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Blondie, 11/5/17

Wow, generally I think of Dagwood as being pretty cheery and not at all prone to self-reflection, so it’s kind of amazing amazing to see him waking up in the dark and staring out at the reader saying “Time for another day” in genuine despair. The only thing Dagwood really consistently dislikes is work, and this strip is canonically happening on a Sunday! Today is a harrowing look at the yawning emptiness at Dagwood’s core, the one he can never fill no matter how many sandwiches he stuffs down his gullet. In the final panel, he learns about the Daylight Savings Time mixup and realizes that at least it’s socially acceptable to escape into the blankness of sleep for another hour.

Mark Trail, 11/5/17

Ha ha, that got grim, didn’t it? Uh, well, let’s cheer up with Mark letting us know that sometimes animals do weird stuff, and it “goes viral” online! Can anyone explain why it happens? Mostly not! Mark, innocent lamb that he is, believes the scientists who tell him this bird’s mothering instincts were triggered by the fish’s mouth-hole. Here’s the truth, Mark: they’re kissing. That’s what kissing looks like. I know you think you need to work your way up to that with a rousing game of “got your nose”, but you’ve got to understand, these are animals.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/5/17

Our hero Buck has come a long way since he became dangerously dehydrated from walking around a comic-book convention. But today he’s facing a foe that will challenge all the physical conditioning he’s been doing since then: stairs.

Spider-Man, 11/5/17

AHAHAHAHA

SPIDER-MAN GOT DISTRACTED BY TALKING INTO HIS CELL PHONE AND WEB-SLUNG FACE-FIRST INTO A BUILDING

THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE

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Gil Thorp, 11/9/17

I’ve decided to settle in and just genuinely enjoy this Gil Thorp plot, which seems to ask us to unironically believe that Uncle Gary’s quest to make Rick Soto a viral singing sensation (a) could work and (b) would change his life if it does. After a vigorous astroturfing campaign got Rick the coveted anthem spot, Uncle Gary is swinging into action, bringing together video editors and social media experts to create the seemingly perfect organic explosion of worldwide interest in Rick Soto’s patriotic pipes. Look at Gary in the control center in panel two, with his bluetooth earpiece and mid-grade laptop! And in panel three … well, if grandpas of all people are watching Rick’s videos, can a Grammy award for Most Patriotic YouTube be far behind?

Spider-Man, 11/9/17

Man, I get it, the life a celebrity is exhausting, travelling between glamorous cities and promoting your films and what not. Sometimes you just want to go visit your old family friend, a dangerous lizard-mutant, and sun yourself on a rock in his terrarium, away from the probing eyes of the press, you know?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/9/17

Buck’s ex is of course violent, abusive, and delusional, and trying to separate him from his new, healthier relationship is a classic abuser move, but in panel three we get to see just how delusional she is. Like … does she think selling comic book panels on eBay is how a guy like Buck can woo a lady? That’s … that’s not how anything works, man.

Mary Worth, 11/9/17

[Not shown: four panels of Iris saying, “No, it’s too late in the evening, coffee will keep me up all night,” and Zak winking at her in increasingly exaggerated fashion and saying “No, not coffee, but, you know … coffee.”]

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Dennis the Menace, 11/10/17

I had a lot of questions about what exactly we’re meant to understand about the the main six panels of this strip — did Dennis make Mr. Wilson sit through an entire movie, or, given the mention of Ewoks, the entire original trilogy? or is he just jumping around on his couch rambling on about his favorite media franchises? why does Dennis seem to think that Mr. Wilson, who would’ve been in his 30s when Episode IV came out, is somehow unfamiliar with what’s probably the most famous series of movies ever made? — but then I saw the second throwaway panel and it sent chills down my spine, illuminating the real reason why Dennis feels compelled to hang out at the Wilsons’ place all the time, and why Mr. Wilson, for all his showy irritation, never actually kicks him out. I look forward to the day when Dennis is old enough to learn about his true parentage, and Mr. Wilson implores him to join forces so they can rule their suburban neighborhood together, grumpily.

Spider-Man, 11/10/17

Ha ha, what you do you think that last e-mail was like? “Hey, Peter, this is a little awkward considering how we left things the last time we saw each other (I was a lizard and trying to kill you), but I just wanted to let you know I’ve always valued our friendship and also I definitely don’t turn into a lizard on the regular anymore. Anyway, I’ve got to go tend to my dying wife, but here’s my address in Miami — I’d love to see you any time you’re in town. Even if it’s several years from now, don’t bother calling in advance or anything. Just show up! I love unexpected visitors! Your pal, Doctor Connors (who is absolutely not a lizard right now and won’t be turning into one anytime soon)”

Gasoline Alley, 11/10/17

I genuinely appreciate the single bead of sweat rolling down Walt’s face in the final panel here, and he gets an inkling of the Kafkaesque hell that awaits him as he tries to track down this package. And I certainly hope we get to see every minute of it over the next two or three months! It can’t be any worse than the eight weeks they spent on scrapbooking!

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Funky Winkerbean, 11/14/17

Oh, hey, remember those comic book covers Darin inherited? Well, he’s decided to auction them off to benefit Lisa’s Legacy Fund! The comic book covers are incredibly valuable, naturally, I don’t think we even need to question that, even though the embittered artist who left them to Darin died in poverty, so probably the money they’ll raise at this big auction will finally put the Lisa’s Legacy Fund over the top and they’ll cure breast cancer. Anyway, while today’s dialogue is a real treat for fans of word-sequences that no human being would ever utter, don’t let it distract you from the colorist’s error in panel two that produced a nightmare mass of writhing hands sticking out of Darin’s torso.

Judge Parker, 11/14/17

Huh, is Randy going to become a prison-reform radical as a result of his wife’s imprisonment? Is he going to bring down the carceral state … from the inside? I’ll just point out that, while April has some justified beefs with the prison-industrial complex, I don’t see her questioning, say, the government’s employment of an army of shadowy assassins operating across a dizzying array of intelligence agencies.

Spider-Man, 11/14/17

Man, when I filled out that survey last month about what I wanted to see more of in future Spider-Man storylines and checked the box next to “Spider-Man walking and/or web-slinging into things, painfully and face-first,” I didn’t think I’d get results so quickly!

Mary Worth, 11/14/17

And heeeeeeeeeeeere comes the grift

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Mark Trail, 11/21/17

Mark’s sidekick Johnny was too cowardly to gun down a woman, so instead he’s going to lure her down to the tunnel under the bank, where the bear will eat her.

Spider-Man, 11/21/17

Sorry all comedy writers everywhere, but nothing you produce this week will be funnier than “I can’t have my wife back — but at least maybe I can grow a new arm.” Anyway, I’m glad we’re finally going to find out why supposed science nerd Peter Parker works in the incredibly low-paying field of freelance news photography rather than getting a job as a lab tech or something. I assume that it’s because he’s actually pretty bad at science, which is great for me because I’m psyched to see one of his screwups turn Dr. Connors into a lizard.

Beetle Bailey, 11/21/17

Man, I have to say, Lt. Fuzz was not at the top of my “who at Camp Swampy is going to plan the coup” list.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/21/17

Boy, this bluegrass version of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” sure changed some things!

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Spider-Man, 11/25/17

It’s incredibly crucial for continuity strips like Spider-Man to tie up every last narrative loose end in order to satisfy their famously nitpicky audiences. For instance, when the Parkers arrived at Dr. Connors’ lab, it was apparently abandoned, which is why our hero barged in and got womped in the face with some big metal thing that was never fully explained, actually, and then discovered that the lab was still fully occupied by Dr. Connors. But if that was the case, then where was Dr. Connors’ vehicle, huh? Surely if a sensible minivan with a bunch of crazy re-arm-ulating equipment thrown in the cargo area were parked in the front the building, Peter would’ve immediately said, “Ah ha! Dr. Connors is home, despite the apparently dilapidated state of his lab! I shall knock before entering!” Too bad for Peter that the lab comes with off-street parking, although it’s probably great for Dr. Connors, since it’s no doubt tricky to haul big pieces of equipment to and from the car with only one arm, and besides you probably shouldn’t leave a bunch of scientific gizmos with high resale value too visible in car just parked at the curb. Anyway, I look forward to learning how exactly all the windows got broken (probably by the big metal womping thing, which took a while to calibrate before it only womped intruders).

Funky Winkerbean, 11/25/17

One of my least favorite Funky Winkerbean moves (and really, it’s quite a list) is when one of the characters makes a joke, and normally you’d think that joke represented to strip’s punchline, except instead the characters then assess how corny the joke is, and that’s actually supposed to be the punchline, somehow??? Today’s strip really builds a whole emotional arc out of it, with Becky giving Harry a sly look right as she unleashes her pun in the second panel, and Harry wagging his finger as he assesses it the third. I look forward to the day where someone makes some terrible wordplay and then we just have weeks and weeks of strips analyzing it!

Mary Worth, 11/25/17

Shoutout to Pedro for adhering to the salesman’s creed: Always. Be. Closing. Sure, Wilbur just caught him making out with Wilbur’s girlfriend, who’s supposed to be his cousin, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Wilbur is closed off to prospect of buying some discounted salsa lessons. You’ll never know until you ask!

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Spider-Man, 12/2/17

Wait, so Peter Parker knows Dr. Connors is The Lizard, but Dr. Connors doesn’t know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man? That’s what I’m assuming from Peter coyly saying he’s developed different interests since his days as Dr. Connors’ lab flunky while thought-ballooning about his own super-heroics. If Connors is truly in the dark, then he’s just seeing Peter smirking and not following up on his obvious hint, and probably is thinking “gee, what a dipshit,” just like I do three out of every four times I read this comic.

Anyway, this seems like an unfair power imbalance! Whenever anyone’s embarking on a dangerous journey of self-experimentation, he should have all the facts about his lab assistant available to him! FOR INSTANCE, if he knew that he was being assisted not just by some dork who strings for a New York tabloid but by a man with enhanced strength and combat abilities who could defeat and contain, say, a giant, angry, rampaging reptile, he might err a little more on the side of “OK maybe this new formula will turn me into a lizard like the last one did, but there’s only like a one in three chance, so let’s give it a shot.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 12/2/17

Right, so, as many predicted, it turns out that bad-ass art forger guy is Rene, Sarah’s erstwhile art teacher. As the dragnet closes in around him, what has he got to say for himself?

YOUR CONCEPT OF ORIGINALITY IS HOPELESSLY OUTDATED, MAN

THIS IS AN “EVERYTHING IS A REMIX” CULTURE

I’M TRANSFORMING YOUR ORIGINAL CONTENT WITH IRONY AND RECONTEXTUALIZATION IN WAYS YOUR FEEBLE MIND COULDN’T EVEN UNDERSTAND

AND I’M MAKING MAD BANK DOING IT TOO

HELPING THAT CHICK TORTURE HER NERD EX-HUSBAND IN THE PROCESS WAS JUST A BONUS

Ha ha! That Belluso kid, he’s plays by his own rules!

Pluggers, 12/2/17

Pluggers used to be into sex, but now the best they can expect from their failing physical form is the ability to maintain a stable train of thought for more than a few minutes at a time.

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Spider-Man, 12/4/17

Guys, I’m gonna be blunt: I don’t think the Newspaper Spider-Man comic strip has a real solid sense of how “science” works. Like, I’m no biologist with a speciality in limbs myself, but I imagine Dr. Connors would be analyzing the genetic mechanisms that control limb regrowth in species like geckos, or maybe studying how limbs grow in embryos, say, then forming hypotheses about how those processes could be reproduced in an adult human. But, no, he apparently just brought a big cardboard box of bottles out to his swamp-lab. “One of them will help restore my lost arm! Vinegar? Liquid-Plumr? Pesto? I won’t stop guzzling down whatever’s in these bottles until my arm grows back!”

Blondie, 12/4/17

As we all know, Dagwood and Blondie spend most of their time sitting in the same room facing away from each other. They’re doing a little experiment to try to restore some emotional intimacy to their everyday lives by sharing the same piece of furniture, and it is not going well.

Dick Tracy, 12/4/17

We’re launching into a new Dick Tracy storyline this week, and it begins with Sam and Dick grousing about how they’re always at the beck and call of Diet Smith, wealthy inventor and supplier of cool cop gear, just because he’s rich. Sure, it’s fun to be a policeman and decide who lives and who dies, but our heroes are getting sick of being tools of capital. But will there still be a need for brutal police violence after the revolution? Don’t worry, boys: according to all of human history, yes!

Dennis the Menace, 12/4/17

Is this even … is there some menace happening here? This is just Henry leering at cheerleaders on TV. Not really sure if he’s watching Bring It On or the College Cheerleading Championship on ESPN, but the point is that daddy’s horny and Dennis knows it and he’s telling his mom about it. I guess the real question is, is there anything that isn’t menacing happening here? Even Ruff looks to be in a heightened state of unnatural arousal.

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Spider-Man, 12/11/17

Oh, hey, remember how MJ was on the verge of being falling victim to the various reptiles that live in the Everglades? The normal ones, not people turned into lizards because they’re trying to grow their arms back or whatever. Anyway, she’s been rescued by … this rugged khaki-clad outdoorsman! Once again my extreme disinterest in Marvel comics leaves me blissfully unaware of who this guy is, which makes it fun for me to speculate. Is he a new character created for this Newspaper Spider-Man storyline? Or is he one of Marvel’s deep bench of third-tier superheroes and/or villains, with a name like … Swamp Fellow, or Reptile Fighter, or the Vigilante Park Ranger, or Our Lawyers Assure Us He Doesn’t Infringe Upon Steve Irwin’s Life Rights Man? Whatever the case, he’s sure to get his own Marvel Cinematic Universe movie or at least a Netflix series by 2021!

Slylock Fox, 12/11/17

“…and you, Shady, are using latex paint!” Slylock proclaimed. “Anyone who knows basic chemistry would know you were the culprit! I arrest you in the name of forest environmental law!” The detective was so busy feeling smug that he barely noticed the frog collapse quietly in the the grass, the rubber paint having thoroughly coated his permeable, breathing skin.

Six Chix, 12/11/17

I have to give a shout-out to Six Chix for simultaneously and largely successfully going two different directions with this joke: imagining the “rat race” in terms of adorable rats with tiny medals and little tank tops, and painting us a picture of a surging, seething mass of rodents, just a nightmarish rat flood that cannot be stopped or escaped.

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Beetle Bailey, 12/14/17

The thing about this strip that most irritates me is that it presumes an entirely unearned affection readers have for Beetle Bailey’s antic wackiness. “Ha ha, that’s our Camp Swampy!” says literally nobody. But to get into the specific details that annoy me, let’s take on the fact that panel two is a crowd scene and Beetle Bailey has tons of established but rarely used characters to draw from and yet the background is populated by people we’ve enver seen before. I’m not sure who I feel more drawn to: the two ladies running by in wide-eyed, manic glee, one of whom I’m reasonably sure is holding a giant knife over her head, or the dead-eyed, joyless guy who seems to be thinking “Really? I’m the only black person in this strip and they’ve got me playing basketball? Really?”

Spider-Man, 12/14/17

Oh, hey, MYSTERY SOLVED, it turns out that scruffy dude hanging out in the swamp rescuing Mary Jane from various reptiles wasn’t some random low-level superhero/Marvel character at all but was actually the Incredible Hulk! Or, I guess, it was Bruce Banner, who’s a nuclear physicist and … I’m not sure why he’d be in a swamp, actually? Or why he’d have the knife skills to chop of a snake’s head to save MJ? Still, the important thing is that, as scientists who occasionally transform into monstrous green creatures, Doctors Banner and Connors are gonna have a lot to talk about, eventually! Like, for instance, that terrible deep gash on Dr. Connors’ leg, and whether he should just double down and root around in his box of potions to see if he can find one that will regrow two limbs.

Lockhorns, 12/14/17

Usually characters trapped in endless, unchanging comic-book time go through their eternal-now lives blissfully unaware of the strangeness of their existence. However, thanks to this seemingly innocent question posed by their therapists, the Lockhorns, who have been in their middle age for almost fifty years now, have been forced to confront the eternity that stretches before them. Having both long consoled themselves that at least death will free them from their mutual prison, they are understandable despondent.

