Prickly City: No matter how much evidence or common sense you foist on us, we will never relent!!!

When Prickly City is the voice of reason, you know things are fucked up.

Lola: I told him that cologne was way too musky.

This comic is hilarious because Grampa Crawford is being raped by a bison.

No, really.

Family Circus: I think it was self-defense.

This cartoon is hilarious because Dolly is a sociopath.

On another note, PJ is easily the most tolerable and gentle Keane child. So, of course, he’s the one that's most often sadistically abused, too. This is just the way things go in the cruelly Darwinistic world of The Family Circus.

Big Nate: I'm packing us some water and trail mix.

This comic is hilarious because teenage girls like to shop.

Wizard of Id: They banned him from the zoo for life.

And so The Wizard of Id is moving from thinly veiled jokes about people having sex with animals to outright jokes about people having sex with animals.

I never would have expected a comic strip written by the corpse of Johnny Hart to be at the forefront of the movement for acceptance of man on beast love, but I guess you never know with these things.

Family Circus: Daddy, did you ever know and cavemen?

This cartoon is hilarious because it's obvious that PJ's completely aware that Jeffy is a fucking idiot.

Lola: I wish the prize in this cereal was earplugs.

Like most families in the comics section, this family is comprised of characters who abhor one another.

Candorville, Prickly City and Frazz: Naaaawwww...too dog-ish.

This Candorville is funny, while this Prickly City is not so funny. But the reason I'm highlighting them is that they're both homages to Peanuts. Now, Peanuts is easily one of the best comic strips ever and completely deserves all the homages it receives. But I sometimes wish cartoonists would a pay a bit more attention to other classic comics. I can't even remember ever seeing a Pogo homage, and the last time I saw a Krazy Kat homage was in a Calvin and Hobbes strip.

Speaking of which, Calvin and Hobbes is the other strip that seems to get a lot of love. Frazz, for example, is basically one big Calvin and Hobbes homage.


*Candorville from 8-21-09. Prickly City from 8-22-09.

Family Circus: At last! After all those days of camping in the woods, we're finally home!

And so the Keanes are delusional.

This has nothing to do with their camping trip.

Off the Mark: Luke inadvertently grabs his lightsaber and ends up looking a good deal scarier than he had planned.

I've written before about the need for single-panel cartoons to create situations that are inherently amusing, as there is rarely enough space for a set-up followed by a punchline. And while there is a nominal set-up and punchline joke in this Off the Mark, the writing's real value is that it makes the absurd situation clearer. The situation is funny, but the labeling the writing provides is, in this instance, necessary.

This cartoon also has the advantage of having a well-known set of characters to play off. Most single-panels have to make do without any established characterization, which makes it both more difficult and more important to create an amusing situation.