Heathcliff, 4/21/14
The defining feature of Heathcliff’s universe is unrelenting low-grade surrealism. And the human residents of this world seem pretty inured to it all at this point: whether we’re talking about fish used as sporting equipment or word-helmets or balls of string with faces or the Garbage Ape, it’s just not anything to get worked up about. So I’m glad to see that the fishmongers, at least, are offended by this unicycle-based theft. “Oh come on this … this is absurd. Wouldn’t it have been actually faster and easier for him to grab it and run away on foot? Plus, that unicycle doesn’t even have any pedals! You’re just kicking your paws up and down in mid-air, on nothing! Damn you, Heathcliff, and your unstoppable reign of mild whimsy!”
Archie, 4/21/14
This Archie strip is clearly a modern-day joke grafted unsuccessfully onto an old one: the corny Archie versions of an iPad and Netflix and Mad Men prove that someone involved is aware of cultural developments of the ’10s, and yet the core gag makes absolutely no sense, unless some people get a secret “Netflix remote” that doesn’t let you actually look up shows by name but does let you scroll through them endlessly at random until you find the one you want. Anyway, when do you think the art from this strip originally ran? I’m thinking Jughead’s inexplicable Yankees shirt places it around 9/11, when the awful attacks on New York meant that we all had to pretend to like their sports teams, for some reason.
Dennis the Menace, 4/21/14
Ever since those hippies Woodward and Bernstein managed to screw over Nixon, Henry Mitchell has managed to blame the Washington Post for just about everything, so don’t doubt that this little fender-bender is also going to turn out to be the liberal media’s fault.
B.C., 4/21/14
Here is today’s B.C.! It’s about eating rabbit turds.
Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/20/14
We’re four and half months into the Terry Beatty era on Rex Morgan, M.D., people! One of the interesting challenges in taking over a long-running continuity strip like this is integrating your predecessors’ character designs into your own style, which can have awkward results — see, for instance, Niki’s starfish hair, which was always pretty bizarre but at least sort of worked with Graham Nolan’s aesthetic, but poor Beatty is kind of stuck with it here. I am glad to see that the new artist is adhering to another tradition involving Niki — namely, that whenever frank discussions of his sexuality are on the table, he’s suddenly drawn to look like he’s about thirty years old.
Judge Parker, 4/20/14
Don’t worry about April out in the jungle, Randy … she’s in her element out there! Plus she has a nice, sharp knife. When you make April leave her own wedding reception to go look for your stepmom because she wandered off into the mercenary-lousy jungle, somebody’s going to get stabbed.
Beetle Bailey, 4/20/14
I’ll admit it: I got to panel five and I thought, “Well, I never expected that Beetle Bailey’s decades-long run would end with all of Camp Swampy dead in some sort of mass cult suicide, but I’m willing to run with this.”
Apartment 3-G, 4/19/14
Well, this thing has finally wended its way to wherever the hell it is it’s going! And that hell is: Tommie is going to “work” through the grief of her fiancé dying in a plane crash by “working” as a vet tech! She used to “work” as a nurse, which is not the same thing as a vet tech, but Jack is a large animal vet and humans are a kind of large animal, so probably she’ll do fine, and anyway she got fired for being sad about her dead fiancé, which strikes me as slightly illegal? Hopefully she’ll get “paid” for her “work”! And hopefully Jack won’t continue to be super mean to her? This all seems super emotionally healthy, A+++ grieving, good job, everybody.
B.C., 4/19/14
Ha ha, these talking turtles are planning to … kidnap and enslave that talking bird, for its eggs? I’m not in favor of that, and in addition would like to point out that turtles also lay eggs.
