The Comics Curmudgeon

The Emperor of Ice Cream’s regime is crumbling

Heathcliff, 6/17/13

Lots of people like cake, you know. Really like cake. Very few of them use this like of cake as the ideological basis for an independent cake-empire, which declares its separation from the insufficiently cake-worshipping polity to which it previous owed allegiance and then presumably goes on to aggressively impose cake-adoration on its unwilling neighbors. Heathcliff, as ever, does not do anything by half measures.

Crankshaft, 6/17/13

Oh, goodie, it’s been months since Crankshaft journeyed to New York to make vaguely New York-themed puns! But first, in today’s third panel, we’re treated to the precise moment when Pam gives up on trying to make her dad love her.

Spider-Man, 6/17/13

“With the Kingpin in custody” is kind of an obscure way to say “Now that we’ve finished having surreptitious beach-sex, let’s talk loudly and ostentatiously about our supposed romantic entanglements with women,” but I don’t want to tell you guys how to live your lives.

Happy Father’s Day, jailbirds!

Heathcliff, 6/16/13

Somewhere, deep down in the bowels of my long-term memory, there’s a little glimmer that tells me that, yes, Heathcliff’s father has always been a notorious hardened criminal in the strip. I’m not sure what the significance is of the fact that he wears his prison uniform even as he walks the streets a free man. Are we meant to understand that he’s only just escaped from the joint and hasn’t had time to change yet? Is this an act of defiance against the government that once put him behind bars? Mostly his uniform just serves to draw uncomfortable attention to the fact that Heathcliff is walking around stark naked.

Dennis the Menace, 6/16/13

A rare double menace from Dennis today! In the throwaway panels, he waits until Margaret comes into earshot before letting everyone know that he doesn’t like her and is only hanging out with her for her cooking; and then he uses this twee little Father’s Day exercise as a chance to inform the other children that his father loves his family, unlike theirs, who will take any excuse to get away from them and enjoy their “hobbies,” alone.

Mary Worth, 6/16/13

Haha, the look on Beth’s face in the final panel is priceless and has made this entire storyline worth it. “Tom! Wait, you want to … what? We never … no. No. Not in front of … are you kidding me, Tom?”

Panels from Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/16/13

Sorry, everybody, I have been remiss in keeping you up to date with Rex Morgan, M.D.! Anyway, remember when Sarah wanted to sell her horsey art, for money? Well, now an actual museum wants to buy that horsey art, to use in a gift shop book! It was way too easy. “Wow … that was too easy!” thinks Sarah. She’s right. Sarah can smell a trap anywhere.

Pluggers, 6/16/13

Pluggers don’t understand that the structure of our global capitalist system ensures that fluctuations in equities and derivatives markets have major and sometimes painful results in the real day-to-day economic life of ordinary citizens. Also, they are very clumsy and often bump into things.

Thursday quickies

Gasoline Alley, 6/13/13

Gasoline Alley’s current plotline involves the contemptible Slim being left to his own devices after his wife travelled to Hawaii without him, but things seem to be looking up as he heads upstairs to accidentally stumble upon his neighbor’s marijuana home-grow operation.

Heathcliff, 6/13/13

Moreover, where does he get the sycophants who laugh uproariously as he savagely beats the uncannily accurate depiction of his owner dangling lifelessly from a limb chosen for its maximum visibility from the house?

Mary Worth, 6/13/13

Pretty sure that even at this moment of sudden and terrible self-knowledge Elinor doesn’t consider herself a “creature,” Narration Box. This sort of needless editorializing is why so many of us don’t trust the mainstream media anymore.

Gil Thorp, 6/13/13

“You OK, Jimmy?”

“Of course I’m not OK, coach! There’s some monstrously huge hand-thing crawling up my chest! Augh, now it’s reaching for my neck! Get it off me, for the love of God, get it off me!”