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Spider-Man, 12/17/17

So I guess it’s true, Dr. Connors really doesn’t know Peter Parker is Spider-man! Fortunately, he’s been savagely RRONGK?ed on the leg and so can’t pay attention to whatever’s going on around him. I personally have never been subject to a leg-RRONGK?ing, but I find this slightly unbelievable! Maybe I’m overestimating my own stamina and ability to focus, but I feel like even if I had some mid-level lacerations in my lower extremities, I’d notice if a guy three feet away from me loudly announced he was Spider-Man and then took off his shirt and it turned out he was wearing the Spider-Man outfit and then he fought the Hulk, proving he was Spider-Man!

Also, I get that Newspaper Spider-Man is trying to capture some of the magic the Hulk brought to Thor: Ragnarok as a super-powered sidekick to the title character, but why call him an “abomination” in the narration box? That’s just disrespectful to your guest star.

Pluggers, 12/17/17

Pluggers live their lives surrounded by increasingly nonfunctional garbage.

Hi and Lois, 12/17/17

Is Christmas about the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ? Or is it about elaborate sexual roleplay? The culture war around the holidays continues unabated.

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Spider-Man, 12/20/17

Let’s ignore the super-fisticuffs here for a moment and marvel at the moment where real serendipitous scientific progress is being made! When we last got a good look at the number that gator did on Dr. Connors, his pants had a huge hole in the leg, revealing his gashed thigh-flesh. But now it appears his pants have healed themselves, leaving just a fading scar where the material has somehow knitted itself back together. Could it be that Dr. Connors has been wasting his time with bioengineering potions and should instead focus on the “smart clothing” that can merge with and cybernetically enhance the human body?

Meanwhile, I know that playing around with the borders of comics panels for visual effect has a long and honorable history, but I’m pretty sure what’s going on between panels two and three isn’t so much “Let’s tweak longstanding visual storytelling conventions to create striking imagery that changes how readers perceive the narrative” as “oh crap I drew that guy’s body too far to the right and his head isn’t going to fit here, uh, uh, uh”

Mary Worth, 12/20/17

Holy shit, Wilbur really is going into a full-on paranoid breakdown in regards to Iris’s wealthy new boytoy. “My ex-girlfriend, whom I hold in high regard and desperately want to reconnect with, has a filthy drug-addict son and her new boyfriend is probably a criminal because she’s got no morals or loyalty. What a bitch! God I love her, the traitor!”

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Spider-Man, 1/3/18

Oh, hey, I didn’t really discuss what happened in Newspaper Spider-Man while I was gone, did I? Well, it turns out that Dr. Connors lost a lot of blood due to that gator bite, and also that the whole reason Bruce Banner was in town the swamp in the first place was because he and Dr. Connors have the same rare blood type and Bruce was looking to do some kind of blood exchange thing to de-Hulk himself, but now maybe the transfusion is going to go the other way, which would be bad news for a guy who already has a problem with turning into a large, violent green thing? Also, Peter Parker revealed his secret identity to Bruce Banner, which was a shocking development to everyone who had taken for granted that he didn’t already know about this in the Newspaper Spider-Man continuity, which is to say nobody. Anyway, none of this is as important as panel two here, in which Spider-Man uses his famous and beloved jumping power (the relative jumping of a spider) to leap from boat to dock. I expect to see several more days of him hopping through the marina area, until he finally gets to an area with tall buildings where he can web-sling through, at which point he’ll raise up a hand to shoot a web and accidentally drop Dr. Connors’ head onto the pavement.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/3/18

Look, I get that this is a side-splittingly hilarious visual gag. But was it worth the terrible disruption to nearly a century of accumulated Barney Google and Snuffy Smith lore? Are we just supposed to [sarcastic nerd chuckle] believe that Elviney has had this [increasingly angry sarcastic nerd chuckle] [finger quotes] “twin sister” all along? Obviously if she lived in the tiny community of Hootin’ Holler we’d have met her by now, but just as obviously if she were visiting from another holler Elviney would have said as much, ugh, I’m starting a petition to get this strip stricken from the canon

Gil Thorp, 1/3/18

Notice how all the panes seem to vanish from Gil’s surprisingly large office window at some point between panels one and three? That’s because right around the middle of panel two is where Gil allows himself to indulge his usual middle-of-a-Marty-Moon-interview fantasy: that he could just lean back in his chair and tumble out into the welcoming arms of the forest below.

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Mark Trail, 1/6/18

Oh my God, in order to convince Rusty’s teacher (side note: Rusty goes to “school,” I guess?) to let him have time off to go to Mexico with his adoptive parents, Cherry had to pimp out her own father to the lonely, horny schoolmarm. Mark is bug-eyed in horror in panel two: one of his family is actually going to have to do sex with another human! Sure, Rusty is finally going to get to go fishing — but at what cost?

Spider-Man, 1/6/18

Ah, yes, threatening a hospital orderly, those notoriously overpaid and underworked health care functionaries, with physical violence unless your personal friend is given special treatment, and then looking on in satisfaction as he simpers with fear of your freakish, superhuman strength and does your bidding: truly the mark of a hero!

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Spider-Man, 1/8/18

Huh, so, when they set up that Doctors Banner and Connors have the same incredibly rare blood type, I assumed the meant, like … a super-powered sci-fi blood type? One conducive to turning people into green monsters? Not, you know, AB negative, a normal human characteristic which is rare in that it’s the least common of all the possible blood types, but even at about 0.6% of the population, that’s still thousands and thousands of people in Dade County alone! So I’m not sure it’s really a “we need a specific donor right away from whom we can siphon delicious blood” scenario, but thank goodness Bruce will soon be there, having already removed his shirt to make finding a vein that much quicker and easier.

Slylock Fox, 1/8/18

Speaking of South Florida, I love that Max is planning on attending a beach wedding by throwing a jacket on over his usual total absence of a shirt. I think Slylock’s giving him bad advice, though. He needs to bring both jackets — black for a sophisticated look at the beach, and then change to white for those hot Miami nights on the dance floor.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/8/18

Somehow Funky ended last week’s AA meeting diatribe by concluding that the world was so messed up that it went way past the point where he should start drinking again, so I guess that’s … a cheerful ending? Anyway, now we’ve moved on to another classic topic of Funkyverse japery, Bull Bushka’s encroaching TBI-caused dementia. You know what they say! Old ballers never die … their minds just fade away, leaving them a wizened husk of their former self. In a way, it’s like a living death. Then they do die, eventually, but by then it’s a blessing. THAT’S THE PUNCHLINE TO TODAY’S STRIP EVERYBODY

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/14/18

The solution to this mystery is painfully obvious (the bat is upside down, you see!) so I’m going to pose a more complex question. Can we truly hold just one of our soccer-playing quartet, who for some reason have put on numbered uniforms for a two-on-two game, responsible for the broken window? After all, they collectively decided to play in dangerous proximity to Chez Beaver. Aren’t they similarly collectively responsible for the damage? This bat is quite the little narc, sowing discord where there should be solidarity and allowing three of these creatures to convince themselves that they’re not on the hook for what in truth they all did.

Curtis, 1/14/18

What sells this strip are the six panels setting up Greg’s quiet ecstacy at having some time to relax on the couch, making Curtis’s loud “rap” music all the harsher violation. I particularly enjoy the second panel in the top row, in which we see that Greg’s relationship with his sofa borders on the erotic.

Spider-Man, 1/14/18

Oh, say, remember how Dr. Connors had the same rare blood type as Bruce Banner, and so Bruce gave him a blood transfusion? Well, it seems they took too much blood from Bruce, and now he needs a blood transfusion! I’m not sure why, if Bruce has the same blood type as Doctor Connor and Spider-Man is able to donate blood to Bruce, he couldn’t have just skipped the middle man and donated directly to Doctor Connor, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing to know is that the last time someone drew Spider-Man’s blood, a series of comical events led to him briefly assuming the identity of “Gown Man,” a superhero who climbed around on window ledges wearing an extremely short hospital gown, which had predictable results results in terms of everyone on the street below seeing Spider-Man’s junk. Can’t wait to see where this medical plotline’s going!

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Dick Tracy, 1/17/18

So, just to remind you of the ongoing antics in the Dick Tracy Moon Maid plot: Glenna Ermine, daughter of flower-themed gangster Posie Ermine, was surgically and psychologically altered so that she looks like, and for a while believed herself to be, the deceased Moon Maid, daughter of the Governor of the Moon and Dick Tracy’s daughter-in-law, and now Ermine and the Governor (side note: who’s governing the moon in the Governor’s absence? Is there a Lieutenant-Governor of the Moon???) have broken into Diet Smith’s heavily guarded compound where Glenna, who now understands her origins and refers to herself as Mysta Chimera, lives. Anyway, if you thought that being held incommunicado in a research facility run by a defense contractor was a bad deal or something, today’s strip should disabuse you of that notion, since you can see that Mysta is free to relax and grill some burgers outside in the freezing Neo-Chicago winter anytime she wants!

Blondie, 1/17/18

Ahh, you know the old saying, “History is written by the winners, and then taught to the children by people who come across as ‘nice,’ but the children can’t help but sense the elided stories of the conquered and exterminated that lie beneath the sunny tales of victory, and so they and their adult friends who maybe they spend more time with than is healthy end up staring blankly out across the snowy landscape, unable to express the gnawing feeling of absence that underlies everything they know.”

Spider-Man, 1/17/18

Looks like Doctor Connors should’ve had one more bottle in his box o’ potential-arm-regrowing potions: a bottle of Hulk blood! All’s well that ends well, unless his new arm gets angry for some reason.

Pluggers, 1/17/18

Plugger multitasking: a plugger can simultaneously operate a manual-shift truck that would baffle an elitist city-dweller, exacerbate his incipient diabetes, and promote his favorite #brands.

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Six Chix, 1/18/18

I feel like I need to apologize, because this comic is basically pretty terrible, but I also kind of love it??? Like, I can’t parse its internal logic at all — clearly the “contgratulations, it’s a” balloon is a take off of the gender-denoting balloons for parents of infants we know and love, so did they give birth to this obnoxious teen, or did he spring forth self-living from one of their foreheads, or did he come in the mail, or what — but I still love his grinning, obnoxious teen face. “Hey guys!” he seems to be saying. “Guess what! I’m here, and I suck.”

Mary Worth, 1/18/18

I don’t have kids myself, so probably I don’t get to weigh in on this, but just because your child loves you, maybe that isn’t in and of itself a sign that you’re a good parent? Maybe another sign of good parenting would be if she goes through an emotional trauma and confides in you rather than just never mentioning it, I dunno. Anyway, even Wilbur’s theoretical sticker is baffling, since (a) “sticker” makes it sound like a bumper sticker, but apparently he’s imagining that he’d “wear” it, and (b) “How are my parenting skills?” gives way too much leeway to your interlocutor to just start telling you their opinions. If you’re just looking for a conversation starter that’ll let you boast, try “Ask me about my parenting skills!” But if you’re asking me about your parenting skills, well, this blog is already on the record with some opinions.

Rex Morgan, 1/18/18

So, it turns out the Morgans’ schlubby-ass lawyer is in fact trying to bring together the battling parties to reach a compromise that leaves everyone feeling like they had some of their needs met, instead of just spending as much energy as possible destroying his clients’ enemies financially and emotionally. As panel three makes very clear, this won’t do at all.

Spider-Man, 1/18/18

Oh, uh, it turns out getting an infusion of Hulk blood doesn’t turn Doctor Connors into a Hulk, it turns him into the Lizard, which is kind of weird because it was some other serum that turned him into the Lizard in the first place. Like when multiple different things injected into your body all turn you into the Lizard, maybe the problem isn’t the things being injected into you, maybe the problem is you, you know what I’m saying? Also, I assumed that the whole Lizard situation was a “human transformed into dumb rampaging beast against his will” deal, but now that I know the Lizard can talk, and use his powers of speech to talk about himself in the third person, I have significantly less sympathy for him.

Family Circus, 1/18/18

I am immediately intrigued by the idea of child-proof pants, but I have to imagine there’s a real cost-benefit analysis you have to run with them. Is the danger of Jeffy soiling himself outweighed by the danger of Jeffy exposing himself?

Gil Thorp, 1/18/18

“WOW THESE ISLAND PEOPLE GET ALL THE FREE HAMBURGERS AND BACKUP VARSITY SLOTS THEY WANT JUST BECAUSE THEY GOT SLIGHTLY HURRICANED, IT DOESN’T SEEM FAIR, DOES IT” –the syndicated newspaper comic strip Gil Thorp, I guess????

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Dick Tracy, 1/21/18

Dick Tracy is one of the lucky few sci-fi-ish franchises that have run so long that they’ve seen real life overtake their signature gee-whiz future tech. Just as Star Trek’s 1960s-era communicators look ludicrously bulky compared to the actual communication devices of the year 2018, Dick Tracy’s signature wrist wizards are basically everyday technology in the ’10s. Whatever advantages they have in sleekness (presumably they don’t need to sync to a cell phone) or style (is that an analog clock taking up a good quarter of its UI?), they lose a million points for subtlety, especially if, for instance, they’re being used by an police officer working deep undercover within the criminal apparatus. It looks like T-Bolt (actual name “Lee Ebony,” and I’ll leave it up to you as to which is more cringeworthy) should’ve just used a burner phone from 7-11 like a normal person.

Gasoline Alley, 1/21/18

Hey, uh, do the first two panels in the second row imply what I think they’re implying? Gasoline Alley HQ is going to find itself on the receiving end of a Blue Lives Matter protest in short order if so.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 1/21/18

Oh, snap, sexists, I bet you failed to figure out this mystery because you forgot that girls can be gamers too! This is like that “the surgeon was his mother” riddle, but updated for our current era (our current era, it goes without saying, is extremely stupid).

Spider-Man, 1/21/18

Finally, after months of build-up, it’s time for the super-powered battle between Spider-Man and the Lizard that we’ve been waiting for! [one panel later] Ah, well, uh, let’s see if the Hulk can handle this.

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Spider-Man, 1/30/18

A lot of the “dramatic” “tension” in this strip arises when MJ or Peter almost accidentally blurt something out that would reveal Peter’s secret identity, and then furiously thought-balloon to themselves that it’s crucial that they not reveal Peter’s secret identity, only to do it again a few days later. Thus I find it pretty hilarious that Bruce’s straight-up slam on Spidey’s Lizard-fighting prowess didn’t prompt a defensive reaction or other giveaway from MJ. “Hey lady, you husband sucks!” [in MJ’s subconscious] Yeah, that checks out, no need to follow up on it or anything.

Also, do you remember Bruce Banner’s beloved catchphrase, “That’s my secret, all the Avengers as a group: I’m always angry!” Well, Newspapaer Spider-Man is here to remind you about it! For more quips like this, check out [consults Wikipedia] Avengers: Infinity War, coming to theaters in … May, probably? Ugh, I’m so tired, guys.

Beetle Bailey, 1/30/18

I’ve come around on this point from where I was a year ago: I now think it’s cool and good that the people behind Beetle Bailey have literally no idea what camouflage is, and apparently think the 21st century U.S. military disguises its soldiers as, like, trees and shit, like they’re going to help Malcom and Macduff take Dunsinane from Macbeth.

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Mary Worth, 2/2/18

I suppose “Saul Lewman” is here because Mary Worth doesn’t want to run afoul of the notoriously litigious Newman’s Own foundation, but think about the implications here: Mary and Toby live in a universe where Paul Newman was never born, and where his counterpart had the somewhat more recognizably Jewish name “Saul Lewman,” but still became a famous leading man. Does that mean that Mary lives in a world that was, in the mid 20th century, less anti-Semitic? Did the Holocaust never happen in the Maryverse???? This is a can of worms that can’t be unopened!

Spider-Man, 2/2/18

Having never really read Spider-Man comics books as a kid, and having refused to see the James Garfield Amazing Spider-Man movies because of the absence of J. Jonah Jameson, I’m not really familiar with The Lizard, a super-villain who hasn’t made much of a pop-culture impact. Is his deal that he’s a real asshole who’s mean to everyone? That’s what I’m getting from his appearance here. Not that I’m complaining, mind you!

