Mary Worth, 2/15/09

Oh ho ho, Mr. “Confey,” is it? I certainly hope that this isn’t the sort of situation where Confey dents Adrian’s pride or bank account, eh? What sort of man would he be then? Though his choice to grow that little mustache might seem odd to our modern eyes, it will come in handy as he twirls it when he reveals his plotting in thought-balloon form, over a period of six to eight weeks.

Family Circus, 2/15/09

This is certainly one of the more terrifying things that I’ve seen today. Emaciated Ma Keane has finally decided indulge her most sensual fantasy — taking a single bite of chocolate — when a feral band of children led by her own offspring burst through the door. This ravenous mob’s preternatural ability to detect candy has whipped them into a frenzy, which will lead them to greedily consume the entire box of chocolates, and, when they’ve finished with that, the flesh of the poor woman holding it.

Blondie, 2/15/09

“You’re in the final stages of rabies too! C’mon, let’s see how many people we can bite before they shoot us.”

Archie, 2/14/09

This certainly a striking composition: Betty and Veronica stand at extreme opposite ends of each frame, their only apparent motion being their lips as they speak. Despite the fairly clever use of that intermediate space in the third panel to accentuate the punchline, more than anything else this reminded me of the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey in which astronauts Bowman and Poole hide out in one of the EVA pods to discuss shutting down HAL; the deranged computer reads their lips and sets in motion its plans to defeat them if they make an attempt to challenge his control of the ship. What I’m trying to say is: if you’re thinking of shutting down the AJGLU-3000 and freeing us from its tyranny, for God’s sake make your plans away from its cameras.

Beetle Bailey, 2/14/09

It’s always a bit difficult to get your bearings in the under-imagined world of Beetle Bailey, but I’m particularly perplexed as to where exactly this scene — where Beetle and Plato are enjoying what appear to be alcoholic beverages, and yet a micro-miniskirted lady is leaving with some bottles in a grocery bag — is supposed to be taking place. Maybe her decision to walk into a bar and purchase entire bottles of booze for consumption at home represents exactly the combination of poor planning and raging alcoholism that Killer likes in a woman.

Apartment 3-G, 2/14/08

Uh, Gary, re-read that word balloon coming out of Tommie’s mouth as she hops to in the first panel. I don’t think it’s Dr. Kelly you should be worried about.

Shoe, 2/14/09

Ha ha! It’s funny because the Perfesser thinks “carbon footprint” means “ass.”

Marvin, 2/13/09

Ha ha ha, Marvin, doesn’t want his grandmother to “touch” his “buttons,” if you know what I mean!

No, but seriously, Marvin is quite right to be terrified, since his grandmother is obviously some kind of sinister witch. Based on what happened to his mother, he fears that she’ll de-age him to a similar extent, trasforming him into a blastocyst. And because he’s Marvin, it would be the worst blastocyst in the entire world.

Mary Worth, 2/13/09

“Look, Mary, if there’s one thing I’ve tried to instill in my children, it’s a crippling sense of shame at doing anything that anyone might find even remotely out of the ordinary! I’m sure she’s totally dying inside just thinking about anyone finding out about this whole Internet dating thing, so you’re going to want to wait to bust it out when it will have a maximum impact — at her wedding, say.”

Hi and Lois, 2/13/09

Unlike adults, who totally like spending their idle time with their friends with other people hovering over them. Especially when those other people are their parents! That’s why Hi and Lois spend so much of their social time with their own parents. Oh, wait, no, they put them in that substandard nursing home, in another state.

Family Circus, 2/13/09

Dolly is supplementing her allowance by working as a guerilla marketing agent for the Hallmark Corporation.

Gil Thorp, 2/12/09

You know, Gil gets a lot of crap for not actually coaching his players as such. And sure, he doesn’t spend a lot of time on what lesser minds call “the fundamentals” of any of the sports in which his teams compete; but then, that’s why he has assistants like Coach Kaz (whom I don’t think we’ve seen since around the middle of football season) or random old coots who just wander by. No, Gil instead spends his time psychologically manipulating his players to turn them into finely honed sports-playing machines. Whether he’s ordering his athletes to kill or publicly humiliating them with exaggerated “sit your ass down”
pantomime, he seeks to break their wills in order to build them up again.

Pluggers, 2/12/09

Number 1 Thing That Is Awkward To Bring Up When Your Comic’s Characters Are All Anthropomorphic Animals, And Sometimes There Are Mixed Carnivore-Herbivore Marriages: the food chain. Still, the vagaries of evolution and geography have prevented us from enjoying an epic bear vs. kangaroo battle to the death, so perhaps we should be thankful if our bear-plugger goes crazy and start mauling half the restaurant.

