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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/13/12

There’s definitely an interesting socioeconomic analysis to be done on the ways in which certain activities that were once deadly earnest attempts to gather food came, in an era of relative caloric abundance, to be luxury pastimes instead. But I’m hard-pressed to explain how Snuffy and Lukey, who never had any kind of job when times were flush, have had their lives affected by extra-Holler financial crises. Perhaps there’s less demand for chickens, Hootin’ Holler’s sole export, which means there are fewer chickens for the two old rascals to steal? More likely, “th’ economic downturn” refers not to anything that would affect us flatlanders, but rather to some apocalyptic event that severed the last tenuous economic tendril connecting Hootin’ Holler to the outside world, leaving its isolated residents with no option but to turn back to the forests and streams for sustenance. This crisis presumably happened decades ago, and so what we’re seeing here is a prequel strip showing the genesis of the Snuffy Smithiverse as we’ve come to know it.

Mary Worth, 9/13/12

Hey, remember when Dawn got dumped by her boyfriend and she was incredibly depressed and then her dad took her on a cruise and they almost died but then were rescued and it made Dawn re-evaluate everything and decide to live a more meaningful life? Well, in order to live that more meaningful life, she bowed to Mary’s demand that she volunteer at the hospital, and, oh look, she’s found a Dave-replacement — a similarly bland and blond fellow with a monosyllabic all-American name — on her very first day there. How efficient! I guess she can stop volunteering now, mission accomplished!

Herb and Jamaal, 9/13/12

Shorter Herb: “I only married my wife because she’s physically attractive, and now I can’t understand why she’s mad at me all the time.”