Adam at Home, Big Nate, Betty, and Candorville: Have you given any thought to a New Year's resolution?

I don't really blame cartoonists for using any particular trope (unless it's an especially egregious circumstance). The sheer number of stories (short though they may be) that cartoonists have to come up with over the course of a year is pretty daunting, after all.

The problem is that it's hard to really say anything particularly new or interesting or funny when you're simply rehashing a set-up that's been used a thousand times over. And that's what's happening here. These are all solid comic strips, but they're basically just going through the motions today.

Betty: Wait! Why aren't there any red gumdrops on it?

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?

Betty: Deciding which to pay and when gives me the feeling that I have control over my life.

I am a fan of the quiet-loud joke construction. It's basically the comics section equivalent of the quiet-loud-quiet song format Nirvana made so famous.

Betty: Hockey season's greetings.

This comic is hilarious because it's written in Canadian.

Betty: SPLOOSH!

This comic is hilarious because Betty and Alex want to have a threesome with an old lady.

Betty: Think of them as kind of a sorbet.

Look. Having a boot fetish is one thing. Having a Croc fetish is just sick.

Betty: What do you think?

This comic is hilarious because Bub's desire to have sex with a woman in thigh-high, leather, stiletto boots has been overcome by his irrational concern that having sex with a woman that is taller than him will make him less of a man.

Betty: I like these boots.

This comic is hilarious because Bub is attempting to convince Betty to buy thigh-high, leather, stiletto boots so as to fulfill his as yet undisclosed sexual fetish.

Betty: Beep! Beep!

This is one of those cases where the comic would be better if the third panel were omitted, but actually omitting the third panel would probably render the joke incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't read the comics section every day. It's not the cartoonist's fault, so much as it a flaw in the medium. Daily exposition is a necessary component of even the very simple continuing stories in comic strips because cartoonists just can't trust their readers to stay up to date or pay a ton of attention. It doesn't have to be this way, of course, but it is the way the medium has evolved at the present time.

Betty: Whap!

This comic is hilarious because you should buy newspapers because you can't SMASH A FLY WITH A COMPUTER, NOW FUCKING CAN YOU?

Betty: One interesting thing about an online newspaper is access to past editions.

This comic is hilarious because Betty has just discovered the existence of the Internet.

Next time in Betty: Betty marvels at all the pornography.

Betty: It's like watching a vampire hug a braid of garlic!

And this comic is hilarious because teenage boys don't like hugging their mothers.

Hi and Lois, Betty and Daddy's Home: I'm a kid of Camp Runamucca...

In case you haven't been paying attention, every child in the comics section has been sent off to summer camp, where they are participating in such traditional tropes as:

• Going to a camp with a ridiculous name.
• Having enormous counselors make them do stuff they don't want to do.
• Singing stupid songs.
• Not understanding old-fashioned games because their minds have been poisoned by teh modern technology.

Betty: Sigh.

This comic is also hilarious because children like to watch television.

Adam @ Home and Betty: How did you marry someone as nice as Mom?

The actual answer is that this is a comic strip, and in the world of most comic strips all men are schlubby and all women are MILFs.*

*This is also true of many television worlds.

I actually kind of admire the way Betty defies this trend. Gerry Rasmussen seems pretty resolute about making all of his characters, male and female alike, as ugly as possible.

Betty: If it helps, think of it as an app for your iBod.

While The Family Circus settles for combining just two tropes, Betty manages to riff lamely on three of them:

1. Kids get bored easily,
2. It's boring inside, but FUN FUN FUN outside, and
   
3. These kids today with their computers and their iPods and their techhoozits!

Also, a lazy pun!

Betty: Parry Hotter?

This comic is hilarious because Betty is buying gay porn for her son.