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Six Chix and Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/13/16

My main source of info on the aesthetics of diamonds is my wife, who thinks standard diamonds are pretty but not worth the cost and chocolate diamonds are gross. But tastes vary! Still, I’m not really sure what the thrust of the joke in today’s Six Chix is supposed to be. I’m assuming Newly Engaged Lady can’t just be straightforwardly praising her fiance’s choice, as the strip would then lack a “joke” per se. Does she like “chocolate” diamonds because it’s like chocolate the candy and … ladies … be … eating chocolate? Like beloved cartoon character Cathy? Ack? Is this meant to be a commentary on the successful marketing of chocolate diamonds, historically just called brown diamonds and used mostly for industrial purposes, as a newly hip decorative gemstone? Whatever the case, today’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith cuts through the various layers of meaning encoded the modern tradition of the engagement ring. Our modern, post-industrial society can afford to create abstract signifiers that participate in the ritual of creating a family bond; in impoverished Hootin’ Holler, the residents are closer to the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and they know what a bride wants is agricultural land, and lots of it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/13/16

[stocks of Abbot, Nestle, and other infant formula manufacturers skyrocket as terrified mothers abandon breast-feeding]

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/7/16

Congratulations to Barney Google and Snuffy Smith for deftly handling this reveal, this sudden shift in perspective revealing that those we see as bestial have their own way of looking at the world, and that our actions through their eyes are truly monstrous. It’s right out of the classic sci-fi horror novel I Am Legend, and it’s sad that this century-old comic strip created to make fun of hillbilly stereotypes manages to pull off this nuanced narrative twist better than, say, any of the movies the novel was turned into.

Shoe, 2/7/16

OK.

Your comic strip characters are all bird-people and they live in trees and sometimes they fly but they never, ever acknowledge “Oh, we’re genetic freak shows that look like birds but wear clothes and talk and have jobs.”

Fine.

I get it.

But if you’re going to go down this road

don’t

birds

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/30/16

Maybe if Hootin’ Holler’s lone clergyman weren’t a theological fraud, the town’s inhabitants would be a little more familiar with Genesis 9:11, where God promises that, among all the methods He has at His disposal for wiping out all life on Earth, mass flooding was the one He was specifically renouncing. Anyway, don’t worry, Snuffy, Parson Tuttle is probably just putting some personal touches on the nice yacht he was able to buy with all your community’s contributions.

Beetle Bailey, 1/30/15

I truly enjoy Sarge’s look of gentle bafflement and bemusement in panel two. “Wait, so this is a joke about how young people only know about cell phones? But we’re still wearing these uniforms? What the fuck year is it even supposed to be?”