Lola: Tax on this! Tax on that! There's a stinkin' tax on EVERYTHING!

One would think that Lola would be old enough to remember the days before 1980 when taxes were a lot higher than they are now. So perhaps she's not old, but instead the victim of a horrible aging disease.

It's more likely, however, that she's just the idiot mouthpiece of a lazy cartoonist.

The Fusco Brothers: How ironic that I'm also agoraphobic.

This is not what irony is.

Curtis: I enjoy scripted shows with real actors! Today's fare is a bunch of kids on ugh "reality" or "comptetition" crapola!

This comic is hilarious because it's so completely true that television today consists of nothing but lame reality shows.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith: Stand by for an important message from the I.R.S.--

Considering that Snuffy and Loweezy appear to earn virtually no income, it is extremely unlikely that they would have to pay much in the way of federal taxes. But why let a little fact like that get in the way of a hilarious and original joke about how taxes are annoying?

Brevity: Stop it.

Why is Spock green?

Blondie: What's the price?

This comic would make a lot more sense if smaller cars actually cost more than bigger cars. But why let honesty get in the way of a lame punchline?

In the Bleachers: Bench-clearing brawl!!

Oh, these modern sports stars with their greed and their violence. I know, it's so funny.

But let's stop laughing for a minute and try to think through the logic in this cartoon. The author is apparently upset that sports teams build stadiums with taxpayer money. I'm upset with that too! Teams totally shouldn't do that!

It is, however, the teams that are building the stadiums, not the players. The players are just employed by the teams. Therefore, the teams, not the players, are saving money at the expense of the taxpayers.

Moreover, were the players to return their bonus money, they would be returning it to the teams, not the taxpayers. And so the result would be that the teams would save even more money, at the expense of both their employees and the taxpayers. The point being, this cartoon is very stupid, as is the popular mode of thought that led to it.

But oh, look. On top of all that, it's acting as a metaphor for the current banking crisis and bailouts. Why that makes it, um, even stupider?

Hi and Lois: Spoiler Alert!

This is not how spoiler alerts work. Generally, when you issue a spoiler alert, you then go on to give away the spoiler. Otherwise, there's no need to alert anyone.

It seems to me that you really ought to understand the things you write about, but Mort Walker Inc. and Bil Keane obviously disagree.

Family Circus: It's a good thing Spider-Man's mother wasn't afraid of insects.

The hilarious thing about this cartoon, of course, is that:

1. Spider-Man is, like, sort of part spider,
2. spiders are not, in fact, insects, and
3. Peter Parker's mother was, in fact, dead long before he ever got bitten by the radioactive spider.

I'm not entirely sure those last two points are intentional sources of hilarity so much as instances of gross ignorance on the part of the author.