Family Circus: Wow! So now they can drive our car?

This cartoon is hilarious because Billy thinks that dogs can drive when, in fact, they can't.

Pluggers: To a plugger, tennis shoes never were 'tennis' shoes.

Because tennis is one of those hoity-toity, effete sports for rich elites who never had to work a day in their liberal, latte-sipping lives.

Family Circus: I hope I'm as pretty as you when I'm realy old like you, Mommy.

This cartoon is hilarious because Dolly told her mother that she's really old, when, in fact, she's merely middle-aged.

Blondie: No chores?!

This cartoon is hilarious because Dagwood lied to his wife.

Mark Trail: Guns...that's not good...we'd better get out of here!

Who is Rusty talking to? The dog? Given the humorous expression of surprise on her face in the last panel, the dog can apparently recognize what guns are, so maybe she can understand vast quantities of human language, too. In which case, Rusty really ought to think about entering her in some sort of talent contest.

Ziggy: *See next year's diary!

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out any way in which this cartoon could possibly be construed as hilarious. But I give up.

There is literally nothing hilarious about this cartoon.

Except maybe the amount of effort that must have gone into coloring it. Which, for the record, is exactly as much effort as the cartoon deserved. Possibly a little more, even.

Shoe: You mean you're making profits again.

Nobody talks like this.

Now, I don't expect a great deal of naturalism in the comics section. There is something of a conceit embedded within the whole construction of the set-up and punchline joke. But I do think that the dialogue should make a little bit of sense. And it really doesn't here.

If someone were tell you that their business was back in the black, you would not reply with a flatly declarative statement of definition. A normal human being would probably congratulate them. But for the sake of this joke, Cosmo could have said something like, "So you're making money again, huh?" Or, even better, he shouldn't have to said anything. But instead we get the dictionary definition, as though the cartoonist just couldn't trust his audience to understand what "back in the black" usually means without him explaining it for us very clearly.

The difference between "So you're making money now, huh?" and "You mean you're making profits again" might seem small. But it's not, really, and it mostly has to do with the question mark, which softens the inflection of the line, but also with the way the construction of the line is turned around and made less formal. It's the difference between a reasonable approximation of naturalism and a line pulled straight from a dictionary.

Pearls Before Swine: Me go eenside now. Protect my potatoes.

Is this the first ball joke in the history of the comics section? I think it just might be.

Family Circus: Do want me to sing you to sleep, Grandma?

This cartoon is hilarious because Jeffy singing would not, in fact, help his Grandma get to sleep.

Sally Forth: Well, Jenny, your six-beers-a-day dad can - I mean, he'll be happy if you're happy.

This cartoon is hilarious because Jenny's dad is an alcoholic.