Last year, nearly half the comics in the comics section featured New Year's Eve jokes about how hard it is to stay up until midnight. Only one of those comics features the same joke this New Year's Eve. That comic is The Family Circus.
Hi and Lois is easily the most interesting legacy strip, if only for its wide variety of tones. It usually settles for simple gags, but occasionally forays into more controversial territory (I can't find it now, but it has explicitly acknowledged global warming in a nonjokey way before) and at times into outright misery, as is the case today.
Kelly and her icky, womany vagina have so upset Mark that he is reduced to using contractions.
Oh good. Torture humor. My favorite.
This is why Jeffy prefers serial killing to so many other activities. His ability to murder people is never dependent upon the weather.
Garfield is the sort of comic that does so many things wrong that it's easy to forget the things it does right. Garfield Minus Garfield has sort of rectified that, but today's installment is the rare instance in which the titular character's presence actually makes the comic better and, in this case, sadder.
Not all comics contain jokes. Some comics are meant to impart some other sort of meaning besides humor. Sadly, I'm pretty sure this comic was meant to contain a joke.
Gasp! Requesting a glass of milk! My lands, that Dennis is just so rude!
In the next very special installment of Stone Soup: Alix and, um, the other one learn a valuable lesson about old people.
And so the Olive Garden is just a little too high-class for pluggers.
The censors unfortunately butchered this one. You just have to imagine the robot as a dead body to get the full effect.
AAARGH. If only Les had died horribly like he was SUPPOSED to, we wouldn't have to put up with this inane awkward love triangle.
This comic is hilarious because General Halftrack appears to be depressed and potentially suicidal.
I know that picking Get Fuzzy as the best comic of the day every day is kind of lame. But this story is just so good. And that line is amazing.
The Born Loser is not the worst strip in the comics section, but it is probably the hackiest. So it's not exactly a surprise to see a holiday fruitcake joke today. It's just kind of sad.
After the big Funky Winkerbean fake-out, I know I shouldn't get my hopes up over the prospect of Herb and Jamaal possibly each getting shot in the face. BUT OH MY GOD HOW AMAZING WOULD THAT BE?
Apparently Billy and Dolly are on good terms again, because this is some pretty harsh mockery. Thel doesn't stand a chance.
In all honesty, I just never want this arc to end. Ever.
In the month or so that I've started reading the comics section again, The Quigmans hasn't been showing up on my Chron comics page. I was hoping this was because it had gotten unceremoniously canceled during the time that I was away. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case, as it unexpectedly appeared before me today.
And so the Wizard wants to have a threesome with his wife and his new winged-lizard pet.
Even in the midst of being sexually assaulted by her idiot brother, Dolly takes a moment to criticize and condescend to her mother.
I had somehow managed to forget about the annual Curtis Kwanzaa Extravaganza, and now I am perhaps disproportionally excited about it. But excited about it I am!
This comic is hilarious and adorable because PJ is an idiot.
It appears that a serial killer who is not Jeffy has sneaked into the Keane house through the chimney and is lying in wait to murder the whole family horribly.
Women! They just can't handle manly things. Like boats. And water.
Here we see Billy being his oddly pretentious self, Jeffy dreaming of mutilated corpses under the tree, and Dolly gleefully awaiting her total world domination. PJ, of course, is pooping.
If it weren't for Lola, Funky Winkerbean's cloying sentimentality and empty spiritualism would be the most revolting thing in the comics section today.
I wish this were Funky Winkerbean so we could at least take solace in the fact that at least one of these characters was going to get cancer and die.
I think this is supposed to be a Dick in a Box type joke, where the male believes the greatest gift he can give to a woman is his amazing self. But it's not obvious. What is obvious is that this is horrifying.
Things you can say or at least directly refer to in the comics section:
This comic is hilarious because Curtis's father is going to beat Curtis with a belt for getting him a lousy present.
Here we see Mrs. Halftrack, having earlier stumbled across her husband's large collection of punk fetish adult magazines, attempting to rekindle the romance in her marriage. The general is unimpressed and, as usual, being a huge prick about it.
I can't decide whether this comic is funny or not.
There are times when I think that Dolly is like that little boy in The Twilight Zone who could turn people into jack-in-the-boxes with her mind.
The ex post facto coloring of daily black-and-white comics really is an artistic disaster. How terrible must it feel to write a solid joke and then have it at least partially ruined by lazy coloring?
"But just in case I'm wrong, here, take this gun."
And so Lola has set her son on fire. Given that Lola is a sociopath and her son is unbearable, this isn't terribly surprising.
The best part of today's Luann is the thoroughly disgusted look the cashier has on her face.
Tom Batiuk's winking so hard today that he may never get his left eyelid to work right again. But I'm not sure what it says about your comic strip when the funniest thing that happens in weeks is a character not dying horribly.
Maybe I'm getting soft, because I sure am picking a lot of best comics of the day these days, but both of these comics are very funny in a completely different way than today's 9 Chickweed Lane is funny. 9 Chickweed Lane is funny because of its strong dialog. It features no action of interest. 
Dolly's coldly utilitarian view of the Christmas story is oddly refreshing.
This would all make more sense if Darrin Bell wasn't a professional writer himself. But it's still an improvement over what Rudy Park usually gives us.
Having saved his wife, The Phantom now promptly abandons her on what appears to be the very next day. No doubt to get some more vengeance done. Because that's what really matters right now.
This comic is hilarious because Toni generally leaves her left labium uncovered.
Hopefully, it's a long story that ends with Les being a ghost.
This comic is hilarious because the sexually idealized women who star in Internet porn movies are far superior to the sexually idealized women in Gizmo's comic strip world.
