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Slylock Fox, 7/6/15

Are we supposed to assume that our criminal dog, fleeing Slylock and his goons, got into this room one step ahead of the law? How did that work, exactly? He leaps into the unoccupied bed, starts feverishly wrapping bandages around his face, and growls to the actual patient, “You don’t say nothin’, see?” Or maybe it’s much more horrible: maybe he’s subjected the other dog to an involuntary Face/Off-style surgery, the better to escape justice. His victim is in a morphine haze, but the criminal refused painkillers; though he’s in agony, he knew he’d have to be sharp in case the cops showed up. Either way, the real tragedy is that the real patient didn’t receive a fruit basket.

Spider-Man, 7/6/15

This is a good question, because let’s be frank: even when he has his whole life ahead of him, caring about stuff isn’t Peter Parker’s strong suit.

Archie, 7/6/15

The way Veronica stares directly at the viewer in the final panel, inviting us into her world of gossip, is profoundly unsettling. “Do you miss the good old days? Sign up for an account on Gosspr, my new social app for gossip and rumors, and feel free to share what you know or have heard about your closest friends! #jointhecoversation”

Momma, 7/6/15

Ha ha, it’s funny because Francis and Marylou are slowly poisoning their mother!

Pluggers, 7/6/15

Pluggers have found that they hardest part of living is the seemingly endless slog through a meaningless existence that we have to endure until we finally feel the sweet embrace of death.

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Shoe, 5/20/15

If you’re like, me you saw the Perfesser’s statement that he attended a “1950s sock hop” and immediately thought, “Have the bird-men of Shoe invented time travel, and do they use it to travel back to enjoy the innocent entertainments of simpler eras?” But the answer is clearly no, as obviously the Perfesser wouldn’t have phone service in the days before the deployment of modern wireless networks. So instead, we’ll have to console ourselves with the deliciously depressing story of the evening that we can derive from this strip: the Perfesser, having finally worked up the energy to leave behind another grim night at home, went out for a social event with fellow bird-nostalgists, only to be overcome with social anxiety at the thought of actually interacting with others; he thus spent the whole evening staring at his phone screen, with eventually disastrous results.

Heathcliff, 5/20/15

Hmm, how many SynergyPoints™ should we award today’s Avengers-themed Heathcliff? Well, we should deduct some for the fact that it was published nearly three weeks after the movie debuted, but perhaps add some back because the colorists correctly did up Heathcliff in Hulk green despite the absence of explicit color or even name cues in the caption text.

Archie, 5/20/15

OK, Newspaper Archie, we know you’re just slumming it here on the comics pages and most of your money comes from those Double Digests on sale at supermarket checkout aisles around the country, but that doesn’t mean you have to be rude about the genre.

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Funky Winkerbean, 5/5/15

I vaguely remembered that this “band box” business has been in the strip before, though I’ve apparently never discussed it on my site. A little Google searching to try to find out more led to a pretty horrifying discovery, though: Luigi’s is a real pizza place in Akron, Ohio, and it’s not only the model for Montoni’s but actually boasts about that on its web site. Luigi’s mentions the band box on its site, but for a picture, you need to go to the Funky Winkerbean Wikipedia page, where it’s under the “comic book connections” heading, for some reason. Anyway, the band box presumably plays old-timey music, and it’s probably gotten more and more wobbly and off key over the years as Funky has desperately tried to keep its archaic mechanisms functioning. Just imagine its tinny, irritating background music adding another layer of unpleasantness to your visit to Westview’s Only Viable Business™! Do you think Funky can get it to play mariachi music for people to listen to while they eat their Cinco de Mayo pizza special? (The Cinco de Mayo pizza special is a pepperoni pizza with a jar of store-brand salsa dumped on top of it, or maybe a jar of store-brand mayonnaise.)

Mary Worth, 5/5/15

“I must’ve seemed like a stalker! You know, the way I tracked you down, years after our relationship ended acrimoniously, once I decided to win you back at all costs, and then I found out where you lived without asking you, and then rented an apartment there, and showed up right outside your door with no warning! Just doing the sort of things that stalkers do! I must’ve really seemed like one! I didn’t plan on coming on so strong! It was just a powerful reaction that I couldn’t or wouldn’t control!”

“And I didn’t plan on being so emotional! I should’ve been more rational. Methodical. Say, let’s drive far into the woods where nobody can hear you scream, shall we?”

Archie, 5/5/15

How are you celebrating National Cartoonists Day, everybody? Cartoonists are celebrating National Cartoonists Day by drawing their favorite characters having hot three-way makeouts. Some of them are even getting those drawings published!