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Family Circus, 6/1/17

I’ve never been fully on board with the theory that the Keane Kompound is a generations-long project to produce a racially pure strain of humanity via extensive inbreeding, but today’s panel is certainly another piece of evidence pointing in that direction!

Mary Worth, 6/1/17

Ha ha, we’ve been so focused on “Will Derek cheat on his wife or won’t he???” that we’ve missed the fact that Toby’s already slept with half the dudes on this boat!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/1/17

Canine horniness: just another reason why law enforcement in Hootin’ Holler is so slipshod.

Spider-Man, 6/1/17

Guys, I know she’s old, but … she’s right there

I’m pretty sure she can hear you????

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Dick Tracy, 5/31/17

I freely admit that I don’t understand even a little what exactly Dick Tracy is doing with this “the Margies are all named Margie and it’s cute and they committed some mild CosplayCon grifting and also HARBOR AN UNREASONING HATRED OF THE JEWS” plot. I will say that Margie’s “I know how your people work, Catchem,” doesn’t ring true to me. First of all, everyone knows it’s “you people,” and second of all, most anti-Semites who “know how you people work” would probably assume that the sinister Jews are pulling the strings from behind the scenes, probably in a bank somewhere, rather than getting their hands dirty as beat cops. And yet isn’t that just any despised minority’s dilemma? Nothing will be good enough for those who hate you. Sam Catchem wanted so badly to be accepted as an ordinary Neo-Chicago police officer that he dresses like a damn leprechaun, for God’s sake, and still he catches this kind of abuse from the Margies of the world.

Hi and Lois, 5/31/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because depression is quite common amongst older people, especially if, like Mr. Wavering, they don’t have a partner, but Trixie is too naive to understand this!

Mary Worth, 5/31/17

I know we’re pretty deeply committed to the Katie-Derek-Esmé love triangle plot right now, but, you know, if Toby were to accidentally purchase a cursèd Mayan artifact as a souvenir and bring it back to Charterstone, leaving a trail of gruesome, mysterious deaths her wake, I certainly wouldn’t object.

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Spider-Man, 5/30/17

As regular readers of this blog know, I have a cruel double standard when it comes to Newspaper Spider-Man. On the one hand, I cheerfully mock the strip’s treatment of the superheroic combat one expects to be the staple of the superhero genre, which is extremely infrequent and underwhelming when it actually happens. On the other, I actually don’t care that much about actual superheroic combat, which is why Newspaper Spider-Man is definitely my favorite superhero genre work of all time. I love it because it allows me plenty of room to follow my own personal obsessions, like the Daily Bugle’s place in the modern media landscape, and now the geopolitical situation of Subterranea! I am thrilled to learn more about how the Mole Man lost his position as ruler — did he flee a violent revolution one step ahead of the guillotine? Was there a peaceful grass-roots political movement that eventually rendered the Mole Man’s position untenable? Did he make the mistake of sharing power with an elected Parliament, which eventually voted depose him and declare Subterranea a Republic? And — why has he ended up in Los Angeles? Did the US offer him asylum in return for decades of rule marked by extremely friendly relations with ExxonMobil and a blind eye to literally Subterranean CIA black sites? Or is he just too gross for even Saudi Arabia to take in?

Six Chix, 5/30/17

Six Chix is, for better or worse, a gag-a-day comic. Each strip is a self-contained little world, and I feel like the “joke” here is too big for just one punchline out of nowhere. You really need to explore a theme like this — namely, that for two unlucky seniors a lifelong marital commitment has turned into a terrible prison in which each serves as the other’s jailor — over years using longstanding characters. It has to be earned, damn it.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/30/17

Fellas, maybe don’t laugh so vigorously and tongue-lollingly! it’s all fun and games until someone gets fatally hexed.