How can you tell the mark of a professional artist? Birds that are really the letter "m," for one. I mean...I know Heathcliff is in all of 73 newspapers, but m-shaped birds? Really?

Besides that, there are a few things that I'm disappointed in. First is Iggy Nutmeg's imagination. "I think it's a lap." Woah man...you just blew my mind!



I hope that Heathcliff doesn't see it as a lap. Perhaps a cubist expressionist dadaist pre-Raphialite representation of Mrs. Nutmeg's breasts melting onto a spinning turntable as it falls into the third level of Hell. I hope that Heathcliff walks up to Iggy's sandcastle and upends it, or at the very least gives his own critique. "I think it's a cluster of terrible, forked penises, rising from a monolith." That'll show him.

And speaking of Mrs. Nutmeg...must she always wear an apron? She's on a beach! I know you're like...76 or something...but wear a dress or a one piece or even a tankini if you're feeling sexy. You're not cooking. You're not cleaning. To be honest, I've never seen you do a goddamn thing that requires an apron, so stop wearing one! Grow some hands while you're at it, Stumpy. The shark fin is a particularly tasteful accessory.

Some random, nameless people who will never in a million years appear again in this strip got lazy and decided to forgo garbage bags, throwing their garbage directly into their singular can via the window. Heathcliff makes them pay for this grave mistake, floating in with twilight and eating some of the garbage, which, obviously, always requires that he flips the can over leaving the same sized mound with the same garbage as all the other times. He then floats away, leaving the man and woman to squeeze through the door of their poorly designed house to stare haplessly/furiously at the Monopoly money left on the top of the can because, as we all know, cats that walk like humans are impossible to catch.

Absolutely none of this will matter in a mere minute though, as Pac Man is preparing to eat their house. Tragic.

I can't exactly tell what's what in this strip today, mainly because the secretary says "bait" as opposed to what's in the fucking Chineese take-out box. Is it sweet and sour pork? General Tso's chicken? That sleeping fish from Super Mario World?

I don't think that it's just worms in the box, because who in their right fucking mind would take worms to a vet? I'd like to nominate the cat wearing the purse, but again, I don't think you'd exactly describe worms, who have the sole purpose of wriggling around, as "listless and lethargic."

What's in the box?

Mr. Nutmeg is a sweet transvestite.

Heathcliff, having easily reached the two hand fee to get into State Penitentiary, must now navigate over the inner barbwire fence to see some of his relatives, who, as it turns out, got much more than a five minute major back in January. The Nutmeg Kid looks pretty pissed off that Heathcliff didn't take both hands from Propeller Cap.

I beg to differ, Your Honor, but Heathcliff is worse than the rooster trial. Why is a lawyer giving council to his client bad? What fucking rooster trial? Push your glasses up to your eyes! Shit...you're talking to a floating Weeble! This is way worse than the rooster trial, you old fuck.

The price of Cas (sic) being such as it is, Heathcliff and the Nutmegs are forced to drive a magic, floating cow.

The fisherman can't read.

Heathcliff landed a gig as a guest photographer for Playboy, hence the smoking jacket and pipe. The hot dog vendor, who I hope becomes a regular character, mistakes this as signs of a cat having a cold and decides to cure it the only way he knows how: heating up the brown water left in the package of hot dog wrappers.

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Peter Gallagher went to fill up his car today and noticed what all of us have noticed for quite some time: gas prices are way up. He had to spend the entirety of the paycheck he received for this strip on gas and only wound up with 1/4th of a tank, because comicing is only lucrative if your strip doesn't encourage people to set fire to their house via lighting the funny pages on fire.

Enraged, he returned to his loft where, after hours of overturning stools and whiskey bottles and drawing tables, he sat down and thought of a way to act out against this injustice, and then figured that the only way to do it would be to show a random passerby observing the dickishness of his hero. Why not? When life gives oil executives oil, they make a massive profit. When life gives Heathcliff lemons, well, he's gonna do the same motherfucking thing.

1. Obtain lemons
2. Make lemonade
3. ????
4. Profit

There's only a few things wrong with this, I guess, if you want to be lenient. Taking the standard price for lemonade (I wouldn't pay more than 25 cents) and multiplying by 100 isn't gouging, it's retarded. In fact, if somebody were to be selling $25 lemonade, it'd better be either a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster or a retard really is selling it, and, in the latter case, you'd smile, give him maybe a dollar, he'd smile, give you lemonade, and life would move on.

Besides that, other children could obtain lemons just as easily, if not easier, than a cat could, and they'd probably charge for less. Important-Briefcase-Carrying-Man is hardly pressed to find a better deal on street yellow, he just wants to talk to a cat.

Finally, I'd wager that, despite Heathcliff's ambivalent nature, that the price gouging is not going well. He brought one fucking pitcher of the stuff, and it isn't exactly at a premium. To make matters worse, he's set up shop in a vacant lot. Important, Briefcase Carrying Men only go to vacant lots to obtain sex and...ohhhh...