Dennis the Menace, 2/2/18

Mrs. Wilson covers her mouth in astonishment, as she suddenly makes the connection between George’s odd sleeping hours and the reports of a portly and stealthy masked vigilante who has been rumored to fight crime on the city streets in the wee hours of the morning.

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Mary Worth, 2/8/18

Mary Worth is, of course, the most emotionally self-actualized character in the comic strip that bears her name. How could it be any other way? All of that is on full display on today’s strip. Mary neither seeks nor fears fame. She’s ready for the attention that her muffins’ greatness might draw to her; but, on the other hand, she knows that the vulgar mob is fickle, and if they turn away from her, it’s their fault, not hers, and definitely not the muffins’. She remains open to and sanguine about all possibilities, with an equanimity that Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic philosophers of old would admire.

Spider-Man, 2/8/18

WAIT WAIT WHY DIDN’T IT WORK … THE FIRST TIME???? Is spider-sense one of those things you have to train, like the way Siri learns to understand your voice better over time? “Huh, he’s about to get whacked by a giant lizard tail. Is that good or bad? Not sure, let’s wait and see! [later] OK, definitely bad, we won’t let that happen again, ha ha!”

Crankshaft, 2/8/18

Oh, whoops, Crankshaft isn’t faking his drug-seeking behavior at all: he’s hoarding pain pills to sell at big markup to his creaky-kneed friends. Are you ready for Breaking Bad, except with more terrible wordplay?

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Gil Thorp, 2/16/18

Well, the social justice nerdlingers marched down to the radio station and gave Marty Moon the business for his racially insensitive on-air banter. Look how excited the kid in panel three is at the sick burn they laid down on Marty when they left! But as much as I’d like to see Marty humiliated and professionally destroyed by a some teens, again — remember the time he got fired from his public access TV show and replaced by a pair of dippy Milford students? — I think they’re going to have to go harder than a little sarcastic vowel shifting if they want to get his goat. He probably didn’t even notice, because he was probably pretty drunk.

Spider-Man, 2/16/18

It’s funny that Bruce Banner and Peter Parker are both supposed to be big braniacs — Banner said in the recent Thor movie that he had “fourteen PhDs” and, uh, I guess Peter did well in science in, uh, high school? — but neither seems to be that interested in the mechanism by which radiation radically changed their very bodies. Like, you’d think they’d want a bunch of analysis and experiments done to ensure that they understand what’s happening to them, whether it’s going to harm them in the long run, whether it can be reproduced, etc. But turns out nope! Turns out Spidey doesn’t care, and as long as Bruce can assure himself that no matter how distasteful he finds his Hulk personality, at least he’s not Spider-Man, he’s OK with it too!

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Spider-Man, 2/21/18

So J. Jonah Jameson showed up in this strip a couple days ago, and I assumed it was because he as a newspaperman was chasing the big story of Spider-Man fighting with a giant lizard on the roof of a hospital in broad daylight. But, no, I guess he’s at some unspecified “business conference” where some of his business buddies wanted to engage in some classic business conference R&R: taking a boat into a swamp! I’m heartened to see that even though JJJ is of course a loud-mouthed alpha male, he, like me, hates nature and wants to spend as little time in it as possible.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/21/18

Also a couple days ago, Snuffy Smith found his father, who he … hadn’t seen in years and, one has to think, assumed was dead? Except he was just sleeping against a tree stump, Rip Van Winkle-style, and couldn’t be woken up. I know modern medicine hasn’t made a huge impression on Hootin’ Holler, but you’d think “don’t move the sick or injured, and definitely don’t drag them roughly across uneven ground for miles” would just be common sense.

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Funky Winkerbean, 2/26/18

Welp, I apologize: it turns out that even though last week I dismissed the possibility that Darin and Jessica were driving from Los Angeles to northeast Ohio rather than flying for some reason, and that Mopey Pete would prefer to tag along rather than flying himself for some reason, that is in fact what’s happening! I … have no idea why? I guess flying with a baby is a pain, but probably not so much of a pain as making a multiday drive with a baby? That kind of drive is a big undertaking and generally you only do it if you have a specific reason, like you’re moving with all your stuff or you want to see the country or something, and yet these guys are just acting like it’s a normal, everyday occurrence, which makes me think that I’ve missed some pivotal Funkyverse event, like all air travel being banned due to a sudden outbreak of Atmosphere Cancer.

Mark Trail, 2/26/18

“The death toll was awful … there were dozens of them packed into a single boxcar, with no safety measures of any kind. One of the few survivors said that any real clown would rather die true to their values than travel in a vehicle with a reasonable number of people in it.”

Spider-Man, 2/26/18

We established last week that JJJ’s sojourn to South Florida had nothing to do with Spidey’s adventures there, but it’s nice to know that he just rants to casual acquaintances about what a menace the wall-crawler is, presumably without context or provocation.

Slylock Fox, 2/26/18

It’s good to see that Slylock has so thoroughly eradicated crime that he can spend his time advising school administrators how not to embarrass themselves, I guess! But I think he’s wrong here: no teen is going to sharpen these pencils, because a pencil that says “TOO COOL TO CHEAT” is so hilariously dorky and pure that they’ll be keeping them in pristine condition for years.

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Spider-Man, 3/9/18

You know, it’s funny that Spider-Man’s whole shtick is that he was bitten by a radioactive spider and has the “proportional [X] of a spider” but his definitive, most famous power move — web-swinging from building to building — is … not something spiders do? I mean, I know sometimes they blow on the wind and stuff but the thing where he shoots a web at one building, uses it to pivot, then shoots another web at another building and repeats — is just not spider-y at all. It also only works in his native New York and other high-density cities, which is understandable but maybe he shouldn’t admit it quite so readily in front of a man who lives to antagonize him and buys ink by the barrel.

On an unrelated note, if the vision of Spider-Man swinging around an alligator (the proportional alligator swinging of a spider) and using it as a truncheon to beat aside other alligators and various snakes doesn’t fill you with pure joy, your mind works quite differently from mine.

Mark Trail, 3/9/18

You know, if I saw a big tiger in my front yard, my immediate reaction would be gibbering terror, not an earnest desire for civic engagement. I guess that’s the main difference between me and Mark, that and the fact that I don’t take unseemly pleasure in the screaming panic of children.

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Spider-Man, 3/17/18

This Spider-Man storyline hasn’t exactly been covering itself with glory when it comes to even vague gestures towards scientific plausibility, what with the limb regrowth and the blood transfusion musical chairs. And this is of course a strip that routinely refers to spiders — the species at the core of its whole shtick — as insects. Even so, I’m particularly appalled by today’s installment, which appears to imply that Bruce Banner is a reptile. Why, just because the Hulk is green? First of all, not all green life forms are reptiles, or vice versa, and second, Bruce isn’t even green right now, jeez.

Pluggers, 3/17/18

Ha ha, remember that old guy who always refused to buy a cell phone and said “Why would I need to spend the money on one of those things? I’ve got two dimes in my wallet!” Anyway, he’s dead now. He ran out of gas and he died of exposure on the side of the highway.

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Mary Worth, 3/19/18

Hmm, how does Mary Worth fare on the suddenly very relevant Soap Opera Comic Museum Verisimilitude Test? Well, significantly worse than The Phantom, which meticulously reconstructed a room at the Met for its protagonist to ruminate sourly in. It turns out that Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is in the Uffizi just to the left of the same artist’s Pallas and the Centaur, and not, as today’s Mary Worth would have you believe, next to Some Trees Or Whatever.

Spider-Man, 3/19/18

Oh, man, remember the tense drama that arose in this strip when, for for reasons that were explained in only the sketchiest of ways, Bruce Banner could no longer turn into the Hulk? Well, good news: now he can turn into the Hulk again, with no attempt to explain it at all.

Crankshaft, 3/19/18

Don’t get your hopes up, people. Last year’s Funky Winkerbean strip where we finally had it confirmed that Crankshaft’s moldering husk is still technically alive in the ten-years-ahead section of the Funkyverse’s fractured chronology wasn’t just weird and distasteful; it also robbed us of even fleeting moments of anticipation that Crankshaft might actually die in his own title strip.

Dennis the Menace, 3/19/18

The vision of a child stuffing cookie after cookie into his mouth from a trash can infested with chittering vermin as he mutters “Still clean enough, still clean enough for me,” is … uh, menacing, yes, let’s say that.

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Spider-Man, 3/29/18

“There are human beings trapped inside those grotesque forms! Not like me! I’m not grotesque at all! Just normal and beautiful, albeit with radioactive blood and freakish mutations! Plus a red-and-blue spandex outfit for some reason. Oh, yeah, and mechanical gadgets on my wrists shoot out goo, justlike a spider. I’m extremely normal! But, like, I care about these grotesque monsters, for whatever reason. I’ve got to save them both, or die trying! Or, well, maybe we’ll skip they dying part. They’re pretty unpleasant to look at, to be honest.”

Dick Tracy, 3/29/18

I certainly hope that once this is all over and this murderous chef is in prison for life, Dick apologizes to him for doubting him. His boss really is sleeping with the fishes! You can’t pass up on opportunity for that sort of wordplay.

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Gil Thorp, 4/12/18

Hey, guys, remember Aaron Aagard, the hero of last year’s basketball season storyline, who was inconsistent not because he was on drugs but because his mom was, and then he ended up living in a teammate’s basement? Well, he’s playing on the team again this year, it seems. I guess we’ll never know the details, since all media coverage of the Mudlarks has now ceased, which should hopefully break the spell the various high school teams have over Milford in short order and everyone else will get hobbies and Coach Thorp’s budget will get reassigned to the music department and Coach Kaz will have to mortgage his dojo.

Mark Trail, 4/12/18

Based on Mark’s grim facial expression in the final panel, I assume he knows that Jim was crushed to death under the jeep, and is going to allow Marlin to mourn in private. If there’s one thing Mark doesn’t like being around, it’s emotions.

Mary Worth, 4/12/18

I’m not sure what sort of stuff Rick’s sells, exactly, but I’m certainly hoping that Iris and Zak are here to buy, say, a hammock, talking loudly all through their shopping experience about how it’ll easily be converted into a makeshift sex swing.

Crankshaft, 4/12/18

Fun fact: True Crime Addict is a real book, and James Renner is a real person who’s been rendered here relatively faithfully, presumably because he owes someone a terrible debt, or perhaps because he lost a contest.

Spider-Man, 4/12/18

That quote is from the Bible, so in attributing the inerrant word of YHWH to some unspecified “they,” JJJ is proving himself a darn polytheist on top of everything else!

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Slylock Fox, 4/16/18

It’s extremely sad to me that Count Weirdly is so constantly persecuted by the Animal authorities because of his eccentricities and (let’s not mince words) species. He’s always coming up with amazing inventions like a functional bipedal robot that’s capable of feeling real affection, but because he’s cut off from traditional funding avenues, the only way he can raise capital to manufacture and market his creations is to market his own reality video content. These shows, which are as popular post-animalpocalypse as they were before, have certain narrative conventions. And so, yes, Weirdly had to structure a narrative arc where he appears to develop and construct Mortty within a single half-hour episode. Was this, strictly speaking, true? No, but isn’t the robot itself achievement enough? Doesn’t everyone assume that so-called “reality” shows are highly edited? Why won’t Slylock leave this innovator alone?

Spider-Man, 4/16/18

Hey, remember when we first came upon Dr. Connors, way back at the beginning of this storyline? He was sneaking out of his janky-ass lab, which he presumably owed a lot of back rent on, and was throwing all his scientific equipment into back of his minivan so he could decamp to his even jankier-ass lab out in the middle of a swamp. I’m not really sure “world’s top scientist” meets the standards of journalistic accuracy we’ve come to expect from the Bugle, is what I’m trying to say.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/16/18

Hey, Darrin and Pete, why not try looking excited or eager about your new gig? Maybe put some effort into arranging your facial expressions so that you look like you’re feeling something other than creeping existential dread! Because honestly, if you go into this endeavor convinced it’s going to fail, it’s going to be less fun for me when it inevitably does.

Mary Worth, 4/16/18

I believe it was George Orwell who once said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a panel of Wilbur in the shower at least once a week — forever.”

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Spider-Man, 4/19/18

I’m trying to figure out how exactly Spider-Man and et al. can stop JJJ from publishing his huge Lizard scoop, and I can’t, so consider dramatic tension successfully established! My only idea was that Peter Parker would try to unionize the Bugle and seize control of its editorial processes from the business side of the paper, but that requires a degree of interest in the conditions of his fellow employees that he’s never demonstrated, plus it would take a lot of effort.

Mark Trail, 4/19/18

To Serve Man … it’s a cookbook … OH MY GOD DIRTY IS PLANNING TO EAT MARK TRAIL

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Spider-Man, 4/23/18

Welp, as of last week almost all of the dramas in the current Spider-Man plot had been resolved — Dr. Connors is no longer the Lizard, Bruce Banner can once again turn into the Hulk, and we’re all just going to agree to not talk about whatever the implications of that whole blood transfusion swap business were. All that’s left is Jameson’s threat to out Connors as the Lizard, even though we just established that he wasn’t the Lizard any more. Spider-Man came up with an actually effective, if extremely brutal, solution to this problem, which was to leave Jameson in the swamp to die, but now that the cowardly publisher has promised on fear of his life not to do the bad thing he was threatening to do, I guess they’re going to let him live. Definitely he’s completely dependable on this point and will honor a pledge extracted from him under duress! All that’s left for us to learn is whether Spidey’s extremely efficient “carry the other two guys out of the swamp tucked under your arms” transportation method can scale up to three guys.

Pluggers, 4/23/18

Pluggers are just completely insufferable. Straight-up narcissists. When you have a conversation with a plugger, is he really listening to you? Does he care about you, as a person? He most definitely does not.

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Gil Thorp, 4/27/18

Finally, our basketball heroes have solved racism forever, so now we’re ready to launch into our spring storyline, which is centering on … Barry Bader! Barry is a tremendous asshole who really leaned in to being a heel even before his father, a travelling salesman and amiable drunk, got a DUI and was sent to jail by the judge-mom of one of his teammates, then got drunk again and was involved in accident that killed a Milford student. This made Barry even more of an asshole and everyone ended up rejecting him socially, which is I think where we left it, like two years ago? I don’t remember any Barry action since, so I assumed he graduated or quietly transferred to another school where none of the students were friends with anyone his dad killed, but it seems the Bader family is being brought back for a very special plotline involving a Mudlark looking to make pen pals with a hot prison DILF.

Spider-Man, 4/27/18

I feel like I need to go back earlier in this storyline to when Spider-Man’s hitherto unheralded jumping powers became an important means of locomotion for the characters, because the whole point of it was that (a) it was a fast way to get a desperately injured man to the hospital while avoiding Miami’s notoriously congested freeways, and (b) it at least involved jumping unnaturally long distances, which is a kind of superpower, even if it’s an extremely dorky one. Now that we’re in the swamp and nobody’s in a big rush, you’d think everyone could just, you know, walk out on their own power, but hilariously “Spider-Man needs to carry Dr. Connors to the hospital while leaping” has morphed into “some characters are going to carry other characters while strolling through the Everglades.” Meanwhile, MJ has arrived on a jet ski, which means an end to this hilarious nonsense but the beginning of even more hilarious nonsense as we watch five people trying to balance precariously on a jet ski.

Mark Trail, 4/27/18

Ha ha, Rusty, you can’t remember the names of ancient Mexican structures or of the various cultures that built them! You just got … mesoamerisplained.

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Mark Trail, 5/7/18

Have I plugged my novel lately? Is it possible that I have relatively new readers who aren’t even aware that I wrote a novel? Horrors! Guys, I wrote a novel, called The Enthusiast, that’s about a mysterious marketing agency that tries to drum up enthusiasm for products and projects and abstract concepts, and you can buy it where books are sold, though you’re probably after the Amazon link, aren’t you? ANYHOO, a lot of the book revolves around obsessive fan communities, specifically fans of old soap opera comic strips, something you could guess I know a little bit about, and railfans who are really into subways, something you might not know that I’m similarly into but I am! Where I’m going with this, other trying to boost enthusiasm for something I’m selling within my own content in an act of meta-marketing, is that I’m “in the know” enough to be aware that adjacent to train obsessives you have your airplane obsessives, and Rusty seems to be on his way to becoming one. Sure, most of them are into spotting different kinds of planes and detailing their flight experiences on different airlines, but I’m sure there are whole Internet message boards to serve those who, like Rusty, are fixated on the relative size of various airports and of the crowds of people who use them. You do you, Rusty! Never be embarrassed about the things you think are interesting!

