MOTHER GOOSE & GRIMM: Monday:

MOTHER GOOSE & GRIMM: Monday: "On his day off, the Grim Reaper loves making parking meters expire." OK, Mike Peters, here's the three ways you ruined the gag. 1.) Why "on his day off"? It's confusing and irrelevant. 2.) Saying "loves making" it happen is a bad setup. Who cares what the Grim Reaper feels here? He's the Grim Reaper. You've got to do a lot more setup if you want to make the Grim Reaper's emotional state be part of the gag. 3.) The "expire" thing is worthless, and bolding it for emphasis is extra-worthless. The real joke is not some lame pun about expiring, it's the conceptual gag about how when the Grim Reaper comes by, the parking meters' time is up.

So from the original caption, we're left with ". . . Grim Reaper . . . parking meters . . . " Both of which are in the drawing, so you don't need to mention them by name. Now get rid of the Reaper's "heh, heh, heh" thought balloon--which is really just you laughing at your own gag--and you've got just the image: Death striding past a row of parking meters, which are going "click," one by one. Now that, Mike Peters--that's a strip you could sell to the New Yorker. If you weren't such a crappy artist, we mean.