Heathcliff is selling his body for the low price of $25 (the bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin' (or so I have read)). An Important, Briefcase Carrying Man thinks that $25 is a bit much for a fat, old Tabby cat, lemonade or not, and insults Heathcliff's poor business sense on his way to a powerlunch of hookers and blow.

Mr. Nutmeg has finally snapped. During the night, he slaughtered four neighborhood cats and put their heads in his weeping willow tree. When questioned, he claims that it's "art" and that "people just don't understand the burdens of creativity in the modern world."

His neighbor is justifiably bug eyed: While going through all of this, Mr. Nutmeg is jerking it under his jeans.

Heathcliff, who will never hit a baseball again, has a perfect understanding of the English language. The ump is just being an asshole.

Also, that isn't what backstops look like. Or umpires. HE HAS NO EYES. He's also going to need some dental work if he bites on the bar that is very clearly in his mouth. Maybe he didn't say "meow," and was just mumbling through the bar, and Peter Gallagher had a hard time understanding him?

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Heathcliff, a notorious cheat and a general bastard, floats to Loans with a two of a kind, seeking a loan to cover Mr. Nutmeg's raise. He is refused on the grounds that he is a fucking cat, but for the sake of the "joke," it's because Heathcliff didn't stop at the fucking drug store to buy a new deck of cards to make his two of a kind something a bit more formidable. Some swindler.

A Jew selling pork products is pissed because he got a thank you card instead of money. I don't blame him. You can't buy a new hand (or nose-hair trimmers) with thank you notes.

People are starting to notice this...

Which is awesome. It isn't like I'm being noticed in any crazy way, but I just checked Google Analytics, and it appears that I'm starting to get organic hits from Google via the word "Heathcliff" alone. I'm on Page 5 of Google for it, without quotation marks even, which is higher than I ever expected to go. I've leapfrogged a ton of pages about the cartoon, Wuthering Heights, and even the Cosby Show. People link here without even telling me that I've been linked too. Life, such as it is, is good.

So uhh...thanks for reading. I guess I should probably link to other comic mocking blogs here as opposed to on my other blog or something, because I actually get hits from them, and fair is fair. And it probably adds to my PageRank. Page 4, here I come am.

Mrs. Nutmeg locked Heathcliff and Mr. Nutmeg out of the house for putting the 18th hole in their front yard.

If that's the clubhouse, then this strip? Utter fucking failure.

Heathcliff is corpulent.

It takes the Horn of Gondor to summon Heathcliff.

Heathcliff is hiding a rubber fist behind his back.

Hands: They have four fingers.

Heathcliff apparently hits a sacrifice fly, and since getting put out is a fantastic thing (i.e. being put out to pasture...and shot through the skull), he does a crazy dance for all of a frame, jumping around like a ballerina before doing some wire-fu. Finally, he does a Russian hat dance, where it turns out that Heathcliff and Co. are playing on probably the worst baseball diamond ever. There also appears to be some sort of odd trade-off going on: Heathcliff either has no face, or he has no eyes.

In any event, there wasn't anybody on the bases, so this, in fact, was not a sacrifice fly, and Heathcliff was just being an asshole.

Heathcliff is part coon. Oh shit...that's racist!

Mr. Nutmeg is appalled at his cat's snobbishness, but not in the least bit concerned that he's standing like a human and talking. Think fast, Mr. Nutmeg: this is only the beginning. Soon Comrade Heathcliff will be drawing up tenants for Animalism, and as we all know, in Glorious Animal's Republic of Heathclifflandia, mouse catches you.

There isn't a joke in this comic.

Using little more than a pine tree and a jackhammer, Heathcliff creates something that...isn't art. Cost of art school for a cat? Mrs. Nutmeg's arms. Is this a clever visual pun? Likely not.

In exchange for Mr. Nutmeg's arms, you cruel, joystick-wearing bitch.

Unsurprisingly, Peter Gallagher blew a fantastic opportunity to cut a "steroids make your penis small" joke. Instead, Heathcliff is likely to kill everybody within a 10 radius of his massive stick.

Heathcliff randomly belches, which means that it's time for a botox injection. Oh wait, it's poker night. Hilarious, but not as much as the woman in the last panel who is pretty much her cat's bitch.

Guess which part of the above is sarcasm.

Animal Planet has just launched their newest endeavor, Dancing With the Dog Catchers, which features celebrities who were dog catchers after their careers washed up dancing with strippers! Catch Dustin Diamond, Mario Lopez, Paula Poundstone, Bob Sagat, Chyna, and more! Mr. Nutmeg is clearly nonplussed - If it wasn't for Iggy, he could be watching Randy Jackson Presents: So You Think You Can Dance? until Mrs. Nutmeg went to sleep...then MILF porn.

WAR COLLEGE! GIANT MUTANTS THAT TOUCH THE WAR COLLEGE SIGN! WAR COLLEGE! MINORITIES! HEATHCLIFF AS A FIVE STAR GENERAL!

WAR COLLEGE, WAR COLLEGE, WAR COLLEGE!

It feels like Jesus Christ just cried out with his dying breath and ripped my brain in two.

Adulthood isn't working out so well for Jughead.