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Pluggers, 5/16/24

The caption is basic down-home folksiness combined with “pluggers are always hungry,” but the facial expression on the man-bear plugger seems to speak to some real desperation behind his question. “How late are y’all open tonight? I’m asking for regular reasons, not I’ve-been-banned-from-literally-every-other-restaurant-in-town-for-noxious-farts reasons. Just curious if you’re open late, and if, once the dinner rush is over, a fella could get a table that wasn’t too close to anybody else.”

Mary Worth, 5/16/24

Fine, I’m done being grumpy. This one’s good. A panel where it’s just a closeup of Wilbur’s crotch and a toilet while he soliloquies about the impermanence of life? That’s art, actually, and I’m sorry I ever thought any different.

Gearhead Gertie, 5/16/24

Oh wow looks like BIG GOVERNMENT is trying to shut down HARD-WORKING SMALL BUSINESSES so employees can go WATCH CAR RACES, can’t believe NASCAR and its lamestream media mouthpiece Gearhead Gertie have GONE WOKE

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Mary Worth, 5/15/24

Oooh, look everyone, Mary Worth is doing a bit where Wilbur is shouting “Stella!” like Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire, except it’s “Stellan,” the name of his fish, and instead of demanding forgiveness from a wife he’s just assaulted, like Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire, he’s just sad because the fish is dead. Is this what you want, Mary Worth? That we all notice and pay attention to this truly outrageous stunt? That we all titter knowingly at the reference, and maybe post on social media that we realize now that you’ve been playing the long game on this one, for two and a half years? Well, fine, fine, we’ll pay attention to you, but keep in mind that not all attention is good attention.

Slylock Fox, 5/15/24

The central fact of the world of Slylock Fox is that one day, for reasons nobody clearly understood, almost all the animals simultaneously Ascended to sapience, and every strip, in ways ranging from the trivial to the profound, attempts to grapple with the implications of that transformation. For instance: what happens when creatures that had long been solely concerned with eating and sleeping, escaping predators and perhaps experiencing bodily pleasures, suddenly become aware that there is a world out there beyond themselves, a world vast and unknowable — or, perhaps even more terrifying, knowable? What happens when they happen upon a discarded book of spooky fish tales, and learn that their bodies and the sea that sustains them is not all that makes up a fish’s world, but there is spirit and divinity as well? Would they be struck, all at once, with a combination of wonder and terror, like Adam and Eve in the garden, realizing what good and evil were, wondering what comes next?

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Gasoline Alley, 5/14/24

Ha ha yes, last week I had some fun imagining Walt encountering some biblically accurate angels, but this week Walt has entered a dreamscape where he’s conflating going to a public meeting and not actually doing anything helpful until the mayor showed up and fixed the actual problem with being an ancient hero, a biblical patriarch and warrior who triumphs over impossible odds. Don’t worry, though: unlike the real bible, this imagined ancient setting will still include the crushingly unfunny wordplay you have come to expect from this strip.

The Phantom, 5/14/24

Oh, OK, so this whole thing has ultimately been about a little light idol theft, and I think it’s funny that this bad guy thinks he can rope our hero in with the promise of ill-gotten idol riches. The Phantom would never do anything so gauche as to launder pilfered cultural heritage through discreet and well-connected European auction houses so they end up at the British Museum next to a small plaque that says “provenance unknown”! Why would he bother, when he could just keep them in a room deep in his jungle lair and go down and look at them every few years?

Gil Thorp, 5/14/24

“Well, here’s your problem: you got one of those cubist buses! Sure, you can perceive it from multiple perspectives at once so you can better understand its context, but that kind of setup is hell on an internal combustion engine.”