Big Nate: My favorite place in the mall is Pretzel Time!

This comic is hilarious because fat kids like to eat.

Better Half: I caught a snowflake on my tongue and it tasted like a tropical cocktail.

After a long break, Better Half has returned to its always cogent global warming commentary.

Crock and Non Sequitur: Why would he like living in jail?

There are two kinds of prison jokes:

1. Prisoners practically have it better than the rest of us!
2. Anal rape!

No, these are not contradictory at all.

*Non Sequitur from 12-31-10

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.

Crankshaft: I use mine to kill spiders in the basement.

Make all the fruitcake jokes you want, Crankshaft, you'll never be as hacky as The Born Loser.

Family Circus: That's it, I'm tired. I'm gonna call it a year.

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.

This is, on the one hand, rather surprising and, on the other, not surprising at all.

Herb and Jamaal: Ever since I had that argument with my mother-in-law...

A mother-in-law joke. That's very clever, Herb and Jamaal. Tomorrow you should write about how other women are terrible, too.

Off the Mark: Bryan didn't realize who was following him.

Off the Mark is a really solid single-panel gag cartoon that I rarely talk about but usually enjoy. Today's installment uses both Twitter and a pun in service of a joke, which normally wouldn't be a good sign, but Mark Parisi manages to pull it off.

The cartoon works because neither Twitter nor the pun are the joke in and of themselves. Rather, they sort of each work as a set-up and a punchline at the same time; the tweets set up the pun, but the pun does just as good a job setting up the tweets. And what's really funny about the cartoon is the situation.

Which makes sense, given that single-panel cartoons tend to live or die by the absurd situations they depict.

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

AAARGH MAKE IT STOP.

Family Circus: See, Daddy! The Christmas stuff IS up!

Department stores sure do start whoring Christmas out early these days, don't they? Ha hOH MY GOD WHO DECAPITATED SANTA CLAUS AND AFFIXED HIS HEAD TO A POLE?

Seriously, though, that works surprisingly well as a metaphor, unintentional though I'm sure it was. Unless ... is anyone else seeing that sly smile on Jeffy's face?

Bizarro: Enough with the tweeting.

I was hoping that in the months that I'd been away from the comics section, cartoonists would have finally ceased to make Twitter jokes.

Apparently not.

Non Sequitur: Meet the blogger

Really, Wiley? A mother's basement joke? Really?

No one hates new(ish) media like Wiley hates new(ish) media.

Better Half: I automatically prescribe antidepressants to anyone who's been married as long as you have.

This cartoon is hilarious because marriage makes people depressed and drives them to suicide.

BC: You've been married for 20 years, Jake.

The thing about adultery that so many people don't seem to understand these days is that it's HILARIOUS.*

*OK, not really.

Edge City: I'M GOING TO CAMP!

Congratulations to Edge City for being the first comic to reach for the summer camp trope. With two children characters in the strip, the author should be able to use it twice without too much trouble. A third time in one summer might be pushing it, but if it's still producing this much hilarity, who's to say it would be wrong?

Pardon My Planet: Art objects.

It would appear that modern art is every cartoonist's worst enemy.

Perhaps comic strips are every modern artist's worst enemy as well.

Drabble: You stared into the refrigerator for half an hour! You're on your way to becoming a true man!

Is this something men actually do? Or is Ralph/the guy who writes Drabble just making up sexist tropes to torture his son/audience?

Curtis and Mallard Fillmore: I've got students interviewing for summer internships in flip-flops, with bare midriffs...

These kids today with their [insert activity old people dislike]. [Cue contemptuous and self-righteous chuckling.]

F Minus: Happy Birthday from your husband and all of us here at rememberyourwifesbirthday.com

Et tu, F Minus? Even you?

Hagar the Horrible: What's for dinner, Helga?!

Men. Dates. Hilarity. Etc.