Spider-Man, 5/7/18

I’m not going to lie, my entire knowledge of the Hulk comes from the occasional Marvel Cinematic Universe movie I see, but … is it really part of the canon that, when he’s in non-Hulk form, he leaves the scene by just, like, swimming off shirtlessly or whatever. Can that be right? It seems like that can’t be right.

Funky Winkerbean, 5/7/18

Here’s today’s Funky Winkerbean, in which some poor sap can’t figure out if Les is named “Les Moore” or “Legacy Trilogy,” and Les does not seem very interested in helping him figure it out!

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Crankshaft, 5/10/18

The “town moms prepare to do battle with Crankshaft, because he’s so bad at his job and contemptuous of the public that he makes their lives miserable in innumerable ways” sequence is an annual strip staple, though I believe this is the first time we’ve seen one of the mothers training to punch Crankshaft in the face until she’s physically exhausted.

Mark Trail, 5/10/18

Just putting this out there: have we ever seen any indication that the Trail family cabin has modern HVAC, or indeed indoor plumbing? I feel like Mark is protesting a little too much here for the benefit of his Mexican cabbie. “Boy! No power, no air conditioning … no showers, which are all things that, uh, I definitely use on a daily basis and know how to operate, in America.”

Spider-Man, 5/10/18

Gentlemen, you could, uh, put some shirts on? Now that you’re not transforming into horrible monsters? And maybe change into some non-tattered pants? No pressure, you don’t have to, but, you know, you could.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 5/10/18

REX MORGAN, M.D.: SPINE-TINGLING TALES OF SCHEDULING DISAPPOINTMENTS!!!!

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Mary Worth, 5/16/18

“Doctor, I have some things to get off my chest… I want to talk about the women in my life! Iris … Fabiana … Dawn, who it will probably squick you out that I put her in the same category as the first two but you ain’t heard nothing yet … and Wendy, the elusive Wendy. I want her, I need her wisdom, but she’s always … just out of reach. Is it possible to love a woman who doesn’t exist? To make love to a syndicated advice column persona? Will I have to quit writing the column in order to consummate my life, and also purchase some elaborate VR equipment?”

Crankshaft, 5/16/18

Very briefly I thought that Crankshaft’s adventure in this mysteriously hostile and empty bank was supposed to be taking place in some kind of empty parallel dimension, like the Upside-Down from Stranger Things, and that he had been exiled from our reality as part of a twisted science experiment gone actually right, for once. But then I spotted the little triangles in the corner of the first frame, denoting that we should be thinking of it as a photo in an old-timey album, an affectation that used to call us back to the distant past in this strip when Crankshaft was young, but now just means “time that took place at some previous to the current narrative, perhaps as little as a week ago.”

Mark Trail, 5/16/18

Oh, wow, I apologize for saying yesterday that Mark was going to brutally pummel this poor schmo with nature facts. Nope, our hero will just sassily waggle his weirdly tiny index finger at him and get on with the business of whale-saving. Still, I’ve got to imagine that some day — he won’t know when, but the day will come — this gruff tourist will awake and find himself strapped to chair, forced to watch Mark Trail Sunday strip full of nature facts after Mark Trail Sunday strip full of nature facts, his eyelids pried open Ludovico Technique-style.

Spider-Man, 5/16/18

Oh, boy, it’s Spider-Man vs. the TSA, that recurring Newspaper Spider-Man plot point beloved by everyone somebody, somewhere presumably. Anyway, Peter is nervous about his secret identity being blown, as usual, but presumably they’re just about to pull out something really embarrassing, like a canister of cotton-candy flavored vape juice that’s over the legal 3 ounces.

Dennis the Menace, 5/16/18

The only thing menaced by Dennis is the oppressive machinery of the modern state. NO GODS NO MASTERS

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Spider-Man, 5/30/18

If you’re going to have entire cinematic universe of stories dedicated to superheroes whose intellectual property rights are held by a specific #brand, I think one of the things that would be good to explore is how the media covers super-combat for the benefit of their mostly non-super-powered readership. Ideally, as I’ve noted before in this space, this exploration would take the form of a Netflix series called Bugle, of which I would be the executive producer, featuring a ragtag group of underpaid twentysomething reporters and bloggers whose lives are made miserable by their overbearing skinflint boss J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons, who we can hopefully get under contract to do at least six episodes a season) who occasionally yells at them to get more pictures of the Shocker up on the Bugle’s Snapchat or whatever. The big question, of course, would be how you’d do this without Peter Parker, who’s the best known Bugle employee but whose teen MCU arc doesn’t seem like it’d intersect with life as a stringer photographer anytime soon. My solution: there’s one episode where they use some of the blurry Spidey pics he’s posted to Twitter and promise to give him “exposure” and hint that maybe they’ll start paying him somewhere down the line, but when he can’t come up with pics of any other superheroes, they stop responding to his emails. You can’t afford to specialize in just one superhero and expect to get paid! It’s the era of doing more with less, journalism-wise! Get with the program, Peter!

Mary Worth, 5/30/18

I’m a guy who like karaoke, but I’m willing to say that a big part of its appeal is the you’re all in it together, you know? Like, if Wilbur is going to belting out Luke Bryan’s oeuvre, as a reward he should get to see Toby dancing “sexily” while she breathily makes her way through Ke$ha’s “Die Young,” or a stone-faced and extremely sober rendition of “Riders of the Storm” from Ian.

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Spider-Man, 6/4/18

There are of course plenty of different schools of thought on storytelling. Some people will say that every detail should point towards the eventual resolution of the narrative, and if that’s the template Newspaper Spider-Man is going for perhaps this angry cabbie will show up up at a crucial part of the climax, out for revenge. But many writers like adding little grace note details to their stories, which make the world of their tales feel more filled out and lived in, and clarify the nature of their characters, without really pertaining to the plot. I assume that’s what’s going on here as Peter Parker is berated by a cabbie as a cheapskate. While Peter himself doesn’t make much money, his wife is a successful actress and, honestly, he doesn’t even attempt to beg poverty. “Sorry. Didn’t have that much money on me,” he says casually. “I just didn’t think ahead, and now you have suffer for it. Oh well!”

Dennis the Menace and Pluggers, 6/4/18

Here we have two men in the twilight of their lives evaluating their priorities in very different ways. Mr. Wilson rejects Dennis’s extremely non-menacing nutritional advice, for a number of obvious reasons: he’s already lived a good long life, and why not enjoy the time he has left, or at least use the fleeting joy of a sugar rush to distract from the fact that what should’ve been his golden years are being spent constantly feuding with the child who lives next door? Then there’s our elderly dog-man plugger, whose house and body are in equal states of disrepair. He could try getting out the toolbox and fixing up the house — he is a plugger, after all, and that’s the sort of thing they do — but, you know, he’ll be dead soon, so why bother? The stair will outlive the knee, at least, and soon he won’t be able to walk down the steps anymore to hear the squeak. Then it’ll be somebody else’s problem.

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Dick Tracy, 6/10/18

Ha ha, I guess this is why they call him “Sawtooth”: if you try to make small talk with him during the 46-hour train ride from California to Chicago, he’ll bite your head off! Metaphorically. And maybe literally, later. 46 hours is a long time. And that’s the scheduled travel time. Those long-haul Amtrak routes often run very late. Lotta opportunities for, say, a guy with metal teeth to bite another guy’s head off, is what I’m saying. He’d have some soothing quiet then, by God. Except for all the horrified screaming, I guess.

Mary Worth, 6/10/18

Remember, Mary is of a certain age, so she uses euphemisms like “seeing someone at the Medical Arts Building” to mean psychotherapy and “exciting personal life” to mean “non-stop fuckfest with a hot rich dude her son’s age, to which I have given my blessing.”

Spider-Man, 6/10/18

Boy, there’s a lot of musing about hospital administrators padding out this comic before we get to the best: the NEXT: box that boldly uses the completely horrifying phrase “spider of flesh!” Imagine if you will a spider not covered in chitin like the ones you know, but rather just composed entirely of flesh. Just a spider-shaped flesh-chunk, no organs or anything like that, but somehow alive, and moving. Pretty awful, right? Sure would want a fist made of iron to come along and pound it into oblivion!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/10/18

“…with a bigger budget than most, of course. So, in other words, I’m not like a regular mom at all! I’m rich as shit!”

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Slylock Fox, 6/11/18

Today’s Slylock has what strikes me as a pretty big disconnect between the text and the art. The narrative we’re presented with asks us to believe that it’s Max who was lagging behind, and Slylock who has to still forge ahead to complete their mission. But check out what they actually look like: Max dynamically striding forward into adventure, looking over his shoulder at his companion, who’s desperately clinging to the broken bridge with a look of panic on his face. It’s almost as if these tales aren’t being written by their true hero, isn’t it? Anyway, here’s hoping Max crumples that map into a ball, tosses it into the ravine while Slylock watches, and heads off into the jungle, never looking back.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/11/18

While I admit it isn’t for everyone, I really enjoyed the Darren Aronofsky Noah from a few years back (my pocket review is that the it’s the only big-budget biblical epic I’ve seen that has the nerve to get as crazy as the actual bible). One of the key themes of the movie is that for most of the story Noah believes that God plans to kill off all of mankind for its sins; Noah and his family are merely to shepherd the animal species through the Flood, and then once they die of old age, the human race will be justly wiped out. It’s only when he discovers that his daughter-in-law is pregnant that he has to recalibrate his thinking; but what today’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith asks us to imagine is a word where the Flood is meant as a final and complete act of extermination, not just for man but for the beasts as well. Parson Tuttle is, as usual, wrong: There is an ark, and these creatures are calmly walking one by one into it, each to bear witnes for his or her kind at the complete elimination of all their fellows. All will live out the rest of their lives in contemplation, and eventually perish, leaving the earth cleansed of the filth that is biological life.

Mary Worth, 6/11/18

Hey, remember when Tommy used to date one his co-workers, but then he hurt himself and missed a few days of work, and when he came back she dumped him and he became a Vicodin addict? Then he eventually got fired, which solved the problem of having to work with an ex, but caused more problems in terms of not having a job and spiraling downward into addiction and so forth. But good news! Now he has a job, and there’s a girl at this job that Tommy clearly intends to make his own! His life’s all set, until the dangerous combination of a back injury and a breakup inevitably befalls him again.

Spider-Man, 6/11/18

It’s funny because Iron Fist has immediately taken Spidey’s measure and deemed him not even worth punching with his titular iron fist, and instead has chosen to kick him with what I assume is a regular, non-metallic foot, which appears to be clad in a ballet slipper of some kind.

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Family Circus, 6/13/18

I’m not sure who’s reactive facial expression in this panel I love more: Sam, striking a noble pose and working very hard to look like he can’t understand what Jeffy is talking about, that his position as morally superior to the other Keane dog, named “Barfy” for what I assume are obvious reasons, is still intact; or Mommy, cringing inside, worrying that Jeffy doesn’t need any sort of even vague hint that peeing on the floor is, in fact, an option.

Rhymes With Orange, 6/13/18

FUN FACT: did you know that even in the blessed afterlife, where we’ll spend eternity glorying in the close companionship of God, we will, eventually, grow bored with our existence, and seek new and ever more extreme ways to stimulate ourselves? And that without the prospect of bodily infirmity or death to create a natural end to this process, it can only escalate? Suddenly Lucifer’s rebellion against his Creator becomes easier to understand!

Spider-Man, 6/13/18

“–you need a refresher course in Spider-Man 101! First lesson: you’d think the whole point of spider-sense would be that it warns me about stuff when I’m not paying attention. But turns out nope! Turns out I have to be paying very close attention for it work. And if you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Wow, that’s pretty lame, and not really very impressive at all,’ well, wait till you hear about the rest of my whole deal!”

Pluggers, 6/13/18

You’re a plugger if you’ve had ten years, literally a decade, to figure out what the App Store is, but you just haven’t, and you have no plans to do so going forward, either.

Hi and Lois, 6/13/18

Ha ha, it’s funny because the baby has crippling anxiety that prevents her from experiencing uncomplicated happiness for more than a brief moment!

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Spider-Man, 6/15/18

Oh, hey, whaddya know, Spider-Man and Iron Fist’s laudable attempts to find out why Jimmy Woo got stabbed and stop him from getting stabbed again, respectively, have unfortunately been set aside so that they can battle it out on the roof of a hospital while engaging in some of the most cringe-inducing banter this strip has ever seen, which is really saying something. Mostly, though, I’m interested in the third panel here. Like many comics, Spider-Man is extremely wedded to the classical iconography that has nurses dressed all in white and sporting a nurse’s cap, even though that hasn’t been the standard nurse’s uniform in the U.S. in decades. Another change in the nursing profession is that now there are male nurses, who never wore the cap, so putting that kind of retro outfit on them would be pretty silly, which gets you incongruous visuals like we have in this strip, where one of our sinister baddies has taken regular scrubs from the supply closet, and the other prepped for this job by shopping in the “naughty nurse” section at the local Halloween superstore.

Crankshaft, 6/15/18

Bad news, everybody: Crankshaft’s garden club isn’t going to turn into a weekly senior citizen S&M orgy, despite what we’ve all been hoping.

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Marvin, 6/25/18

Like most world famous comics bloggers, I usually turn to the virtual funny pages every morning, scan the strips, and think to myself, “Is this one about me?” I mean, sometimes it’s obvious, but other times it’s a little unclear, like today! Because, on the one hand, sure, I’m on the record as hating on Marvin constantly, without even a tiny leavening modicum or grudging respect, and I’m one of the last bloggers alive, since everyone else quit years ago and moved on to [checks notes] creating content for “Instagram stories” or whatever. But on the other, the Marvin creative team may not be that current with developments in online publishing (the tell is the use of the clunky phrase “blog writer”) and it is long-established strip canon that Bitsy is a blogger (sorry, “blog writer”), so maybe I’m not personally being insulted. It’s also long-established strip canon that Marvin and Bitsy hate each other! Just like every character hates ever other character. It’s really just mutual loathing all the way down! It’s funny how we don’t talk about that so much, which I guess is because all the shitting is even worse.

Mary Worth, 6/25/18

Ha ha, Tommy’s in love after one date, everyone! This is definitely an emotionally healthy development that isn’t related to his addictive personality, at all. I’m pretty proud of him for lulling his mom into a sense of complacency by starting slow but then gradually ramping up over the course of the sentence so that everything seems really chill and relaxed about this falling in love thing. Surely he wanted to blurt it out immediately, and was going cross-eyed at the effort of holding it in.

Spider-Man, 6/25/18

Ahh, Dr. Christine Palmer, the [Googles because it’s being boldface-yelled at us like we’re supposed to recognize it] beloved Marvel character who is Doctor Strange’s colleague and occasional girlfriend, and who is played in the movies by [squints at the marvel cinematic universe dot wikia dot com article and then at panel two here] … Rachel McAdams? That seems … not right.

Hi and Lois, 6/25/18

Ha ha, it’s funny because the twins don’t want to go to summer camp but Lois doesn’t want them around so they’re going to summer camp, and the twins know that’s why they’re going to summer camp, and they resent it! That’s … literally the joke of this strip, I think?

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Gasoline Alley, 6/30/18

Every few years, Gasoline Alley teases us that supercentenarian Walt Wallet is headed for the Old Comics Home, a kind of heaven for discontinued comic-strip characters. But it was a lie and a cheat in 2006, and a cheat and a lie in 2013. Will no one rid us of this troublesome coot?

Maybe this time. Here, Team Alley promises to put Walt away for good, with a “roast and toast affair” that will cook, slice, and serve him up on open-face sandwiches. Farewell, honored patriarch, and bon appétit, everybody! Glue down those dentures, folks — there’s a-gonna be some chewin’!

Phantom, 6/30/18

Since its origins in 1936, Phantom has threaded the needle pretty tight on issues of colonialism and race. So it’s refreshing to see today’s unambiguous repudiation of “one drop of blood” racial classification. It’s also pretty savvy of Team Bandar to top up the Phantom with blood from warrior Babudan — Guran’s is basically donuts dissolved in palm wine. Which would make him a plugger, I guess?

