Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/7/10

In all my years of reading the strip, I have encountered few scenes in Snuffy Smith more harrowing than panel two here. Lurleen looks rightly terrified at the slavering mob of women who have assembled at the Gossip Fence, the traditional gathering place for female-oriented rituals in Hootin’ Holler. Little does she know that any woman who manages to successfully bed the hamlet’s most eligible bachelor is by iron custom torn to bits and devoured by all the other women in the town. This is how the community maintains its uniform hideousness: by weeding all the even vaguely attractive people out of the gene pool.

Archie, 9/7/10

Mr. Weatherbee, with his black shirt and white jacket, always seems to be waiting for an ’80s fashion revival that never arrives; today, he’s really attempting to force the issue by donning a piano tie. GIVE IT UP, MR. WEATHERBEE. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Spider-Man, 9/7/10

I love the fact that Spider-Man, true to his intense laziness, just automatically associates computers with video games and nothing else. “Wait, you can use the keyboard-television for things that aren’t Farmville?”

Pluggers, 9/7/10

Seriously, pluggers are shockingly lazy and just straight up don’t give a rat’s ass about what you think.

Is this the first ever COTW post written on a moving bus somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike, thanks to Bolt Bus’s free Wi-Fi? POSSIBLY! Anyway, enjoy your somewhat truncated (all pre-weekend getaway, sorry) comments of the week! First, your #1 comment:

“At least Lonnie died doing what he loved: nothing.” –Rhekarid

And your runners up! Also hilarious!

“I think I see the Keane parents’ plan here. They fill the pool with water every day, but each day they inch it closer to the wild expanse that is the backyard. With luck the children might someday become lost on the way back. Dolly seems to have caught on, but poor Jeffy will go on drinking his ‘water’ until it’s far too late. At night, the wolves will come.” –TheTJ

“Phantom: What sort of totalitarian police state doesn’t have standing orders to shoot through a human shield? Not any sort of totalitarian police state I’d care to infiltrate, that’s for sure.” –Greenman Lefey

“The look of pure loathing on Dolly’s face adds an extra level of pathos. ‘Insult the taste of MY urine, will you?’” –Rootboy

“It appears Dr. Mike is jumping right into his plan to dispose of his father’s body — namely, eating it by the fistful.” –Reedzilla

“Take a look at Hubby’s itty-witty hand. She probably has no reason to fear any attempt at violence, except him possibly using his huge head as a club.” –Poteet

“Of course Jamarr is ditching practice, because he fears a quarterback who is nothing but a disembodied head held up by the massive hands of some unseen fiend. Gil should be wondering about the other boys, who seem more than enthusiastic about joining in the unspeakable rituals of this coven masquerading as a ‘huddle.’” –Lawyerbob

“Coachy McFacialhair may appear emotionally stable as he disdainfully intones that Jamarr has a cold (or so he says), but look closer. His grin is frozen in a Jokeresque rictus and his eyes are practically popping out of his head. That toy telephone is going to shatter into a million pieces when he crushes it in his giant meatpaw.” –LaurenM

“Do not let that bear fool you. It is not ‘half-tamed,’ it’s just biding its time. RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN.” –Smokehouse

“I’m not up on the cost of elaborate chain link fences and a Noah’s Ark-worth of wild animals so you could host a big game hunt for your voting buddies, but wouldn’t it be cheaper to just write a news release announcing your plans to run for governor, and maybe having some signs printed and buying some air time on the Lost Forest Network?” –Dood

“If Frank eventually ends up hunting Mark Trail for sport, he can count on my vote!” –Digger

“So young Jamarr will be found out, and sat out for the first two games of the season due to his ‘cold,’ and the team will get properly stomped on and then fall just short of making the playdowns because of their star player’s laziness? Well, these are all good life lessons, I guess, something to think about five years from now when he’s making $10 million a year with the Jets.” –Mooncattie

As ever, big thanks go out to everyone who put some cash in my tip jar! And, while there are no advertisers to thank this week, there have been some exciting updates to our advertising offerings, so please check those out!

Slylock Fox, 9/6/10

One of the great meta-mysteries of the Slylock Fox strip is: who exactly is Slylock’s employer? Does he work for the mostly dog-staffed police force, or is he a private eye for hire? Today’s strip seems to suggest the latter. The library system, not trusting the generally incompetent law enforcement system, obviously scraped together what it could out of its tightened budget to hire the best detective around to get that computer back. But the cemetery, whose fresh graves Count Weirdly is raiding for body parts that he can sew together and reanimate in a ghastly parody of life? Did they write Sly a check? No? Then screw them. What corpse-monster? I don’t see any corpse-monster. Just hand over the computer, Count, and I forget everything else I saw here.

Apartment 3-G, 9/6/10

Well, it’s yet another Monday, and the chances that this makeover storyline is the secret cover for a change of artist seem to be pretty much nil at this point. Certainly everyone in the audience is looking as appalling as ever. Any makeover show host worth her salt would, as soon as she laid eyes on Martin, stop in mid-sentence and rip that orange suit/yellow tie combo right off his body, then grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him back stage to fix whatever is going on with his hair.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/5/10

Whoah, it looks like our drama involving the sinister brew of prostate cancer and bare-knuckle city politics isn’t over after all! The fact that this story leaked out shouldn’t come as surprise, since Rex already shot his mouth off about it to June and who knows who else. But if the terrifying scene in the next-to-last panel is any indication, the toxic combination of rage and elevated PSA levels has transformed the mayor into The Mayor, a superpowered vigilante determined to stop HIPAA violations wherever he may find them.

Marvin, 9/5/10

Ha ha, Marvin’s grandfather’s friend suffers from a serious medical condition! Also, this is related to the end of summer, somehow! Eh, at least it’s not another “Marvin pooped himself” joke.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/5/10

“I didn’t change how this story finishes, though. My wife’s still dead at the end! That’s just how I roll: very, very glumly.”

Family Circus, 9/4/10

There’s certainly a little something weirdly circular about Dolly praying for the power to pray more intently, but perhaps we ought to take this scene at face value and respect the poor girl’s fervent desire to keep her mind focused on the divine in the midst of a chaotic living situation. Her casual description of her middle brother wandering about the house muttering incomprehensible but threatening nonsense to himself is particularly harrowing.

Crock, 9/4/10

Though I once praised the poor damned souls who do the coloring for the comics, they still must be called to account when they err. Why must we buy into the beauty myth that only blondes are sexy? The Crock artist appreciates an attractive brunette, obviously, having gong to some pains to ink in the hair of Grossie’s sexy friend (since this is Crock, she’s probably just named “Sexy”). Why do you supply a blondeish nimbus that was not part of the original artistic vision, O Colorist?

B.C., 9/4/10

Ha ha, she made a real impression on him … with her enormous ass! Possibly by sitting on him! And her name is “Fanny!” And they’re, uh, ants, and probably when an ant has a distended rear thorax section like that it means something, but, uh, bugs gross me out so I don’t want to look it up. Probably it relates to breeding or something though, or feeding the young. Which casts this strip into a completely different and more disgusting light. Jeez, I think I liked B.C. better when it was just telling me I was going to hell.