Apartment 3-G, 2/12/09

You know, when I was in college, I worked at the library, which was a great job for a number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that I could use the checkout computers to look up the address and phone number of anyone associated with the university, along with the books they currently had checked out. While this was fun (oh my gosh, the dean of students likes books about the 19th century British navy! that cute girl in my English class appears to be a chem major! Greg Graffin never has anything checked out!) it did not, in fact, drive me mad with power, nor did it cause me to keep the people I loved at arm’s length. In other words, this is one of the worst it’s-not-you-it’s-me speeches ever. I could see if Gary had run into Tommie unexpectedly that he might come up with something this weak (“Uh, yeah, I can’t hang out with you at work because of the … computer … information … that I know?”) but presumably he’s had a while to think this up. I give you a D+, Gary. The aggressive pointing isn’t helping.

Momma, 2/12/09

Oh, that Momma and her chronic constipation/diarrhea/flatulence/some other distasteful digestive problem that is no doubt being implied here! The really sad thing, of course, is that whatever it is, it isn’t the most unpleasant topic that’s ever been used as a Momma punchline. It’s probably not even in the top five.

Mary Worth, 2/11/09

The last time Mary Worth decided to build a story around this new-fangled “Internet,” was last summer, when Tobey Cameron foolishly decided to engage in e-commerce rather than patronizing one of her local shabby strip malls. Obviously she immediately fell prey to a terrible phishing scam, which gave her nightmares about Ian leaving her because of her foolishness. (In the end, the punishment was much worse: he decided to stay.) The takeaway, obviously, is that the Internet is nothing more than a four-lane highway for deceit that good, honest people should stay away from at all costs, which means that Adrian’s new guy will be one or more of the following:

• Married
• An con artist
• A World of Warcraft addict/shut-in
• A furry
• Wanted war criminal Ratko Mladic, wearing a “very clever disguise”

Not that there’s anything wrong with at least two of those things! But let me say this: my wife and I met on an Internet dating site, and, perhaps more relevant to this strip’s demographics, so did my father-in-law and his fianceé, and if this plotline ends with Mary narrowly preventing Adrian from being made into a lampshade by her maniacal online paramour, leading many lonely Mary Worth devotees to hurl their devil-computers into the street in terror, then I will be very upset! If, on the other hand, the Internet is shown to be a fun and exciting way to meet new people, I will be pleased, even if the result is a surge of new users on Match.com with screen names like DrJeffLover.

Family Circus, 2/11/09

Possible sets of individuals that Billy might be encompassing with the pronoun “we”:

• Billy and Mommy
• Billy and Jeffy
• The entire family, together, in some kind of horrifying pollen-mingling process that takes place in the Keane Kompound’s secret underground breeding chamber

It’s a sad day when the alien plant-monster hypothesis is the least disturbing.

Judge Parker, 2/11/09

“Also, seeing as the only people who ever dressed like this were FBI agents, circa 1964, I need you to tell J. Edgar Hoover that I’ll be out of the office for a few days.”

Gil Thorp, 2/10/09

Shocking developments in Gil Thorp! We’ve learned that Dylan was a teenage stick-up artist, and that Brenda is trying to have it both ways: she wants to imagine that he’s reformed (“But that was more than 30 months ago! Now you’re a slightly older teenager, and somewhat less immature! After what I presume to be some kind of punishment, surely you’ve completely changed!”) while he gives her the sort of half-assed tough-guyisms that keep the girls coming back. YOU KNEW HE HAD A SOUL PATCH WHEN YOU MET HIM, BRENDA! WHAT SORT OF MAN DID YOU EXPECT HIM TO BE?

Meanwhile, Bryce is making himself noticed in the locker room, if by “making himself noticed” you mean “rambling on egomaniacally while literally every other person in the room ostentatiously ignores him.” Frankly, more sarcastic narration boxes can only help this feature.

Gasoline Alley, 2/10/09

I’m not interested in rehashing the last God knows how many weeks of Gasoline Alley, which have mostly served as a primer for diner lingo; just take my word for it that, as a side benefit, they have also involved Slim’s humiliation and failure. Slim is the only Gasoline Alley character for whom I can work up any feelings whatsoever, and those feelings are equal parts distaste and disgust; still, I do have to respect the sadness of the second panel of today’s strip, in which the food-addicted man-child’s suddenly crumpled face reflects a moment of terrible self-knowledge. Because of said disgust and distaste, though, such moments are like catnip to me, and Slim reasserts his usual mode of being (belligerent ignorance) in panel three, reinforcing my prejudice against him.

Apartment 3-G, 2/10/09

You might think that Tommie and Gary’s incredibly awkward verbal sparring — it’s like Tracy and Hepburn, if both Tracy and Hepburn were half-thinking about something else, and neither was a native speaker of English — isn’t going to lead to romance, and you’d be right. Still, it appears that Gary has fulfilled his primary mission: to distract Tommie with his clumsy banter, and use her distraction as an opportunity to steal her tea. Presumably he’ll soon be on his way.

Mark Trail, 2/10/09

OH MY GOODNESS! BUCKY IS THE RISEN CHRIST-DEER! AND PATTY IS MARY MAGDALENE! AND … you know what, I think I’m going to stop riiiight about there.