Spider-Man, 6/30/18

Aw, look at these two, bickering with Fate when they were clearly Meant to Be. Soon, they will cover the ground together. So much ground!

Luann, 6/30/18

Grr, all right here is your precious Luann.

You know, for the pragmatic, hypercapable member of Team Tonad, Toni keeps getting basic mechanics wrong: using a torque wrench for disassembly, or setting up her pipe wrench to tighten that hose coupling. Seems to have the arm strength, though. And those mitts are the size of her head!

Hello, faithful readers! I’ll be sitting in through Wednesday July 11, as Josh nobly attends to family duties in faraway France while the rest of us sweat it out here. SO UNFAIR. Reach me at uncle.lumpy@comcast.net if the site gives you trouble. No need to alert me to comments in moderation, though — I get automatic updates. Enjoy!

— Uncle Lumpy

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Six Chix, 7/2/18

Panel 3: “Gastroenterologist”

Dick Tracy, 7/2/18

OK, I am legit super stoked about this story, partly because I’m just sure it’s going to catch us up on the Space Coupe of Doom last seen in 2013 heading to Jupiter carrying Mysta-fabricators Dr. Sail and Dr. Ghote in the hands of the solar system’s worst pilot. But mostly I’m stoked because I remember the Chester Gould Moon stories from the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, and that shit was lit, yo. So we’re all in for a treat, at least until Sawtooth, the Green Hornet, Blackjack, one or more of the Margies, the Brush, Posie Ermine, or any of the countless other loose ends turns up again.

Sherman’s Lagoon, 7/2/18

Assuming they can get Alberto the triton snail there to both get chomping and overcome his painful awkwardness with the lady snails, Sherman and Megan are going to save the Great Barrier Reef! Responsible stewards of a complex ecosystem, or selfish hoarders of their supply of edible tourists? You be the judge!

Hey, they’re Great Whites! Maybe they can help us choke down Walt Wallet!

Spider-Man, 7/2/18

“Wow, that one guy I never heard of is really that other guy I never heard of! This changes everything!”

Zits, 7/2/18

Ahem, young lady! Jack Dorsey, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk all wish to have a word with you. Mark Zuckerberg is strangely silent.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 7/9/18

How would rumors like that spread, anyway? “Listen, there may or may not be this one guy, dunno who, and he fights a hypothetical sect called The Hand! They’re famous for keeping their activities, identity, and their very existence completely secret: nobody’s ever heard of them, and everybody knows it! Maybe this guy fights them with his hand? No way to tell! Don’t hold me to any of this, OK? Pass it on!”

Mary Worth, 7/9/18

Hey, you two, I have nothing but respect for your respective sobrieties; Tommy, you have apparently turned your life around yet again, way to go. But before you go getting all boldface, accept that maybe not every waitress is on fire for details of your personal journeys? Think of “Just order your damn drink” as a thirteenth step or something.

Judge Parker, 7/9/18

(Sigh)

No, Neddy, they didn’t — they asked where you were. Ronnie Huerta invented that whole drug thing after the fact. Are you on drugs or something?

Haha Sam is shopping online for a matching lamp. Maybe the strip is so deeply invested in desk lamps because the lawyers don’t have any actual work to put on their desks?

Crankshaft, 7/9/18

♫ Love is the drug got a hook in Ralph! ♬

The only real question is how soon this ends badly.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Spider-Man, 7/14/18

Yesterday’s Newspaper Spider-Man provided the kind of pulse-pounding drama we’ve come to expect from Newspaper Spider-Man, which is to say that it featured Peter Parker, whose powers are beyond those of ordinary human beings, dozing off on the couch. But it wasn’t just a one-off gag! No, it was to set up today’s strip, in which Robbie calls Peter with a hot tip about the Iron Fist. Isn’t it more dramatic that the phone call through which this hot tip was conveyed woke Peter up??? I mean, marginally, I guess. There are other ways it could’ve been done, though. Maybe Robbie could’ve spun around dramatically in his chair right before he said “Iron Fist”? Just spitballin’ here.

Mary Worth, 7/14/18

Ah, yes, the seemingly unstoppable Tommy-Brandy Romance Express is hitting its first hairpin turn: Brandy is emotionally scarred by a bad dad whose problems sound a litte too much like Tommy’s until-really-quite-recently-active problems! And, as he’s a true acolyte of Mary Worth, Tommy is deploying her patented techniques for dealing with a painful past, and is just urging Brandy to just not remember anything bad her dad did, so, problem solved! Now all he has to do is will her with his mind into never asking anything about his own past, so that she’ll be satisfied with the idea of him as someone who spontaneously appeared as an adult in the supermarket where they work together, and everything should be smooth sailing!

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Spider-Man, 7/15/18

I have, of course, persistently refused to go out of my way to learn any of the lore behind the various superheroes who dominate our pop culture and the international economy today, which is just as well because with all the reboots and so forth the characters’ pasts are ever-changing anyway, but my understanding is that Peter Parker got into the stringer newspaper photography game not because of any burning desire to be a journalist but because he knew the Bugle’s management was obsessed with running pictures of Spider-Man and he was uniquely positioned to sell them said pictures and so it was a way for him to make money without doing too much extra work. The desire to not do too much extra work is of course one of Newspaper Spider-Man’s defining characteristics, so it really fits in well in this iteration of the Spidey multiverse; being a stringer photographer for a daily paper also pays very, very little, which fits in nicely with Newspaper Spider-Man’s overall stupidity as well. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not really buying Peter’s moral dilemma here! The idea that Peter has gotten a taste of journalistic fame and now he wants more is only marginally more believable than the idea that he cares about the Iron Fist’s privacy or whatever! I reiterate an idea I put forth over a decade ago: Peter should just use his spider-powers to take pictures of celebrities and sell them to TMZ or the like. The moral stakes are lower all around, and presumably the gig will be so lucrative that he’ll eventually stop fighting crime altogether.

Gasoline Alley, 7/15/18

I don’t know that I would start my Sunday comic with a warning to the reader that, though they may think they’re safe from baffling and enraging faux-rustic wordplay, the next few panels are about to prove them very, very very wrong. But I’m not the guy currently in charge of the century-old Gasoline Alley intellectual property, I guess!

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Blondie, 7/18/18

Blondie is of course absurdly scrupulous about never using actual brand names in the strip. I’ll accept “Online To-Go” as Dagwood trying to come up with a generic phrase that describes the process of ordering food from various apps whose names he cannot be bothered to remember, but the real problem becomes apparent in panel two, as, faced with the prospect of having to come up with four names in short order, the strip verges from the dopey (“Cheesey Chuck’s”) to the uncanny valley of restaurant names (“Copogna’s,” “Gleerou’s” (?)).

Spider-Man, 7/18/18

The Newspaper Spider-Man strip is finally starting to explain one of its longest-standing mysteries, which is: what exactly are the parameters of its hero’s “spider sense” in this iteration of the spideyverse, and what good is it if it can’t, say, prevent its hero from bludgeoned with a pipe or a club, or just bonked on the head by falling masonry? Well, a few weeks ago we learned that Spider-Man has to be paying attention in order for spider-sense to work (which, if you were paying attention, why would you … need spider-sense in the first place?). Today nicely demonstrates that this is a particular problem for our hero because he is in fact extremely distractible. “OK, my spider-sense is tingling very powerfully, which means I have to pay very careful attention to my surroundings in order to avoid dang–OH MY GOD THAT DOOR IS SLIGHTLY AJAR THIS IS AMAZING”

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Beetle Bailey, 7/28/18

There are so many unsettling aspects about the Halftrack’s marital life, and I’d say that one of the absolute worst is Mrs. Halftrack’s weirdly sublimated horniness. Today’s installment makes it seem like she’s doing vaguely sexy mommy play and then takes a turn to the sexy doggy play and, you know what, normally I don’t endorse the General’s obvious and untreated alcoholism but I’m here to say now: I get it.

Spider-Man, 7/28/18

I don’t pretend to know how exactly the Newspaper Spider-Man Universe maps onto other Marvel continuities, but it’s true that there are tons of other superheroes out there — Iron Man! Wolverine! Black Widow! So, while Peter’s antagonists might eventually realize he’s no ordinary reporter, I’m not sure they’re going to associate “not getting stabbed” as a spider-specific power.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/28/18

It’s pretty funny that Rex assumes Jordan will be catering his own wedding, but, when you think about it, Jordan is Avery’s driver and manservant, and therefore is part of the underclass. He can’t hire anyone to cook for him! He’s a guy who people hire to cook! It just doesn’t make sense!

Funky Winkerbean, 7/28/18

Does … does Mason think they give out Emmys for trite wordplay, or

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/29/18

Oh, hey, we’ve moved on from the low-key looming-nuptial-derived happiness of one boring Rex Morgan, M.D., ancillary couple to the low-key looming nuptial-derived happiness of another boring Rex Morgan, M.D., ancillary couple! I like how Corey is really playing along here, asking all the questions necessary for exposition, until finally he gets to the last panel and he just can’t take it anymore. “Ugh, I wouldn’t have to go with you, would I? That sounds boring as hell! Just driving around looking at dull-ass shit, hanging out with you two chumps staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. No thanks! I’m just gonna stay here with my video games!”

Spider-Man, 7/29/18

Of course, it’s always an absolute delight to see Peter Parker abruptly and unexpectedly bludgeoned into unconsciousness, but let’s not sleep on Peter’s hilarious and deluded self-talk in the leftmost panel in the bottom row. “Maybe if I can round that corner and escape, roughly six feet away from where they’re chasing after me at full speed, they’ll give up! It’s totally possible they haven’t yet developed object permanence and will literally think that, if they can’t see me, I no longer exist! It’s worth a shot!”

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Spider-Man, 8/1/18

Wow, it used to be that all you had to do to be the sinister leader of criminal syndicate with a vice grip on Chinatown was be a vaguely racist stereotype and have an army of sexy swordsladies at your beck and call. But now it turns out that you also have to keep up on all the latest D-list celebrity gossip just so that you don’t accidentally chop off the head of the chump husband of some Broadway actress. The final panel is a sad and totally accurate assessment of the relative importance of journalists and people whose spouses occasionally appear in People.

Pluggers, 8/1/18

OK, see, Pluggers, we have a deal where you get to do your thing so long as the event you depict in your panel puts a little bit of a twist on the caption, and the key to this is that the caption has to be a commonly used phrase or concept for non-pluggers, and you show us the plugger spin on it. But today we’re being asked to believe that “upgrading your timepiece” is a thing? A thing anyone says? Maybe pluggers believe that this is a thing that nerds who wear smartwatches say? Hey, Pluggers: the caption to this one could’ve just been “A plugger smartwatch,” BOOM.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/1/18

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hootin’ Holler’s only medical facility is infested with vermin!

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Spider-Man, 8/6/18

Actually, there’s a wide variety of apps out there that can help you learn a second language on your own — Duolingo’s the most popular, but it’s an area where there’s a whole lot of competition. Of course, if you live in an predominantly immigrant neighborhood where you still speak your native tongue on an everyday basis and don’t have much chance to practice the language you’re learning on an everyday basis, you might come off a little stilted; still, you have to admit that, while Claw sometimes chooses a big word where a small one will do, any English-speaker will be able to understand him easily. How’s your Cantonese, anyway, Peter?

Family Circus, 8/6/18

About 10 years ago, I watching the Wizard of Oz with my niece, who was about 8 or 9 at the time, and in the very first scene that takes place in Oz, she said, “Look, Uncle Josh, you can tell they filmed this inside” — and it’s true! It’s really quite obvious it’s on a set. I had a sad moment of thinking “oh no, the kids today are too media savvy to enjoy this movie,” but then she followed up with “–and that’s how you know this is a magical land that they’re in!” It really warmed my heart that she had actually constructed this elaborate theory of the film’s visual semiotics that allowed her enjoy it all the more. Another generation was still going to find itself enraptured by this wonderful movie! Anyway, like I said, that was a decade ago, and all I can say seeing this panel is: welp, we had a good run.

Gil Thorp, 8/6/18

“They’re sure a lot more pleasant than the public school kids I spend most of my time with! Those priests are still allowed to beat some respect into them, I guess.”

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Hi and Lois, 8/12/18

In this fallen age where we’re all overworked and underpaid and comic strip revenue is dropping and endless digitized archives are out there for the reuse and remixing, I’m always slightly suspicious that anything I’m looking at as a comic strip could be a rerun with new dialogue and slightly updated art. Take today’s Hi and Lois. Obviously the core joke is very of the moment. And I’m not sure if we’re supposed to understand Chuck Green’s “my” as meaning “I invented this” or “I just downloaded it.” But is there any world where the visual stereotype to go with either of those things is “guy with white pants, spray tan, and shirt unbuttoned to display chest hair”? Anyway, feel free to imagine whatever extremely 1982 hijinks were going on here before the phone got dropped into the panel.

Crankshaft, 8/12/18

Today’s strip, combined with this weird storyline from a few months ago, indicates to me that someone on the Crankshaft creative team has finally noticed that low-margin retail banking is no longer a profit center for financial institutions and that they’re increasingly trying to cut costs through automation. Unfortunately for the financial services sector, they pissed off someone with access to the unparalleled reach of syndicated newspaper comics. Feeling that burn, Big Banks?

Spider-Man, 8/12/18

Shout-out to Peter Parker for taking time out of his busy being-tied-up-and-ineffectual schedule to notice that Suwan has a feisty nature and a great ass. “Oh, yeah! Shake that thang while you argue with your uncle! Daddy like!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/12/18

Thanks for putting quotes around “Elvis,” Rex Morgan, M.D., narration box! Without them, we might’ve briefly wondered if we were looking at the real Elvis Presley, and that would’ve been exciting, or at least interesting!

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Spider-Man, 8/14/18

Oh heck yes, Kingpin’s back! You might remember this beefy supervillain from his previous appearance in Newspaper Spider-Man, where he changed the face of evil scientific research techniques with his hit management guide, Faster! Work Faster! and then fled in an adorably tiny submarine as his evil scheme collapsed. Anyway, he’s joined forces with Golden Claw for a superstar teamup, and the techniques he’s learning as an equal partner in a criminal enterprise will inform his next book, Murder By Committee: How To Get Buy-In From All Stakeholders For Brutal Gangland Killings.

Dick Tracy, 8/14/18

You ever think about how silly Liz feels talking awkwardly into her wrist genie just sitting around police HQ, when there’s a perfectly good landline phone right there on her desk? Probably not half as silly as Dick feels having to fill out all the damn paperwork the liberals say he needs to deal with every time he kills someone, but Liz’s irritation is a lot more justified.

Blondie, 8/14/18

Man, I wish this were a Sunday strip so we could really get deep into those napping-related security questions, you know? Like, ten is actually quite a lot! I know this strip generally satisfies itself with goofy fake brand names so probably they’d start off just being about how much he loves SleepLyfe® Pillows or whatever, but I really want to get in to the contours of Dagwood’s dreamscape, and I feel like by question six or seven he’d have no choice but to get real and discuss why he prefers sleep’s temporary annihilation of self to spending time with his friends and family.

Gil Thorp, 8/14/18

So it turns out that this year instead of doing a wacky summer storyline, Gil Thorp is doing a storyline about Gil doing some golf coaching. It also turns out that the only thing duller than watching other people play golf is watching someone explain to other people how to play golf.

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Marvin, 8/15/18

I honestly neither expect nor require Marvin, a legacy syndicated newspaper comic strip about a baby who poops a lot, to be up-to-date on current fashion trends, but I do think it’s a little awkward that in its attempt to depict a modern-day hipster they’ve overshot and given him a fashy, the haircut beloved by your more upscale white supremacists these days. Since Miller is the third most common surname for Jews in the United States, it certainly gives a very different reading to “they may not even let you in”!

Spider-Man, 8/15/18

Oh, Kingpin, you think you’re going to be some kind of bad-ass real estate criminal, but you’ve got a lot to learn about branding! The sort of hipster “pioneers” you want to attract in your moves to gentrify Chinatown will be positively thrilled to live above the alley where MJ Parker’s first husband was brutally murdered by a Chinese gang. Then, five years later, once MJ has been married to a fellow celebrity more suited to her current lifestyle, you jack up the rent by $1,000 a month and then the finance industry people move in.