Unpleasant Tuesday panels

Family Circus, 6/11/13

Hey, everyone, grown-up Keane Kid Jeff Keane is once again pretending to be his older brother Glen’s in-panel avatar Billy filling in for his deceased father, who we’re pretending is still in charge of drawing the strip. Got it? Anyway, this hall-of-mirrors meta-version of Billy is gracing us with illustrated puns this week, and it’s only Tuesday and we’ve already reached ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE LEVEL. Ha ha, look, it’s a majestic lion, king of beasts, lying dead, the vague odor of rot already beginning to waft up from him. A horrifyingly cheerful Big Daddy Keane stands only inches away and pelts the corpse with bloody chunks of meat. I mean, I guess if you’ve already decided that “meat” as a transitive verb means “hurl raw steak at,” why not go all the way into horror, you know?

Better Half, 6/11/13

Speaking of rotting meat, it sounds like Stanley’s past his due date, and will be dead soon! Maybe he’s already putrefying from within? I was going to say that there has to be a sexier set-up for noticing something on your spouse’s naked body than “checking each other for suspicious moles,” but considering Harriet’s husband is a walking semi-corpse, who can blame her here.

Heathcliff, 6/11/13

I guess I would judge a seafood restaurant’s quality not only by the number of cats it attracts, but also by its ability and determination to keep said cats out of the dining areas? Anyway, behind that middle door there’s just a room full of sand and cat shit, FYI.

Do birds capable of flying over water even need boats?

Dennis the Menace and Heathcliff, 6/10/13

Since my main beef with Dennis the Menace is that he long ago ceased to be menacing, I feel obliged to acknowledge the flashes of menace we do see. Just trying to return some ice cream that you’ve already gotten your gross spit all over is less “menacing” than “kind of a dick move,” but I choose to believe that Dennis took the ice cream cone from this guy, gave it several long, languorous licks over a period about 45 seconds, all while maintaining unbroken eye contact, then thrust it back at him, saying “I don’t like this, give me money back.”

Heathcliff, meanwhile, is generally well known for a just-don’t-give-a-shit attitude of the sort that Dennis aspires to. However, here we see that he’s willing to kiss a little ass if that’s what it takes to get what he wants, which frankly saddens me.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/10/13

This strip has spent decades making jokes at the expense of rural Americans, but today’s strip, which implies that country folk are interbreeding with evolutionary throwbacks and other nonhuman hominids, goes too far.

Shoe, 6/10/13

This scene of newspapermen (or newspaperman-birds, I guess) blaming each other for the decline of their industry by spinning a nautical metaphor further and further out of usefulness is, I’m pretty sure, a fairly spot-on depiction of the modern media landscape.

Apartment 3-G, 6/10/13

“You’re kidding, right?! I’m not going to let you wear a white dress in front of a photographers. Lu Ann, you spill things a lot.’

It’s not like cats are good at jumping over things or anything

Marvin, 6/1/13

Marvin’s dad’s brief attempt to interact socially with non-wife-and-Marvin persons ended in abysmal failure when his co-worker Ted clumsily attempted to flirt with bar-ladies in his presence. I guess Jeff had been brought as “wing-man,” since there’s nothing that makes you more attractive to a woman than a dead-eyed friend with a combover? Anyway, Jeff will now briefly enjoy his home life again, at least until the next Marvin-expelled toxic event reminds him that hell is other people, no matter what their age.

Heathcliff, 6/1/13

Heathcliff is taking a little break from its downward (upward?) spiral into insanity to do some classic cat humor — haha, the cat wants to eat the delicious, delicious birds! — but I still have some questions about the context here. Namely, is Heathcliff playing in an all-cat baseball game? It would explain why the outfield fence is only 18 inches high, I guess.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/1/13

Having successfully expelled Frankie from their lives with righteous indignation, Darrin and Jessica are getting back to what they do best: smirking at each other while engaged in passive-aggressive one-upmanship.

Pluggers, 6/1/13

Pluggers would rather spend hours driving around Chicago whining about parking than take the elitist communist L train.