Shoe, 4/3/14
The workings of the human mind are mysterious and arbitrary. My own particular mind, for instance, struggles to remember the identities of the advanced hominids in B.C., but uses valuable neurological space to retain the names and schticks of each and every one of the bird-people of Shoe. Loon, for instance, is a sort of noble fool character whose jokes often revolve around his simplistic misunderstandings of life events. Thus, despite Roz’s Goggle Eyes of Murderous Rage here, I think we’re supposed to read his statement not as cruelty but as a harmless literal interpretation of a metaphorical product name. Still, he seems awfully sanguine for someone who casually believes that a substance exists that makes face-flesh invisible and, when applied properly, leaves its wearer’s brain and sinus cavities visible to anyone who wants to take a look.
Beetle Bailey, 4/3/14
I’ve never been in the military and I’m not a gun guy, so I could be wildly off-base on this, but my guess is that Sarge is less mad about Gizmo’s unauthorized but high-tech modifications to his rifle and more about his appalling attitude towards weapons safety, since he appears to be casually pointing the barrel without really looking in the direction of his fellow soldiers (and, more specifically, in the direction of Sarge’s crotch).
Funky Winkerbean, 4/3/14
Last year we breached the narrative space-time barrier between Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, two strips existing in the same universe but 10 years apart, and reality wasn’t torn to shreds, so we have more of that to look forward to, I guess? It appears that the current dullsville “Cory’s mom looks is trying to complete his comic book collection while he’s in Afghanistan” plot is going to dovetail with the even snoozier Crankshaft “Jeff finds his beloved comic books in the attic” storyline (for certain limited definitions of “story”) from earlier this month. Glad you enjoyed those comics again, Jeff! In ten years, your daughter is going to sell them to some lady. Anyway, for everyone who reads Crankshaft and hates its title character, the good news we get today is that 10 years in his future he’s ranting and raving in a squalid old folks’ home somewhere, where nobody’s listening to him.
Pluggers, 4/3/14
PLUGGERS WERE USED TO THINGS BEING ONE WAY BUT NOW THEY’RE ANOTHER WAY WHY ARE THINGS ALLOWED TO CHANGE WHHHYYYYYYY
Shoe, 1/31/14
Comics and other media that present us with a world of anthropomorphic animals generally elide the problem of what that universe’s relationship between predator and prey is like. But it’s hard to avoid if you spend any amount of time thinking about it. Take the birds of Shoe, for instance: the Perfesser is an osprey, according to this unsettlingly detailed chart on the strip’s Wikipedia page. What about the sea life that forms his natural diet? Did they have hopes and dreams? Did any of those fish or mollusks have mothers that they loved? Did they ever feel the stirrings of romance or the icy breath of their own mortality? Today we learn the awful truth: that the squid do indeed have their own independent society, an undersea counterpart to the Shoe gang’s Treetops, and that its leaders are happy to lead predator birds to the regions of that nation where the most vulnerable take shelter. The poor, the mentally ill, the squid who fall through the cracks? They aren’t Squidtown’s problem. They’re food for someone else. And if the squid leadership looks the other way, then the rest of their culture is left alone. This is the worst kind of nightmare.
Apartment 3-G, 1/31/14
Speaking of the worst kinds of nightmare, who on earth could look at the awful top half of that deer head and think “she’s beautiful” and not “AHHH AHHH AHHH GET IT AWAY FROM GET IT AWAY FROM ME”? To be fair, Lu Ann used to be (still is? who even knows) a kindergarten art teacher at a fancy Manhattan school, which means that she probably needs to be very good at smiling and saying nice things about little monsters.
Judge Parker, 1/31/14
Ha ha, look at Judge Parker Senior’s face in that last panel! I’ve decided I’m just going to stop worrying and learn to love his hilariously oblivious privilege-stumble through danger. Car chases? Whee! Snakes? Lovely! Forming an uneasy alliance with narco-terrorists? Charming! It’s not like he’s in the law enforcement game anymore, is he?
Mary Worth, 10/10/13
So Shelly is getting an award for her work volunteering at the homeless shelter (the Nobel Peace Prize? probably!) and who else is she going to thank other than the person who was most responsible for all the good work she’s done over the years: Mary! After all, what’s the more selfless and grueling task: working every day without pay to serve New York City’s vulnerable and sometimes difficult homeless population, or casually telling someone else to do it? The second one, right? It’s only just that Shelly thank Mary in her award speech, but shouldn’t the award just be going directly to Mary? Shouldn’t the homeless carry Mary about the streets of Manhattan on their shoulders, then raise her up and set her on a makeshift altar in an abandoned subway tunnel, worshipping her as their dread Goddess and Mistress?
Shoe, 10/10/13
“Pain in the neck” is pretty clearly a back-formed euphemism for “pain in the ass,” and it’s very rare for anyone to use either phrase to describe actual discomfort in the specified body part, unless they’re being cute; it always refers to someone who’s annoying. The only way this joke works at all, it seems to me, is if the guy dressed as a wizard were an actual doctor making a medical inquiry. But he’s not! Not that you’d have any reason to know this unless, like me, you’re a damned soul/frequent Shoe reader, but the guy dressed like a wizard is the local computer repair guy. Ha ha, because computers are confusing and fixing them is like dark magic! Anyway, long story short, I’m pretty sure the Perfesser is a robot.