Mary Worth, 8/15/18

This is definitely one way for Tommy to gently explain to Brandy that he has no plans to put out any time soon.

Pluggers, 8/15/18

Sure, it makes sense that Branson, Missouri, is ground zero for the plugger orgy scene, but I for one could’ve gone my whole life in happy ignorance of this fact.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/16/18

At some level, I am sympathetic to the dilemma facing Funky Winkerbean here. We live, after all, in a world where it’s almost impossible to avoid transnational brands. Even a generation ago, Funky and Holly might’ve been likely stopping off at a public rest area to have a picnic lunch; but today even most state-run rest stops are just food courts with a collection of national fast food franchises, and many people avoid them and just head straight for whatever cluster of chains awaits just off any interstate exit. The options for the chronicler of daily life on the road in 2018 are to depict the brands in a matter-of-fact way, and thus serve essentially as an unpaid marketing arm for a megacoporation, or to avoid referring to any particular real company, and risk ruining the sense of verisimilitude. Or, you know, you could take the tack today’s Funky Winkerbean does, which is to build a whole joke around one specific company’s consistently bland omnipresence, but then instead of using the company’s actual name you use a fake name that nevertheless lets everyone recognize the company you’re actually talking about. I wouldn’t advise you to do that, but you definitely could!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/16/18

That’s right, everyone, in the Decalogue YWHW commands His people to “not have any other Gods before me.” Yet in Las Vegas, we are all helpless for the God of Excess, impelled to bow down before the glowing neon and the crass, gargantuan architecture! Roz’s hairdresser is guilty of the sin of idolatry! And, uh, I guess she did one of the sex ones, too, probably.

Spider-Man, 8/16/18

Uh oh, looks like the Golden Claw-Kingpin partnership is running into the sort of snags that often arise when two organizations come together as equal partners with no clear lines of authority or decision making. Looks like Kingpin is going to have to follow up Murder By Committee with another best-selling management tome, Too Many Thugs Spoil The Murder: Why Gang Alliances Need To Establish Clear Delineation Of Responsibility So They Don’t End Up Shooting Someone And Then Setting Them On Fire For No Reason.

Six Chix, 8/16/18

Not sure what I’d say if I accidentally picked up a lit candle, guzzled hot wax, realized after it had seared its way halfway down my gullet what I had done, then vomited it up only to realize in horror that the wax was solidifying in my esophagus, leaving me with a hardened dangle of wax down my chin that I would no doubt paw at with increasing desperation until I asphyxiate, but to my mind “Oh for gosh sakes” would be a little too mild!

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Spider-Man, 9/7/18

Oh, right, so it turns out the secret plan of the Golden Claw-Kingpin partnership is the classic “lure all the other crime bosses to a meeting under the guise of forming a city-wide crime alliance, only to use the meeting as an excuse to massacre your rivals” trick, which you’d think criminals would figure out, seeing at the other people they’re dealing with are also criminals! Anyway, today we learn that the site of this meeting is … the theater where MJ’s hit play Picture Perfect is running, except that it’s closed for structur[al reasons?] and doesn’t seem to have moved elsewhere, so how big a hit could it be, really? Long story short, the criminals Golden Claw and the Kingpin lure to the Mammon won’t be the first to die on that stage, if you know what I mean. (I’m referring to MJ “dying” metaphorically in front of an audience, since I assume she’s a terrible actress.)

Funky Winkerbean, 9/7/18

I’m not sure if Bull is supposed to be actually quite bothered that his record being broken and he’s just being manic and upbeat to cover it up, or if we’re just meant to understand that his grasp on lucidity is becoming more and more tenuous, but either way this is a knee-slappingly hilarious strip! “Starting to sound like a broken record!” Ha ha, polysemy!

Judge Parker, 9/7/18

Some dude just stone-cold getting his neck snapped while some lady looks on, screaming in terror? Sure, why not! It’s not your grandpa’s comics section anymore, baby! Unless your grandpa likes seeing comics page murders! Maybe he does. I don’t know his life, man.

Gil Thorp, 9/7/18

Wow, ouch for Tiki Jansen. Not sure who he is but it sure sounds like he sucks!

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Spider-Man, 9/12/18

God bless this hilarious audience of nogoodniks, who are already extremely riled up and shaking their fists in rage before the meeting has even begun! I’m particularly intrigued by the phrase “so-called crime summit”: is our bespectacled thug questioning the very nature of “crime,” rejecting a label placed on his business activities by a government apparatus for which he holds no respect? Or is he disputing the term “summit,” since the theater setting seems to imply less a meeting of equals seeking consensus than a scenario where Kingpin and Golden Claw impose their will from the stage on a passive “audience” of lesser criminals?

Hi and Lois, 9/12/18

There are, in the end, two types of men in the world, and you have to decide which one you want to be. Are you a Thirsty, who’s so determined to assert his autonomy from his wife that he deliberately gorges himself at lunch to the point of nausea, sky-high cholesterol be damned? Or are you a Hi, who obediently sips a cup of broth for lunch so that by the time he gets home his stomach is empty, so empty, and he can properly stuff himself to bursting under his wife’s cruel, stern eye, asking “Now is dinner finished?” before each course only to be told “Dinner is finished when I say it’s finished.”

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Shoe, 9/18/18

OK, so, see, if Roz’s boyfriend collected trash, “The Garbageman” wouldn’t be a nickname; it would be a straightforward description of his job. Like “garbagemen” is definitely a word we use to describe sanitation workers, in American English! Though I guess I’m assuming Shoe is using “collecting” here in the professional sense. Maybe he thinks Roz is dating a hoarder, and is trying to be as cruel to her as possible about it! Jokes on him, it seems: in fact, she’s dating one of his fellow newspapermen — and one who doesn’t believe in the pious niceties of bourgeois, “respectable” journalism! Those are some well earned goggle eyes of horror.

Slylock Fox, 9/18/18

So dad is wearing … hairpants? Like a hairshirt, but pants? Isn’t parenting a child who he obviously holds in contempt self-punishment enough?

Gil Thorp, 9/18/18

Ugh, once again football season gets underway without the annual bonfire, a tradition that dates at least back to 2007 but seems to have abruptly ended after the 2015 season. I for one would’ve loved an entire wacky summer storyline about how the school board’s insurance company finally broke it to the athletic department that giant bonfires are incredibly dangerous and they can’t have them anymore, because it would’ve given Gil a chance to be hilariously indignant, would’ve probably ended in some laughable compromise, and would’ve at least acknowledged that this annual tradition stopped happening for some reason. There’s a slim chance that we’ll get a true bonfire before the first home game, but until then I’m going console myself that the jagged white shapes in the background of panel two are billowing waves of smoke rising into the sky from Milford itself, miles away from Oakwood and in the process of being burned to the ground in an orgy of Mudlark-supporting.

Spider-Man, 9/18/18

Ha ha! They were holograms all along! Just like we all figured! The old hologram trick! A classic bit.

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Hi and Lois, 9/22/18

Ha ha, there’s nothing that says “I love my son” like telling your wife as she walks by, completely within his earshot, “Look, I’m sitting right next to him here on the couch! You were wrong when you said I didn’t love him!” But really, the big shoutout in this strip has to go to Chip, who’s alternating between looking at his phone and reading that magazine he has draped over the arm of the couch. He doesn’t want to be there any more than Hi does!

Spider-Man, 9/22/18

J. Jonah Jameson of course discarded the traditional obituary section years ago, merging it with the wedding announcements to create a weekly “Life Moments” supplement that you have to pay to be featured in. But I assume that if Spider-Man died from some combination of being shot multiple times and suffocating from poison gas, it’d be a gleeful banner headline, for what’s that’s worth.

Marvin, 9/22/18

“Since American suburbia is bereft of truly public spaces, I thought we were going to wander around this commercial center merely for the purpose of experiencing the slow passage of time towards our inevitable and meaningless deaths in a location other than our home, for once. But you entered a series of stores with the intention of exchanging money for goods! What a twist!”

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Spider-Man, 9/25/18

The thing about the super-hero genre is that it features lots of high-stakes combat but also (sorry, Mopey Pete) is mostly marketed to children, so there’s a bit of tension about exactly how far we should go in depicting the consequences of said high-stakes combat, and specifically the consequences on human bodies. Usually the way they get around this is by having a lot of the battling taking the form of just people punching each other, in a super fashion, and we can kind of gloss over that because punching someone out doesn’t really hurt them, shattered organs and traumatized brains aside. But Colleen Wing is wading into this mass of bad guys swinging around a god-damned sword, which by right ought to be leaving behind a trail of severed limbs and thugs writhing on the floor as they die from massive blood loss. Maybe she’s just … bad at swords? Despite swords being her whole thing? Truly, a worthy partner to Spider-Man!

Mark Trail, 9/25/18

Wow, I had assumed that this artifact-smuggling ring was full of dweebuses and losers like sleepy, drooly Jo(s)e and glasses-and-polo-shirt-tucked-into-jeans dude, who I guess is named “Pablo.” But now we finally get to meet the extremely cool member of their criminal gang: a bad-ass, motorcycle-riding, headband-and-skull-belt wearing dude who gets called in when the scheme finally gets to the point where they have to … murder some children? I just want to emphasize to everyone reading at home that murdering children isn’t cool. It’s just that, if your gang has to kill a couple of kids, that’s something you’re going to want your coolest member to do.

Shoe, 9/25/18

The only corrupt politician we’ve ever seen in Shoe is Senator Belfrey, who, despite what I assume have been the best efforts of the Treetop Tribune and its crusading staff of investigative reporters, has remained in office since the strip began running in 1977. No wonder Shoe always seems so uptight!

Beetle Bailey, 9/25/18

“I want this locker full of severed human feet by 0900 tomorrow! Get it together, soldier!”

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Mary Worth, 9/28/18

One of my very favorite things that sometimes happens on this blog is when I make an outrageous prediction about the future course of some soap opera strip’s plot that then almost immediately comes true! So yes, Mr. Wynter really did spend more on his dog’s grave than on his wife’s. At least Bella’s monument is relatively tasteful, with Bella depicted as she was in life, wearing her adorable bow tie, and not as some kind of terrifying supernatural winged cat chimera like whoever’s buried in the plot just behind her. The second panel is great, because it shows what Bella would see if she were buried alive and had like a little hole in her casket attached to a periscope or something.

Six Chix, 9/28/18

Look, one of the advantages of having a multi-artist production like Six Chix is that you get a variety of perspectives and voices, so I’m as confused and disappointed by “big horny animal week” as everybody else.

Spider-Man, 9/28/18

“Say, Danny, have you ever considered using the incredible privilege and authority you wield in our society to better people’s lives, instead of putting on a mask and punching people unusually hard? Just spitballing here!”

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Spider-Man, 10/3/18

I know, I know, I make fun of ol’ Spider-Man a lot, but one way you know he really is a top-tier hero is that he has various powers, admittedly all based on a vaguely spider-centric theme. Like he shoots spiderwebs and he’s spider-strong and and he’s spider … sensible? You get it. Admittedly, none of his powers are helping him out in the very specific predicament he’s found himself in right now, but consider his would-be rescuer Iron Fist, whose sole power is punching. Punching with a fist … of iron, I guess. He’s gonna punch Spidey out of his problems, just you wait and see. (I haven’t watched the Iron Fist Netflix show or read any of his other comics, so if you feel like letting me know what the real scoop is, please let me implore you not to bother, I enjoy my studied ignorance, thanks.)

Hagar the Horrible, 10/3/18

I am charmed by how completely devastated Helga looks in the second panel here. We know that fancy sit-down restaurants exist in the Hagarverse, so I have to assume that the The Horribles attempted to go to one of those, but tragically miscalculated. Since Helga has always been depicted as the more civilized half of the pair, I assume she picked this place out, and is very sad to have to kill her own food, once again.

Pluggers, 10/3/18

My favorite kind of Pluggers submission comes from “Lots of pluggers everywhere” or, in this case, “Lots of pluggers coast to coast,” just in case you smug elitists thought the coasts were plugger-free. (Panama City, home of the official Pluggers P.O. Box, is located in the Florida Panhandle, which is strictly speaking on a coast, for instance.) Anyway, there are lots of pluggers who think it’s hilarious that you big-city liberals are going out and spending a whole $30 on a paper shredder when you could just spend way too much time tearing up paper by hand, letting little bits get all over the rug, and eventually lose interest and do a half-assed job and not actually make it difficult for identity thieves! Ha ha, I guess pluggers have shown all of us what’s what, again!

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Spider-Man, 10/5/18

Though I’m usually defiantly proud of my general ignorance of superhero funnybooks, one thing I do know, having watched season one of Daredevil, is that Kingpin is a real estate-themed criminal, so I appreciate his “evicted” wordplay here. I want more real estate catchphrases out of him! You know, “This plan is trickier than assembling financing for a major construction project in Midtown Manhattan while trying to get your permits in order in time to begin construction,” that sort of thing. As a punchline for this bit, I was going to say “the actual plan he’s talking about is assembling financing for a major construction project in Midtown Manhattan while trying to get your permits in order in time to begin construction, but for evil,” but that honestly seemed redundant.

Mark Trail, 10/5/18

“Wait, isn’t that those two meddling kids who’ve been following me around? Oh, never mind, they’re reading. It can’t possibly be them. The kids I’m thinking of are definitely too dumb to know how to read.”

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Crock, 10/10/18

Ha ha, yes, it’s funny because Crock appears to be suggesting that poor Barlow be fitted with a chicken liver, a ghastly parody of a medical procedure that would surely result in his death. But check out Orville in the final panel, who appears to be using dark magick to animate a severed hand to perform menial labor for him. Maybe he’s a man who could transform a chicken liver into an organ that could keep a human alive! Who could possibly set limits on the capabilities of this powerful wizard?

Hi and Lois, 10/10/18

Trixie is, of course, an eternal infant, trapped in comic-time amber for half a century and presumably doomed to stay there for a half century more, assuming newspaper comic strips are still around for that long (they will not). So it’s not a surprise that her fully adult mind has become all sick and twisted inside her forever soft baby skull. Yes, it’s good that her parents keep her confined behind closed doors; if she were allowed to escape, she would truly “mess up” the world with her terrible and well-earned wrath.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/10/18

I was going to make this one in my continuing series of jokes about “ha ha, Hagar recently converted to Christianity but doesn’t fully ‘get’ it,” but then I remembered … most of the history of Western civilization? Then I got real sad.

Spider-Man, 10/10/18

Oh no, Spidey and Iron Fist punched the helicopter they were dangling off of, damaging it enough to interfere with its ability to fly, probably leading to their fiery deaths! Who could’ve possibly predicted this outcome? Oh, literally anybody? OK!

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/15/18

Oh, snap, did our man Jordan steal some valor? We learned yesterday that he lost his legs to an IED in Iraq not while “on patrol,” since he wasn’t in a combat unit, but rather while he was walking to a market to buy vegetables, because he was an Army Food Services Specialist. You’d think most people would be perfectly willing to honor anyone wounded by enemy action in a combat zone, and that the soldiers he fed would’ve deemed him a hero for risking his life to help supply them with fresh food and not MREs or industrial flash-frozen meals shipped from the States. But, whatever, Jordan just wants to give people a “good story,” and it makes me suspicious that the truth is even further removed from the “real” tale he’s been telling his fiance. Like, in a month we’re going to find out he wasn’t in the army at all, but actually was just a line chef at a restaurant who had to run to the supermarket to get some more spinach during the late dinner rush, and accidentally slipped and fell into the into the industrial floor buffer. Then a week after that we’ll find out the restaurant was an Olive Garden and he was actually picking up more of the Secret Olive Garden Ingredient (Grade B butter).

Mary Worth, 10/15/18

I don’t want to tell Mary how to do her job (“job”), but if you’re trying to woo an emotionally closed-off shut-in back into the world by giving him a specific task to complete that matches his skills, maybe just spend some time with him doing that task and making neutral chit-chat instead of bombarding him with feelings talk the moment you trick him out of his apartment? This is the speech for when he realizes he’s enjoyed the day in spite of himself, not when he’s still in the car on the way over! He’s not going to come out again for another year.

