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Crock, 1/27/15

“Crude” is kind of a polite way to describe what the art in Crock is like, but you have to admit that it gets the job done here. I’m assuming that the “job” in question is to show a couple of sapient animals grinning dreamily about how if they just urinate on things, they own them. Cool, right? Fun how that works out. Just cover it in piss, and it’s yours. Buy some booze so you pee more and increase your landholdings. It’s enough to give you a faraway look in your eye as you contemplate what a wonderful world this is that we live in.

Six Chix, 1/27/15

In less fun sapient animal news, these two goldfish are going to be forced to share extremely cramped quarters with their friend’s bloating corpse for who knows how long. “Is it possible that the water we need to live was too wet?” they babble nonsensically, trying to distract themselves from the horror.

Apartment 3-G, 1/27/15

The Story Of The Breakfast Eaten At The Friendly Neighborhood Cafe Which Is Also Just Two People Standing Around On The Sidewalk … continues! In today’s installment, Margo revels in her local celebrity status. Her boast of “owning that new building down the block” is interesting; this as near as I can tell picks up a vaguely remembered plotline from more than a decade ago, which established that the girls (and perhaps all the other residents?) collectively own the building they lived in, and that said building isn’t new at all but actually old enough to include a hiding place used by slaves fleeing to freedom on the Underground Railroad. If Margo’s managed to spin things so that she’s famous as the sole owner of a newly constructed Manhattan apartment building despite all available evidence, I may have to re-evaluate my low opinion of her as a publicist.

Mary Worth, 1/27/15

Say what you will about Apartment 3-G’s weird story-art disconnect, but at least it doesn’t expect us to learn about its characters’ digestive lives in excruciating detail.

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Slylock Fox, 1/26/15

One of my favorite things about Slylock Fox is the fact that the planet isn’t entirely populated by anthropomorphic animals; although the vast majority of the human race was apparently exterminated as the beasts took control, a few representatives of our species remain, presumably enough to preserve a breeding stock, and need to deal with the unimaginable trauma the best they can. It’s impossible to tell whether these men were professional clowns in the Before Time, or if dressing as such is the only way they can deal with the madness of the world they inhabit. As clowns number two and three demonstrate, traditional clown makeup long ago ceased being manufactured, leaving them to do the best they could with material that actually matched their skintone. Basically if you can visualize a faux-hobo clown wearing flesh-colored makeup stealing candy from a bipedal, dress-wearing pig’s porch, desperately holding up his pants as he runs away, and not break down weeping, you have a heart of stone.

Apartment 3-G, 1/26/16

OK, this thing where the art in Apartment 3-G has little or nothing to do with the writing is just getting sad and alarming, guys. Like, when Margo and her dad were having lunch at a “Tribeca Grill” that looked suspiciously like the inside of somebody’s dowdy apartment, there was at least one word in that description that worked, and that word was “inside.” But now Margo is just straight-up ordering breakfast at a “cafe” that is literally just her and some other woman standing out on the sidewalk. “Now that’s what I call a healthy appetite!” her interlocutor says, as she stares directly into the face of madness.

Gil Thorp, 1/26/15

Speaking of the face of madness, how about panel two of Gil Thorp, eh? Against Gil’s advice, Maxwell has decided to forge an alliance with Marty Moon and establish a memorable #brand! And that brand is MAX BACON™. Because when it comes to bacon … who doesn’t want the max? Other than people keen on not dying of heart disease, that is!

Herb and Jamaal, 1/26/15

Let me tell you lucky kids today: if you grew up before the Internet provided an on-demand stream of smut into every household, you spent a not-insignificant part of your junior high years parsing movie descriptions in the paper for exactly terms like this, just in case there was a chance you could see these so-called “adult situations” on HBO after your parents were likely to be in bed. Jamaal, a jaded inhabitant of our modern porn-world, just sips his iced tea and regards the on-screen simulated humping with disinterest and vague distaste.

Mark Trail, 1/26/15

Do you think Mark is quickly changing the subject in panel two because he’s thinking “Hmm, this swamp-king is awful blase about having seen a mangled corpse and left it behind to be devoured by bog-creatures, better tread lightly,” or because he’s thinking “Well, that problem is solved! I’ll never have to deal with that ponytail man again!” It’s so hard to tell with him.

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Funky Winkerben, 1/25/15

Welp, the Dick Tracy–Funky Winkerbean crossover is wrapping up without a single person dying in a hail of bullets, and I for one am pretty disappointed about it. I do like the words of life wisdom that Holly and Dick are trading here, though. Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t immediately judge (and subsequently arrest and/or shoot for “resisting arrest”) people just because they look “shady,” you know? Maybe you should instead determine their worth based on their enjoyment of cultural production units that you also enjoy. I’m pretty sure that the main character of High Fidelity has the exact opposite of this revelation at the story’s conclusion, which is evidence that he’s grown less shallow as a person, but, baby steps, I guess.

Apartment 3-G, 1/25/15

Apartment 3-G has meanwhile devolved into a full-on Lu Ann dreamscape? “Tommie, why are you leaving the apartment to go to work, in the morning, as the workday starts?” “I’m going to work. Don’t forget to wake up Margo!” “Gasp! Margo is gone!” [stands in the middle of the hallway, nowhere near a door or anywhere where Margo might be expected to be]

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/25/15

While details are murky, archaeological evidence seems to indicate that the Polynesian settlers of Easter Island deforested the place after a few centuries there, which meant they were no longer able to build and move the huge moai statues the island is famous for — and, perhaps more importantly, were no longer able to build oceangoing vessels that allowed them to fish, which in turn led to a rapid decline in population. Meanwhile, in Hootin’ Holler, it seems that the residents are setting in motion an ecological catastrophe of their own, unsustainably extracting fuel to power one of the community’s main economic engines (moonshine production) at the long-term expense of environmental resources needed for the other (chicken theft).

Panels from Hi and Lois, 1/25/15

Look, just between you and me, I never really cared for Mad Men, but if the show’s booze-soaked popularity had anything to do with the return of wacky retro “Thirsty is a drunk” jokes in Hi and Lois, then it has done good for this world.