff works,” but then I realized that I didn’t have to choose! That made me feel better.

Gil Thorp, 5/26/07

“That’s right, I have it on good authority that he’s being scouted by the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Pittsburgh Keystones! Believe me, Mike’s got what it takes to have a real future in the Negro leagues.”

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/25/07

Well, well, well, it looks like “the nanny” had what it took to be a heartless, Machiavellian corporate schemer all along! Just seconds after humiliating her stepson in front of the motley cast of characters on Avery International’s board, with a single regal wave of her hand she puts the smack down on Peter the Perhaps Too Helpful Chauffeur, who was probably thinking that he’d soon find himself Peter the General Counsel or Peter the CFO for his pains. The only remaining obstacle left in the path of her total triumph would be the poor missing Milton Avery himself, and I think that perhaps that search and rescue effort might find itself called off even after the weather improves — we don’t want to be a burden on the British taxpayer, you see, not with the National Health being in such a poor state. If the plane itself is never found, of course, then nobody will be the wiser about certain … modifications to its engines that were implemented just before its final, fatal flight.

I wouldn’t have been implying any of this before today, but then I saw the third panel here, in which Heather gives us a look that will hollow out a person’s soul with an ice-cream scoop.

Blondie, 5/25/07

This, combined with this, makes me think that the the creators of Blondie no longer believe children to be the future, but rather to be the terrifying, menacing present. Look for Dagwood to lead the charge for all children under the age of 12 to placed in prison camps, and only be released when they’ve passed a series of tests of their moral rectitude. Dag’s suck-up buddy Elmo will be a camp guard, of course.

Mary Worth, 5/25/07

I haven’t really been talking about Mary Worth much because oh God oh God SO BORING. Mary urges Vera to open her heart and forgive her brother, Vera deigns to read letter from Von, letter rambles on at great length, blah blah blabbity blah. I think today’s installment is kind of hilarious, though, because it gets to the heart of Vera’s beef against her brother: she’s not mad because he broke the bonds of filial friendship, or because he let his anger get the best of him over a trivial matter, or because he exploited their father’s sexism for financial gain; no, she’s angry because his actions forced her to get a job, which is presumably one of the most loathsome acts of degradation that she could have possibly been compelled to endure. I dearly hope that she shows up at Creepy Lack Of Affect Advertising Agency and tells all of her former coworkers that she thinks they’re low-class plebes whose only role in this world is to buoy the stock market so that she and her brother can live in unimaginable luxury, only to return to stately Von and Vera Manor to discover that Von has exhausted their savings to buy expensive hooch with which to cool his fevered brow.

IMPORTANT MARK TRAIL-RELATED UPDATE: They won’t stop with birds, people!