Mutts and Mother Goose and Grimm: I don't think I have time to send out Christmas cards this year.

I'm feeling magnanimous, so there are just going to have to be a few best comics of the day today.

The cat in this Mother Goose and Grimm is basically me, and the single best way to get me to mention a comic strip is to appeal to my sense of egotism.

Mutts, meanwhile, is just delightful. I don't know what else to say about it, really. It's just so damn delightful. Which, as a general rule, is pretty much what Mutts usually is when it's good.

Mother Goose and Grimm, Mutts, Rhymes with Orange, and Reality Check: Don't play those reindeer games with me, pal!

AAARGH MAKE IT STOP.

Mutts: Little pink sock.

I have a weakness for comics (or anything, really) that depict animals behaving like actual animals. While cats generally don't read clocks, they do often lay around all day playing with socks, sometimes becoming so engrossed in them that they forget its dinnertime. Also, while cats don't sing, if they did, they would definitely sing songs like the one in the first panel. All of which is to say that while the cat in this comic displays human capabilities that actual cats don't possess, the cartoonist is employing those capabilities to highlight actual feline characteristics.

In other words, Mooch is not just a human in a cat's body like most comic strip animals usually are. He's a cat who talks as a stylistic device that only serves to highlight his cattiness.

Mutts: The dude abides.

The Big Lebowski easily falls under the Vonnegut Axiom. Thus a mention for Mutts.

Mutts: Looks like you gained a little weight this summer, Mooch.

It might seem to the outside observer that Mutts is a comic I should probably hate. It does, after all, consist of overly cute characters telling generally terrible jokes.

The thing of it is, though, I actually really like Mutts. But I'm not sure I can say just why the hell that is.

I think it has something to do with the sense of melancholy it sometimes displays and the traditional drawing style. Even the overly cute characters and terrible jokes are overly cute and terrible in old-fashioned ways. It just has a feel to it that no other contemporary comic strip has. And maybe that's enough.

Mutts: I don't see cat nip on the list.

Here in Maine, some ice cream shops sell lobster-flavored ice cream. True story.

Mutts: I bark therefore I am.

Patrick McDonnell may have been going for something cuter here, but this installment of Mutts contains an almost indescribably sad subtext, suggesting as it does that the dog's only consistent companion is its own voice.

Mutts: Sea turtles are perhaps the most endangered species on the planet!!!

Mutts has a tendency to run these message strips that don't bother with anything except the message. It's an annoying habit. Because while I like Mutts, I dislike propaganda, even when I agree with it. There must have been some way to make this (absolutely true and worthwhile!) point without resorting to artless haranguing.

Mutts: Let. It. Go.

It's Earl's helpless expression in the second panel that made me laugh. He wants to let it go. He knows he ought to let it go. But he just can't do it.

It's just like that time I was addicted to heroin.

Mutts and A Softer World: Adventures in melancholy.

An installment like the above makes it pretty clear why Charles Schultz was such a big fan of Mutts.

I have to believe he would have liked A Softer World, as well, had he ever gotten the chance to read it.