The life of a second-string comics blogger isn’t all shootouts and fresh new characters. Most days it’s just slappin’ down the html and takin’ care of business:
Six Chix, 7/17/14
Like poking fun at an easy target:
Hey lady, “testing the limits of humor” usually means the upper limits.
Apartment 3-G, 7/17/14
Or two:
When Jack comes back on foot to lead the mare away, Tommie will regret having brought up the whole “glue” thing. Unless he takes Carol, too.
Gil Thorp, 7/17/14
Marking the return of cherished themes:
Hey, Kaz’s earring is back, and ready for its closeup! Hi, Mimi — how are the kids? Still enjoying 2005? Potatoes, again?
Slylock Fox (panel), 7/17/14
Reporting industry news:
Slylock Fox auteur Bob Weber Jr. has signed on with Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Enterprises LLC as a gag writer for Hägär the Horrible, and apparently has designs on drawing it, too.
Dick Tracy, 7/17/14
Keeping folks up to date on beloved comics:
“Daddy” Warbucks’ and Tracy’s crews look for Annie, last known to have been hostage to the Butcher of the Balkans, who The Great Am believes is now in touch with dangerous spy Axel. B.O. Plenty gets a letter with a vintage stamp and no ZIP Code, which gets passed to Dick, who recognizes the handwriting as Annie’s and the contents as the coded location of an abandoned island nuclear facility, to which he boats in the middle of the night.
Tracy wakes up in a hospital in Simmons Corners in June, 1944, recovering from shell-shock sustained at Anzio. Annie says they’ve known each other for years, and that he’s the main police presence in the town where she lives with Ma and Pa Silo.
Tracy seems to have disappeared from the present. An informant tells Warbucks his boss Axel had him collect the Butcher and Annie, but dies mysteriously before he can say where he took them.
Back in 1944, Tracy is discharged. Annie becomes alarmed when he says “there’s a war on”, thinking he believes what she apparently thinks is a charade. She visits Professor Kenyon, for whom she does chores, then gets a call at the Silos’ asking her to meet with the owner of the local newspaper — a Mr. Axel. Axel, a sinister sort, interrogates Annie about Professor Kenyon and his experiments, then sends her away to listen to the “Belinda” radio show, which seems to have a hypnotic effect on people.
Family Circus, 7/17/14
And, of course, slagging on little Jeffy Keane:
“Why no, Jeffy, I don’t know how he could say such a thing! You have totally achieved every bit of your full potential. There, there ….”
Update: Happy 40th birthday, Josh, and congratulations on completing
The Enthusiast!
– Uncle Lumpy
How are you celebrating America’s Birthday, patriots?
Wizard of Id, 7/4/14
The Wizard of Id crew exists in some faux-medieval land far the bounty of American Freedom, yet its inhabitants are aware that the American experiment ought to mean an end to strife, and the discovery that we can join together with our former enemies to celebrate democracy.
Crock, 7/4/14
In Crock, we see the jealousy that our national greatness arouses in others, as these cruel and cynical Frenchmen mockingly pantomime our Independence Day celebrations while imposing their colonial will in the North African desert.
Dennis the Menace, 7/4/14
Dennis imagines his future manic dictatorship, in which the special nature of this day’s celebration is lost in a ceaseless barrage of explosions, each gaudier and louder than the last, driving all rational thought from everyone’s mind until they can no longer think straight enough to resist his menacing tyranny.
Family Circus, 7/4/14
The Keane Kids represent contemporary Americans’ total ignorance of our nation’s Founding: they don’t know or don’t care that the nitrate-salt tubes and sugar-filled buns they eagerly cram down their greedy maws would have filled our first generation of political leaders with mingled terror and disgust.
Beetle Bailey, 7/4/14
Finally, Beetle Bailey reminds you to ring, not bong. Don’t do drugs, kids!
Family Circus, 7/3/14
Man, you guys, those are some glum-looking Keane Kids right there. Just alone in that featureless room with the cat. How do we get out? is the one question that animates their minds. Not just out of the room — though they want to get out of the room, of course — but out of their heads, out of their family, out of their lives. They’ve seen the antics of cats and dogs on the computer screen, obviously, and they wonder: what about the giggling humans in the background? Do they make money, somehow? Do they live exciting, dynamic lives, lives not spent in some room with a white rug and cream walls and no art? Could Kittycat be their ticket to that life? Too bad Kittycat doesn’t share their ambition, their desperation. Kittycat likes the featureless room. Kittycat just wants to take a bath, then maybe a nap.
Spider-Man, 7/3/14
“Thanks for getting my car back, Doctor Octopus! It’s, uh, all pretty smashed up and undriveable now, but I appreciate the thought. At least that guy didn’t successfully heist it!”
Luann, 7/3/14
Hey you guys, I know I’ve been super remiss in keeping you up to date on Luann’s queasy-making erotic stylings! Anyway, today in Luann’s queasy-making erotic stylings: Gunther’s mom wants Gunther to make good on his spontaneous and instantly regretted boast that he was going to move with Rosa to Peru so she can have the house to herself, for sex. It says a lot about Luann that Quill/Gunther’s mom is the least revolting pairing the strip has offered us in years.
