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Suburban Fairy Tales, 4/26/24

Suburban Fairy Tales is one of the new strips I’ve been reading, and it’s a basically funny and enjoyable strip about cute animals, so I regret that my first discussion of it on this blog has to be scolding, but: look, it’s perfectly OK if your cute anthropomorphic animal character wears pants, and it’s also perfectly OK if they don’t, but it’s not OK at all if they take off their pants mid-comic strip and clearly aren’t wearing any underwear but also have no obvious genitalia. It raises so many questions about what pig genitals looks like in this universe, and also, frankly, what pig genitals looks like in our universe, which I absolutely refuse to Google image search on but like 5% of me wants to know how well the two correlate. Also, just FYI, that’s a “3” on the pig’s tank top, because he’s #3 out of the Three Little Pigs, which is also fine, but I definitely thought for a while that that was a weird “outie” belly button taking up most of his torso, which is not fine, though it did distract me from his whole genital situation, so there’s that.

Gasoline Alley, 4/26/24

Good news, everyone! They’re not going to change the name of Gasoline Alley after all, because the Town Charter contains a number of entrenched clauses, laid down more than a century ago, that can never be amended or altered, even by a vote of the people or their representatives! This is probably fine. Hopefully Mayor Melba will not read whatever this document has to say about women holding office, or owning property.

Mary Worth, 4/26/24

One day, many years ago, a young man who had not yet reached the age of 30 decided to try out this “blogging” thing by joking about his favorite comic strip, Mary Worth, online. “This strip contains what may be the first use of the phrase ‘Wilbur makes an overture’ in the history of the English language,” he typed, while chortling drolly. Anyway, now it’s the far-future year 2024, and an old man is lying in the gutter is screaming “FUCK YOU” at Wilbur, because he knocked the old man over in the midst of a weird sex fantasy about rescuing the lady at whom he made that long-ago overture from a nightmarish ape-man, and frankly I’m pretty jazzed about it, and jazzed that I still get to bring breaking imoprtant breaking Wilbur news like this to you, my faithful readers.

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Mark Trail, 4/25/24

Mark, I don’t know if I’d trust a horse with my life in this scenario. Have you ever seen a horse race? They’re just running in circles, for our amusement! Do you think they know how to get out of the racetrack? Because they sure don’t act like it! They just keep running in circles!

Gearhead Gertie, 4/25/24

Speaking of racing around in circles for the amusement of others, these NASCAR drivers are especially brave, in my opinion. There’s a crazed blimpjacker on the loose! Probably she’s going to use that blimp for terrorism purposes! Has nobody here read or seen Black Sunday?

Mary Worth, 4/25/24

OK, sorry I ever thought we were in for some kind of Redemption of Wilbur Weston because of the way he accidentally saved a child. No, something much more morally complex is happening, as today in a similarly absent-minded state Wilbur accidentally manhandles an old man into the street. In a way, isn’t each and every one of us an anarchic, half-conscious presence in the world, doing good and ill by turns in ways that often barely register on us?

Shoe, 4/25/24

“Ariana Grande is 30 years old and her first album came out in 2013. What kind of idiot doesn’t know this?” you’re probably asking. The answer is: newspaper comics readers. They don’t know who she is and think her name sounds dumb! This strip is a public service.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/24/24

OK, fine, I admit it, I’m a hypocrite: after many years of complaining that Rex Morgan, M.D., doesn’t do high-stakes medical drama, all of the sudden it’s been doing high-stakes medical drama and I haven’t been talking about it. Because it’s drama about an adorable dog, and that’s too high stakes! I don’t want a fictional dog to suffer! I want to see more stuff like the strip’s off-model Jughead knockoff developing a sudden inability to eat sandwiches! Anyway, the dog is going to be fine, according to this competent medical professional. There’s plenty to criticize about the current state of the medical profession, and now I’m going to add “I can’t bring a box of whatever I just ate too much of to the doctor and say ‘my tummy hurts’ and get a diagnosis” to the list.

Intelligent Life, 4/24/24

Speaking of your tummy hurting … you guys ever heard of DoorDash? DoorDash … for when you don’t want to cook food, and would rather just order it instead. DoorDash! [punchline TK]