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Heathcliff, 7/15/13

Last week’s Heathcliff fish joke, while well within the expected whimsy-parameters of an inoffensive long-running legacy comic, still adhered to a basic logic, that logic being “cats like stealing fish, to eat.” Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh? Or … maybe, as I imagined last week, we’re meant to interpret the fish’s open eyes as meaning that it is still alive, which makes its bemused facial expression all the more hilarious. “Oh, now the cat’s using me as a baseball bat. That’s fantastic, just fantaaaastic.”

Archie, 7/15/13

The current run of Newspaper Archie Reruns From The Late ’90s Or Maybe The Early ’00s has actually involved a continuing plot that’s running over multiple weeks, which is kind of a new one, though not new in the sense of these strips actually being new, obviously. Anyway, Ronnie’s cruel father made her get a job! Obviously this job just became another venue for her long-running battle with Betty over Archie’s dubious charms. Which I guess is bumming him out? Look at how miserable Archie looks in panel two! I’ve never seen him sadder! And this is before he finds out that Veronica is stalking him with potentially malicious intent. Maybe he’s just sad that she gets access to all that delicious ice cream and he doesn’t?

Beetle Bailey, 7/15/13

As we already know, Camp Swampy exists in an pocket universe in which a single, awful day keeps on happening, forever. Dimly aware of the nightmarish nature of his reality, Beetle is attempting, through this conceptual artwork, to convey the horror of his damned existence.

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Archie, 6/14/13

One thing I keep meaning to mention in regard to whatever era of Archie reruns we’re getting right now is that they all seem to include a one-off mini-punchline in the first panel. I love them not because they’re funny (they’re never funny) but because they go completely unacknowledged by all the other characters, which I think I’m justified as interpreting as silent and withering contempt on their part. Jughead’s ill-will here is particularly well justified. “Archie, I’m in the middle of setting up an elaborate visual gag, I don’t need your wordplay.”

Apartment 3-G, 6/14/13

“I know everything. Why?” is a pretty sad statement about Margo’s omniscience. Sure, her infinitely expansive mind encompasses all the solid facts that make up our universe’s information-sum. But she’s still incapable of understanding the reasons behind the facts, requiring her to actually come out and interact with Lu Ann rather than just relaxing in bed with a bottle of gin and a vibrator.

Pluggers, 6/14/13

So this bewhiskered he-plugger is staring with cross-eyed intensity at the hot weathervixen on the evening news. Are you glad that the TV and its stand block our view of his crotch and left hand, so that you don’t have to see what’s going on down there? Or are you sad that we can’t see, because your awful, filthy mind can’t help but fill in the blanks in the most unsettling way possible? Either way, HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND, EVERYBODY

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Before the comics begin, a note on last week’s fundraiser! Please read if you contributed! First of all, another huge thanks to all of you! I’ve already written to everyone thanking you, and asking which reward you’re interested in and double-checking to make sure your mailing address is correct. Unfortunately, about 20% of you never got back to me! So, if you haven’t heard from me, because your Paypal account is connected to an old email address or my message went into a spam folder or something, please email me at bio@jfruh.com. If I don’t hear from you by the end of the week, you’ll get a magnet mailed to whatever mailing address is attached to your Paypal account (unless I don’t have a mailing address for you either, in which case you won’t get anything). So please, get in touch!

Funky Winkerbean, 5/29/13

You know, after close to nine years of making fun of newspaper comic strips, I still sometimes discover that I have optimism that can be dashed. For instance, I figured Funky Winkerbean would be able to squeeze a week out of Darrin and Jessica indignantly refusing to participate in Darrin’s bio-dad’s terrible reality show, tops. And yet here we are on the next Wednesday and it’s still happening. Most FW “punchlines” contain at least some token bit of wordplay, no matter how grim, but I have to say that “reality” -> “really stinks” doesn’t quite do it for me. Here, here’s a better version: “The only reality about reality TV is that it stinks almost as badly as the fetid, choking air in the terrible, cruel reality that we are forever trapped in, like flies in a spider’s web.” Too … too long maybe? Not enough room in the word balloon?

Archie, 5/29/13

Man, forget the multiple half-assed jokes in this strip; the dramatic arc I’m interested in is the dog’s. He pushes his head around the corner, spots Archie and Jughead, then takes a deep whiff of Jughead’s pants and instantly falls in love despite the fact that his presence has not been acknowledged at all. Is this li’l lost pup so starved for affection that he’s latched onto the first person who doesn’t threaten or flee from him? Or, more likely, does every single item of clothing owned by notorious glutton Jughead Jones smell strongly of ham and/or barbecue sauce?

Momma, 5/29/13

I know it can be hard to tell sometimes, but Momma is still being produced afresh daily in the current Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Thirteen, as today’s strip makes very explicit. I like the way Momma and Marylou look directly at the reader as they announce this fact. “We can’t believe we’re around in this far-off future era either. Death is coming for us all!”

Hi and Lois, 5/29/13

Little known but important motivation for attaining verbal skills: they’re needed to demand constant reassurance that we aren’t completely unlovable.