Six Chix, 10/15/18

One thing I really hate is characters explaining things to each other that they already know, so I’m going to assume that the vampiress on the left has only recently been turned into an undead ghoul by the vampiress on the right. Our newbie has finally gotten over the initial shock and is starting to really lean into the aesthetic, but still hasn’t really that the one thing that’s truly her long hoped for ticket to Instagram stardom is also the one thing that makes selfies physically impossible.

Family Circus, 10/15/18

My favorite part of this cartoon, in which literally everybody is devastated at not being able to go on a trip to New York with Big Daddy Keane (which, why? he isn’t that great) is that Billy is wearing a “Good On Ya Mate” t-shirt he got from his canonically Australian mother. Ha ha, Billy doesn’t know the difference between New York and Australia! The only geography he understands is “here” and “somewhere else.” He’s a moron!

Slylock Fox, 10/15/18

I’m not sure why Slylock felt like he needed so many accomplices for his grim little sting operation here. I do love how pleased Patty looks — maybe she feels like, having gotten a social invitation from Slylock, she’s moving up in the world! — and how tense everyone else looks, as they all wait for this desperate addict to sneak off to the bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and try to pocket the, uh, “toothpaste,” yeah, that’s exactly what Patty’s been stealing from the town’s medicine cabinets, toothpaste. Only our li’l pig pal is completely ignoring the fraught emotional texture of the evening. He’s just eatin’ dinner! He loves dinner! It’s weird that dinner’s been served in the living room off of a coffee table, but guess what: he doesn’t care!

Spider-Man, 10/15/18

“Look who escaped the chopper via their own personal jetpacks!” “Kingpin and the Golden Claw!” “Yeah man, that was a rhetorical question. They were the only other people in the chopper. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Is this … is this how other people feel when they’re talking to me? Hoo boy.”

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Dennis the Menace, 10/21/18

But you couldn’t even follow through with that, could you, Mr. Wilson? You couldn’t just let him get bored and wander off. You had to argue with him from a second story window, at great length. You’re entirely complicit in this thoroughly dysfunctional relationship, sir.

Six Chix, 10/21/18

Six Chix is continuing on with its anti-bullying crusade, but I don’t think today’s lesson — “if you’re being bullied, console yourself with the thought that you’re too disgusting to be killed and eaten the way your delicious tormenters inevitably will be” — is really in the spirit of Unity Day.

Spider-Man, 10/21/18

Man, I know I make fun of Spider-Man’s general uselessness on this blog a lot, but it’s kind of shocking that it’s now explicit canon that you too can be as super-powered as he is, just by working out with Steve down at LA Fitness a couple times a week.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 10/21/18

Look at Leroy and Loretta’s expressions here. Do they look like people engaging in a little light banter? Nope. Leroy definitely tried to fuck those pies, right there in the frozen food aisle.

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Spider-Man, 10/30/18

The whole thing about Spider-Man is that, as a character, he’s supposed to be not some untouchable superhuman, but an ordinary guy with some extraordinary ability and also a lot of foibles — relatable, in other words. And sometimes it works! Like, in panel one, I definitely relate to chatting with someone that you’re trying to make friends with and then you accidentally blurt out some phrase like “you’ve got a lot on the ball!”, which is sort of like idiomatic English but in fact very much isn’t a thing anyone actually says. I’d be kicking myself over it for it for weeks, though; Spidey, on the other hand, thinks this is going great and is ready to confidently progress to the makeouts, which I don’t relate to at all.

Hagar the Horrible, 10/30/18

Ha ha, even after breaking up with an obvious creep, this woman can never escape him, because he’s managed to worm his way into her very mind and take away her ability to control her own body! Ahh, the funny pages, a pleasant place for innocent laffs that don’t as a rule center on nightmarish body horror.

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Mary Worth, 11/1/18

I certainly hope that Bella is absolutely enraged that Saul has moved on so quickly and comes back from Dog Hell to haunt him, in violent spectral form.

Spider-Man, 11/1/18

If you’re wondering if Spider-Man has become any less charged with erotic, forbidden longing since earlier this week, the answer is a resounding no.

Pluggers, 11/1/18

Pluggers know their bodies are feeble and the pitiless scythe of evolution will soon cull their genes from the species! This is simultaneously the most and least depressing Pluggers panel to date.

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Spider-Man, 11/4/18

As hilarious as it would be if Spidey’s sad line in the final panel here were about his heartfelt commitment to the historic preservation of New York’s small architectural gems, in fact he’s anxious because the Mammon was the venue for MJ’s play; despite the fact that he whines endlessly about her making more money then him, they still need her Broadway earning power to, like, pay rent and such. Also, fun fact, MJ casually mentioned that due to theater repairs her play was “just going on hiatus for a couple of weeks” and that was two years ago, so they’re gonna need some more money quick.

Dennis the Menace, 11/4/18

So Dennis literally stole money out of Mr. Wilson’s wallet, leaving him unable to afford the medication he needs to live? That … that’s actually legitimately menacing. Congrats, Dennis, you’ve graduated from whimsy to theft!

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Six Chix, 11/9/18

Normally, as you know, I do not come to praise the art in Six Chix. But I actually sort of like the depiction of the facial expression on the right here? Like it’s not what you’d call … technically skilled but I do think the crinkly smile captures the emotion that they’re trying to sell us. “Ha ha, yeah, I do sometimes do that! Ya gotta love life’s little foibles!”

Hagar the Horrible, 11/9/18

Actually, I think the pedant Hagar is hitting on/scamming out of liquor is a better example of the same thing. I love how he’s chinless in a way that if drawn realistically would be grotesque but here is kinda cute, and the way you draw a crooked frown on him is just by giving him a crooked upper lip dangling over the space where his lower jaw should be.

Spider-Man, 11/9/18

There’s a lot going on here, sartorially. Like, I know it’s kind of a trope for this strip by this point, but how comfortable can Peter’s spider-suit (the proportional suit … of a spider) really be? Would he really leave it on while lounging casually around the house, making phone calls? And then there’s MJ, who, if I’m following the sequence here correctly, was sound asleep in her hotel room in her sexy underwear, butt protruding gently towards the TV, when Peter called. But let’s not let this distract us from the important thing, which is that Peter called MJ to fess up that he accidentally destroyed the theater/their livelihood, and then she tells him she heard about it “collapsing” without mentioning his involvement, so he immediately changes the subject.

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Spider-Man, 11/12/18

So in the last couple of weeks, the guest stars of both the last Newspaper Spider-Man plotline and of the one just getting under way today both had their Netflix shows cancelled over the past month, which raises an important question: is Newspaper Spider-Man the hell to which peripheral Marvel characters are condemned if they don’t prosper in the marketplace of ideas? Anyway, everything I know about Luke Cage comes from watching the first season of Jessica Jones, and my impression was always that his whole deal was more about his indestructible skin rather than uncontrollable super strength. And really, check out the way that he’s delicately holding what I assume is one of those tiny paper cups you get from the dispenser by the water cooler. It’s his way of saying “I didn’t have to knock this door off its hinges, but, you know, I decided to knock it off its hinges anyway.”

Slylock Fox, 11/12/18

The main thing that concerns me about today’s Slylock is what’s going to happen to that poor li’l baby ape once Harry and his mom get hauled away in handcuffs thanks to some extremely circumstantial evidence and Slylock’s ratiocination. Does animal society have some equivalent of the human foster care system? Or is he just going to be returned to the forest to fend for himself?

The Lockhorns, 11/12/18

It is, of course, entirely believable that the Lockhorns, having alienated all their friends with their palpable mutual loathing, would end up having a tiny birthday party, just the two of them, for Loretta. But I will never get over the fact that the birthday girl, in a desperate attempt to try to inject a certain sense of fun into this deeply grim occasion, has put on a whimsical party hat, and Leroy stubbornly refused to get on board. He won’t even give her this.

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Spider-Man, 11/30/18

Ridiculous get-up? Check! Paralyzing insecurities? Check! Unreliable super-powers? Check!

Looks like our Spidey has met his match!

Mary Worth, 11/30/18

“Dr. Jeff is an emasculated tool” Mary Worth is the best Mary Worth.

Now before anybody gets all “ditch the cat,” let me remind you that Mary once dumped a very promising boyfriend because he didn’t share Mary’s passion for seafood. And I’m betting Libby has no problems chowing down the chum. What’s more, Libby doesn’t seem to be allergic to Jeff, does she? So who’s at fault here, really?

If this gets any better I may wet myself.

On the Fastrack, 11/30/18

Dethany cruelly taunts co-workers who died of starvation.

Mark Trail, 11/30/18

Ol’ Sleepy-Eyed José is sounding sketchier by the minute: “Um, guys, those kids you asked me to take to Santa Poco? Well, we all got there, but they’re not with me anymore. They’re in some kind of trouble; don’t ask me what exactly: maybe they stumbled onto something? Certainly no murderous motorcyclist knife-throwing gang leader is chasing them across rooftops — that’s ridiculous, why did I even bring it up? Anyway, get up here quick — and by “here,” I mean a place I’ll call and tell you all about later!”

But Professor Carter will take any excuse to abandon his rest-stop-men’s-room headquarters for a ride in that sweet diesel crew-cab, with the air turned up to blast away the urinal-cake smell.

Guys: find yourself a girl who looks at you the way Dethany looks at donuts.

— Uncle Lumpy

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Dustin, 12/13/18

Look, I’m a firm believer that your masturbatory life is your own business, even if you’re in a committed relationship, and that includes any associated props and interior mental processes. That said, it’s your own business because you keep it your own. You don’t need to talk about how horny you are for this pie right in front of your wife, dude.

Spider-Man, 12/13/18

A hero rises … after being inconvenienced when his vacation plans are disrupted! The Amazing Spider-Man!!!!!

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Funky Winkerbean, 1/21/19

As I keep harping on, I know the time-jump got the details of Wally’s story all messed up, but I never realized that those details were, like, “Wally somehow never told his new wife that he had a daughter, and she reacts to having this information sprung on her by smirking sassily at him” messed up. Big shout out to Funky Winkerbean for always surprising me, and never in a good way!

Mary Worth, 1/21/19

OK, Jannie, see, you can spend your energy buttering up your professor in transparently nonsense ways and hope that the goodwill thus generated will predispose him to be generous when you half-ass your assignments, or you can actually sleep with him and use the resulting emotional connection/potential blackmail material to strongarm him into giving you a good grade when you stop doing work altogether. But to deploy the strategy you’ve chosen here … well, it’s bold, I’ll give you that.

Spider-Man, 1/21/19

Wow, it looks like the Newspaper Spider-Man Narration Box is comparing the exchange of currency for labor in a free-market system to an evil supervillain using supernatural powers to enslave his helpless victim into doing his bidding. You never know who’s gonna go full communist these days!

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The Phantom, 2/16/19

Tragically, the Nomad’s teen daughter would rather hurl herself off the roof of the Bangallan Consulate than live torn away from her family, which she now knows was a nest of terrorists all along. This will be doubly awkward for our heroes. It will make Heloise’s escape from the country, with the President in tow, all the more suspicious if her helicopter zooms away from the site of a public and gory suicide; plus, Kadia was a Bangallan flag rank officer, which means her next of kin is entitled to a generous military pension. Looks like the Nomad’s prison commissary account will be fully stocked!

Spider-Man, 2/16/19

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on the action in Spider-Man! Killgrave had his full powers restored and was about to force Spider-Man and Luke Cage to kill one another, but fortunately MJ managed to completely disable his near-omnipotent voice by whacking him in the throat with a small piece of metal. And if you think it’s kind of unsatisfying that our superheroes were saved by a completely non-super-powered ally, don’t worry: she also did it entirely by dumb luck. Anyway, I assume Killgrave has been permanently defeated by this extremely mild throat injury, seeing as everyone is just kind of standing around chatting about it rather than attempting to, like, cover his mouth or tie him up or something.

Dick Tracy, 2/16/19

I honestly can’t work up much energy to appreciate or even recap the two or so storylines going on in Dick Tracy right now, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the apparently introduction of a new one, about a sportswriter … who stabs.

Mary Worth, 2/16/19

Just want to point out that Ian had a clear chance to say “No, Toby, of course I wasn’t having an emotional affair with Jannie” and he 100% did not take it! I mean, technically an emotional affair has to involve reciprocation, but still.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/16/19

Brayden is lucky he has that sweater to ward off the desert cold, but Rex? Rex just got to smugly correct someone by saying “That’s a common misconception,” and the glow from that will keep him warm for hours.

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Marvin, 2/17/19

I know the joke here is that Jeff is swearing continuously while shoveling but has to briefly stop while his son is within earshot so he doesn’t pass on any bad habits. But honestly, the more realistic scenario is that Jeff is doing that innocent whistling thing as he pretends not to notice that Marvin — who, remember, is a toddler who should probably be supervised at all times — is just wandering past him and trudging out into the icy winter landscape, presumably to his death.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 2/17/19

I really appreciate the point-of-view we’re getting in this panel. It’s as if we’re being invited to imagine what the Lockhorns’ home would seem like through the eyes of something in their refrigerator: long hours of silence and darkness, punctuated by brief moments where you get a glimpse of them attempting to passive-aggressively wear one another down emotionally.

Spider-Man, 2/17/19

MJ’s coup de grâce seems to be based on the assumption that if they can’t see Killgrave, he will no longer be a threat. Soon our heroes will face their most powerful foe yet: object permanence.

Mary Worth, 2/17/19

Ah, so Toby is explaining to Ian that he shouldn’t get too fixated on any one attractive young woman who says nice things about him, because probably there are lots of attractive young women who are lusting after him all the time! Can’t see anything going wrong with this plan.

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Spider-Man, 2/23/19

It’s been a week since MJ threw a blanket over Killgrave, and in that time here’s what happened: Spidey and Luke Cage have stumbled around, partially incapacitated from the aftereffects of Killgrave’s mind-control powers, and Killgrave has run around in a deranged panic, because the blanket is reflecting his own powers back at him somehow. And honestly? It’s been great. If this strip just wanted to be “comical Three Stooges-style slapstick where the main characters have superpowers but mostly just gibber and stumble and almost but not quite fall off of things,” that would honestly feel like it was just leaning into its true destiny.

Mary Worth, 2/23/19

You know what’s a good way to tell what someone’s real age is? If right before they tell you what it is, they say, unprompted, “This age that I’m about to tell you about? It’s my real age!” Remember, the thing all honest people have in common is they loudly talk about how honest they are, constantly.

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Hi and Lois, 3/3/19

Wow, I’ve never noticed that the Flagston house looks … really small from the outside? Like, I know that the design dates back to when the strip launched the ’50s, when new suburban houses were much smaller than they are now. (In a similar phenomenon, the Bumstead home layout dates from the ’20s and doesn’t even have a shower.) But in this comic, the Flagston house looks shockingly tiny, like it doesn’t even seem to have a wing for bedrooms. Certainly it’s not big enough to get amorous by the fire when you’ve got four kids around! Which may explain why the kids are not around, having possibly been left outside to freeze to death.

Spider-Man, 3/3/19

Killgrave is a man with the nearly unstoppable ability to utterly enslave someone with his voice — and having just exposed himself to a special nerve gas, he’s now able to command multiple people at once. Spider-Man and Luke Cage, two powerful superheroes, were only barely able to defeat him. And now they’re going to hand him over to … the police? Sure! That’s going to go great! “Should we have told them to make sure to not take the blanket off of him?” “Ennnh, they’ll figure it out.”

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The Phantom, 3/5/19

If you’re one of the 94.74% of my readers who, according to my analytics, aren’t Canadian, you might not have heard that that wintry nation’s twee, adorable Prime Minister got himself into a bit of a spot of bother by allegedly trying to strong-arm his Attorney General into not filing criminal charges against a major Quebec employer for its various illegal dealings with Muammar Gaddafi. And I know what you’re thinking: not Justin! How could this be! Well, what if I told you that what appeared to be dirty dealings with Libya was just a cover for even more top-secret dealings with Bangalla and its immortal protector? Sure, this scandal might bring down Trudeau’s government, but at least he’ll be sent into political obscurity knowing that he helped the innocent, and that’s what really counts.

