Archie, 3/6/14
Boy, This Archie rerun from the ’90s has turned out to be eerily prescient! It’s true that, in the modern age of atomized, Internet-based media distribution and social networking, many readers have a stronger allegiance to the writers they follow than to the publications those writers work for, especially when those writers can use Twitter and the like to push out information faster than the media outlets’ traditional publication process can. This has resulted in many cases in a change in the power relationships between writers and publishers, exemplified quite nicely by Archie and Reggie’s despair over how their business model can survive now that Veronica has demonstrated how easily it can be disrupted. Let’s all pray that this strip’s prediction of a white-ties-and-black-shirts renaissance isn’t equally accurate!
Spider-Man, 3/6/14
I sincerely hope that J. Jonah Iron Manbot Whateverson realizes eventually that the best way to “crush” Spider-Man is to do so metaphorically, simply by being better at catching criminals than he is. For isn’t it much more satisfying to crush a man’s spirit than to mangle his body? The best would be for him to continue to do this for years, and, every time he emerges victorious, to boast of his superiority over the hated wall-crawler, long after everyone else has forgotten who Spider-Man even is anymore.
Crock, 3/6/14
Uncle Claybo is an animal hoarder, and his pigs got sick because of the unsanitary conditions in his house, and he was arrested for animal cruelty :(
Family Circus, 3/5/14
Haha, look at Dolly panic! She’s only beginning to grapple with the plight of the fictional character, who, despite the promise of “Happily Ever After” at the end of their tale, has no existence outside the narrative written for them, and is forced to relive it, ignorant of what awaits them, every time someone picks up the book. “Time is a flat circle,” as Rust Cohle said on True Detective. Dolly’s real fear is not for Snow White, who is barely real for her, but for herself, and that fear is fully justified.
Apartment 3-G, 3/5/14
Whoops, looks like we’ve gone from “Tommie has a fiancé” to “Tommie’s fiancé died in a plane crash” in a mere nine weeks! And since Tommie delayed Jim with “love-drowsiness” and caused him to miss his plane in the first place, there’ll be some nice guilt to motivate her character into epic fits of maudlin ennui for months and months! First up: Tommie’s story shifts from “My fiancé is a real human who exists” to “My fiancé died in a plane crash that was definitely not made up boo hoo hoo I’m so sad I can’t possibly do my share of apartment chores for the next several weeks.”
Beetle Bailey, 3/5/14
Right you are to “?”, Beetle! This is the focus for the strip today? Isn’t there something even vaguely zany happening anywhere else?
Hagar the Horrible, 3/5/14
Do you think Hagar had to kill everybody in the waiting room in order to get in to see the doctor? Or did he only murder a few, at which point his intentions were clear and everyone else just fled in terror?
Crankshaft, 3/5/14
Funky Winkerbean is spending the week focusing on the collapse of a longtime character’s dreams and sense of self. Crankshaft, Funky’s zanier sister strip, is more into physical comedy, like this gag, where the strip’s main character’s bad back is causing him so much physical agony that he’s reduced to crawling on the floor.
Funky Winkerbean, 3/4/14
Cindy Summers had been just about the only major Funky Winkerbean character to have escaped Westview’s depressive, cancerous gravitational pull, but since her discriminatory firing, her fantasy of personal happiness is now over and God, she’s even more miserable looking about it that I would’ve imagined. Look at the loving detail on the bags under her eyes in the final panel! Has she been crying? Or is she just tired, so very tired? Anyway, I love that instead of going to one of Cleveland’s hipper neighborhoods or even to some nice, soothing chain motel where she can get her bearings, she’s chosen to have the cab take her directly from the airport to the ex-husband-managed pizza place that’s the social and economic epicenter of the dying suburb where she grew up. You can go home again. You must go home again. THERE IS NO ESCAPING YOUR HOME, NOW, AGAIN, OR EVER.
Curtis, 3/4/14
Don’t worry everyone! Gunk did not die when he leapt into the icy water to rescue dolphins! He just went into a state of hibernation so everyone thought he was dead. (We did not get similarly reassuring closure on the status of the dolphins.) Also he has now explicitly admitted that the inhabitants of Flyspeck Island are a distinct and non-human species of hominids? Look for the U.S. Navy to quarantine the place and send in teams of scientists as soon as word gets out.
Better Half, 3/4/14
Harriet would prefer to have sex with a woman.
Lockhorns, 3/4/14
Loretta would prefer to have sex with the Brawny towel guy.