Spider-Man, 3/5/19

Wow, this strip took a very abrupt turn from the unnecessarily antagonistic to the surprisingly erotic and … I’m not mad? I mean, since today is Saturday, this is probably just the cheesy wrap-up strip before we launch into a new storyline next week and [checks calendar] … oh my.

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Spider-Man, 3/16/19

I’ve finally recovered emotionally enough to share some terrible news with you, which is that the current run of Newspaper Spider-Man is ending a week from today. Apparently King Features will be running some “classic” Newspaper Spider-Man strips from the ’70s, which I will definitely cover here because from what I’ve seen of them Spidey is even more of a dick than he is in his current incarnation, but I will definitely mourn the end of my beloved feeble, whiny superhero.

The note from King and Marvel said “We’ll be back soon with great new stories and art to explore even more corners of the Marvel Universe for you and your readers to enjoy. We’ll be announcing more about these new adventures in the very near future, so keep your Spidey senses tuned in!” It absolutely makes sense that Marvel wants to use the toehold they have in newspapers to further promote their various intellectual properties, although how anyone could possibly miss the MCU without literally blinding themselves and living in a cave is beyond me. It will be interesting to see how they do that in newspaper form; my only request is that it be laughably bad.

Meanwhile, how will this iteration of the Spiderverse be wrapped up next week? My hope is that the Parkers travel to Australia, where Peter is bitten by one of the non-radioactive but extremely large and very poisonous spiders they have down there, and then dies. We’ll all drop a brick in his honor!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/16/19

Apparently Rex Morgan, M.D, is considered more likable than Spider-Man, because his strip got a new creative team and new lease on life a couple of years ago. One thing I miss from the Woody Wilson days is how people would just give the Morgans stuff for doing relatively basic stuff like telling an unnaturally calm tween that probably the pilot knows what he’s doing during an emergency landing. So I’m pretty jazzed about this upcoming clothes gifting sequence, which I hope takes the form of a montage like the one from Pretty Woman, or maybe ZZ Top will magically appear to guide his sartorial choices.

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The Phantom, 3/17/19

So the Sunday Phantom storyline has involved a little girl who’s stowed away on a historic airplane that’s using travelling to air shows around the world as a front for exotic animal smuggling in an extremely well thought out scheme. Mostly I like today because the Phantom has announced that these rogues are going to face prison … in Bangalla, a country that isn’t the site of any of their crimes and which has no legal jurisdiction over them, and it’s like, who does the Ghost-Who-Walks think he is, American?

Spider-Man, 3/17/19

Reading this, I assumed that longtime Newspaper Spider-Man credited writer Stan Lee famously said “Ditto” in a movie once, but turns out nope! So I guess that Peter and MJ are spending their last ever Sunday strip paying homage to, uh, the smash hit 1990 Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore vehicle Ghost. Excelsior, everybody!

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The Lockhorns, 3/18/19

OK, so I’m actively angry that, somewhere in the conceptual murk of the Lockhornsverse, Loretta and Leroy went to a rock concert (side note: “rock concert,” lol) and all we got out of it was this dumb joke about how concerts are loud and can affect your hearing in both the short and long term, which could’ve involved any generic set of characters? I have so many questions, about the genesis of this scenario, and specifically how it played out for the characters in this strip who we know and love. Why didn’t we get to see the escalating series of mutual passive-aggressive dares that led Leroy and Loretta, whose cultural consumption generally doesn’t go beyond movies or, very occasionally, the opera, to get outside their comfort zone? Was each of them hoping the other would hate it so they could feel smug about it? Did they see some big-name arena act, or did they go a little club to see some indie band so they could make fun of hipsters together? Deep in my heart, I hope they went and saw The Mountain Goats, and during the double-encore performance of “No Children,” Loretta reached out for Leroy’s hand without looking at him, and Leroy took it.

Spider-Man, 3/18/19

You know, it’s a common sentiment to say that each of us only has a limited time on this earth, and so we should live every moment of it to the fullest; but for me, I think that some of the banal, everyday experiences that many would call a waste of time are the true, quiet core of a life well lived. That’s why I respect that Newspaper Spider-Man, whose creative team presumably got more than a week’s notice that they were being cancelled, is resisting the urge to go out with a big, splashy, dramatic ending; instead, we’re apparently going to get several days of “Peter Parker vs. the TSA,” which is not only boring as shit, but has been done in this strip at least three times already. In one of his previous run-ins with airport security, Peter got bailed out by Obama; I feel like the current administration will be significantly … less forgiving.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/18/19

Rex Morgan really is hitting those classic Rex Morgan tropes: first someone gave Rex stuff for free for no good reason, and now he’s just gonna lounge around mostly naked, giving readers the occasional taste of beefcake they’ve come to enjoy. I assume the news report will be about how Annoying Hawaiian Shirt Man, who we last saw getting arrested after he made an abortive attempt to steal the ham radio operator’s jeep, was technically still under sky marshall jurisdiction when he committed his crime and will thus be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay to be held without trial indefinitely. The towel well fall away as Rex becomes aroused when learning about this tough but fair comeuppance; nevertheless, he will not smile.

Mary Worth, 3/18/19

“OK, I’ll go first! You’ve told me all about Libby; what was your first pet named? I loved all the stories about your mother — what’s was her maiden name? What street did you grow up on? What are the last four digits of your Social Security number?”

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Spider-Man, 3/21/19

I am, genuinely, done making fun here. If Newspaper Spider-Man wants to spend its last few days in the media landscape engaged in utterly pointless bait-and-switches over readership expectations vis-à-vis whether or not Peter is or is not wearing his spider-costume under his shirt, then I say go for it. One of the very first sequences I went through that really taught me what this strip was all about came in 2005, in which Peter’s undergarments were or perhaps were not a problem, with the changes having nothing to do with Peter’s own on-panel efforts. My point is that this feature is going out very much on its own terms. We should all be so lucky.

Family Circus, 3/21/19

One of my least favorite Family Circus things — and lord knows there’s a list — is when some semi-universal cultural touchstone unfolds in real life, like the Olympics or the NCAA basketball tournament, and we’re expected to believe that the Keane kids can’t stop pulling catchphrases from it. It took me a second to notice that Dolly is rubbing her arm here, indicating (I assume) that Billy hit her with the ball, or maybe just punched her and then quickly grabbed a ball so that he could say “I didn’t punch her! Both my hands are clearly occupied in holding this ball!”; before I realized that, I thought maybe he had just farted.

Gil Thorp, 3/21/19

I’m not really a “sports guy” so I sometimes I find myself in the position of wondering what it is that’s confusing me about Gil Thorp: the sport content or the trademark choppy narrative. Like, today, I don’t get why the idea of a scrimmage seems so freighted, and I don’t understand half of what Gil is talking about in panel two. But I do sincerely hope that panel three takes place nine days later, that the scrimmage drama was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and that the phone call Mimi is wrapping up here is acknowledging that and we never hear anything else about it.

Dick Tracy, 3/21/19

“It’s your case too, Joe. Go ahead, rifle through the drawers and get your fingerprints all over everything. Take a dump in the middle of the floor! Nobody can stop you!”

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Spider-Man, 3/23/19

Welp, here it is, folks: the last in the current run of Newspaper Spider-Man! This feature, which began its run in 1977, ends like this: Peter and MJ are going on vacation. And that’s it! They’re not even on vacation, they’re just talking about how much fun vacation is going to be. The only real closure we’re getting is that Peter seem to have finally gotten over his endless macho panic about MJ making more money than him. Congrats, Peter, you and your wife now have a true partnership! She makes the money as a movie star, which gives you the freedom spend your time and energy fighting crime. Oh, what’s that, you’re going to Australia and never coming back to fight crime again? Well, enjoy! Hope your next newspaper incarnation is slightly less dumb and pissy!

Mary Worth, 3/23/19

Mary Worth has been telegraphing “ESTELLE IS BEING CATFISHED” with decreasing subtlety all week, and I think today’s strip really seals it. Not only does “Arthur” not know how to spell his own name, but instead of chatting with Estelle on the balcony of his suite at the Four Seasons Kuala Lumpur, his voice is coming at you from some dark room with a laptop and a dirty table that sports a plebeian can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I like the fact that the phone is on speaker, because it implies that there isn’t just one “Arthur,” but rather she’s being catfished by committee, and they all need to hear what she’s saying so they can put their heads together and come up with a suitably romantic response. They started out in it for the money, but now they’ve really come together as a team and are increasingly excited by how good a job they’ve done as Cyranos!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/23/19

There’s a classic Mark Trail strip that’s somewhere in my archives that I spent way, way too much time just now trying and failing to dig up, in which a villain pledges to reform his ways and immediately goes off panel and shaves his beard, much to Mark’s approval. (If you can find the link, please email it to me, I love it so much!) Anyway, I guess the Rex Morgan, M.D., equivalent is to discard your garish clothes and swap them for a sensible, muted jacket-and-shirt combo. Not a tie or anything, you’re not putting on airs, but this is a way to show that you’ve been “scared straight” and are ready to rejoin civilization!

(UPDATE: Thanks to faithful reader Rita Lake for finding the strip — it’s here, and it’s spectacular.)

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/23/19

I think we should definitely listen to Jughaid when it comes to the food that he knows his body needs. Look at his discolored tongue! That’s presumably due to a serious vitamin deficiency.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/24/19

Oh my god, shoutout to Rex Morgan, M.D., for pulling off the first weird plot twist that I didn’t see coming a mile away in years. I’m not sure which possibility is funnier: that crude lout T.J. really is the evil half of a pair of identical twins and Rex is about to have an extremely civilized conversation with his brother on his flight home, or that T.J. was so embarrassed by his own behavior and subsequent run-in with the law that he’s made up a wildly improbable story about being someone else.

Spider-Man, 3/24/19

Whoops, you guys, I misread that article somehow and it’s actually today that’s the last day of Newspaper Spider-Man. Sorry if I made you mourn prematurely! Anyway, this is an amazing final strip, I think we can all agree. Again, there are two almost equally hilarious possibilities. One is that the ousted creative team, out of a sense of professionalism, decided to do a final strip that quickly resets the last 30+ years of continuity so that today’s strip will flow seamlessly into the coming reruns, setting aside for the moment the fact that a minute ago the Parkers were on their way to Australia. The other is that the writer and illustrator have simply come to feel as much contempt for this iteration of Spider-Man as I do, and wanted to ensure that, when the curtain closes on his universe, he’s left in a state of misery and poverty.

Mary Worth, 3/24/19

Oh my goodness, “Arthur Z” is really … beloved TV star Danny DeVito? This is quite the scandal. What will Rhea Perlman think?

Family Circus, 3/24/19

Much as I make fun of the Family Circus for blatantly rerunning cartoons, I do enjoy some of the older ones just to catch a glimpse of the ways everyday life was different 30 or 40 years ago. There are a few nuggets embedded here — that people’s dogs used to just roam freely around upscale suburban neighborhoods, for instance, or that heavy-duty wooden crates were standard moving gear. The biggest tell that this is from another age, of course, is that Dolly is sitting in this kitchen at all. “Where’s Dolly?” Thel wonders as she looks out the window. “Enh, must’ve wandered off again. She probably can’t have gotten very far — not on those stumpy little legs!”

Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/24/19

I know that the inhabitants of agricultural communities are more prone to be “early to bed, early to rise” types than us city folk, but it’s a little weird that Snuffy and Loweezy are all snug in bed and it’s broad daylight outside, right?

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Spider-Man, 3/28/19

Yes, we’ve all been very sad about the end of Newspaper Spider-Man, but at least we’ve been promised a trip through the strip’s forty-plus years of archives before King Features and/or Marvel figure out how to better cash in on MCU Mania in the funny pages. This week we’re getting our first rerun storyline and it’s from … literally less than five years ago????? Come the heck on, Newspaper Spider-Man, I want to see Peter Parker being a sullen dick in the ’70s and I will not be featuring you on this web-log until then, good day sir

Dennis the Menace, 3/28/19

The smile on the gentleman’s face says “Ahh, he wants to menace me with heckling, but he’s still too young for dick jokes.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/28/19

“They’re not twins, and in fact one of them’s adopted! So, this could make for a great nature vs. nurture study if one of them turns out to be real shitty. And that’s the sort of research that could get me invited to a lot more of these medical conferences where I wouldn’t have to spend time with either of them, now that I think about it!”

Mary Worth, 3/28/19

Heeeeeeeeeeere comes the grift, everybody

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Spider-Man, 4/30/19

I know I said I wasn’t going to get into Rerun Newspaper Spider-Man until it dipped a little further into the vaults than five years ago, but I guess I should grudgingly acknowledge that the particular rerun storyline they chose to launch the reruns involves Mysterio as a villain, who will also be the villain in this summer’s upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home, which means that this zombified strip is doing a significantly better job of adding the infinitesimal amount of buzz of which it’s capable into the cultural ether to boost the next entry in the most lucrative series of films in cinematic history than it did when it was still a going concern.

Anyway, not that I expect to revisit this, but the outcome of this newspaper storyline was that this Mysterio wasn’t the real Mysterio, despite the fact that as far as I’m concerned anyone who puts on this ludicrously dumb costume with its fishbowl helmet and calls themselves Mysterio deserves to be thought of as a real Mysterio, at least. I would find it profoundly amusing and satisfying if this were also the shocking twist at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a film where presumably 75% of those seeing it will have only the vaguest of familiarity with the character. The main result would be a collective “Huh?” from most of the audience, followed by some furious rewriting of the infinite “Who Is Mysterio, The Villain Of Spider-Man: Far From Home?” explainer articles churned out by every publication from Politico to Bon Appétit as they desperately seek out that sweet, sweet Marvel Cinematic Universe SEO traffic.

Mark Trail, 4/30/19

Mark has been scowling aggressively at JJ pretty much from the moment he met him, and he’s gotten so deep into it that he seems to have forgotten his real primary non-punching role, which is to interject nature facts at vaguely appropriate times. Looks like Doc has to do his work for him! And he’s not doing a great job! Javelinas aren’t pigs, but they’re part of the suborder Suina, which means they’re more closely related to pigs than any animal that isn’t a pig. You’re lucky you’re so far out in the desert that nobody can look this up on their phone, Doc!

Dennis the Menace, 4/30/19

I’m not up on modern methods of child discipline, but usually when a kid’s in “time out” or whatever they call it these days, do his parents let his friends just wander in and talk with him? I mean, maybe the other kids’ parents want them to see him, like as a cautionary example or something.

Hagar the Horrible, 4/30/19

Hmm … Lucky Eddie wants to open a fish store because he’s … “passionate” … about … fish?

Hagar the Horrible, 7/17/18 and 8/26/17

Noooooooooooooo

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Spider-Man, 8/25/19

Fandoms and conspiracy theories (pretty much the same thing, IMHO) have this weird tendency to crystallize attention around characters that normies see as incidental. So while I’m dimly aware of the likes of Boba Fett, Jean Grey, Konstantin Kilimnik, and Comet Ping Pong, they’re the center of the universe for yarn-and-corkboard trufans WHO KNOW WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON!!11!

Gwen Stacy is one such secret nexus, I think? You can tell this is a flashback to the earliest days of the canon because Green Goblin’s the only Spider-Man nemesis drawn in a cartoony style; later ones are “realistic” types like Melvin the Mole Man, Electro, and — God help us — Clown-9. So “Gwen and Norman die” is an origin story and plot driver, like the Uncle Ben thing. Except it’s messed up: Harry is mad at Spidey because Norman accidentally killed himself. Spidey swore vengeance on Norman because his own botched rescue attempt killed Gwen (“killed in a fall” is an elegant circumlocution). Maybe after she hears all this, Black Widow will set Spidey and Hobgoblin straight and get them to shake hands, exchange secret identities, and maybe catch The Price Is Right on TV?

Crankshaft, 8/25/19

Humanity’s disordered nature inclines us all toward sin, but I try to give unpleasant people the benefit of the doubt, you know? If somebody seems unreasonably belligerent, say, I chalk it up to them having a bad day, a shaky start in life, or the inability to get past some old grievance. I figure nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I’m going to be a total asshole today, all day long.” But seriously, how else do you explain something like this?

Breaking Cat News, 8/25/19

It’s the long-awaited crossover event between Breaking Cat News and Marvin. At last, POOP IS EVERYWHERE!

— Uncle Lumpy