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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/2/14

Parson Tuttle is a well-known fraud: he’s largely ignorant of spiritual and theological matters and presumably came to Hootin’ Holler, a community abandoned by actual clergy, to bilk its inhabitants out of their meager savings. But today we learn that this long-term grift has managed to trouble even this con-man’s conscience. What right does he, as a fraud and bearer of false witness, have to tell his parishioner-marks that their minor transgressions mark them out for eternal damnation? As an unbeliever himself, how dare he fill these poor souls’ minds with awful visions of Hell? Can the slim, ill-gotten rewards of this life he’s chosen really be worth it?

Pluggers, 12/2/14

Boy, today’s Pluggers caption is really pretty long, huh? Usually they’re short and sweet, but I’d be down with seeing the walls of text expanding to show us what’s really going on beneath the down-home folksy surface of a typical Pluggers panel. “You’re a plugger if you get your ladder out of the garage in the morning to clean out your gutters and it’s still leaning against the house at dusk, because what’s the point, really? It’s just a task you’re going to have to do year after year, again and again. Maybe your gutters will clog up if you don’t do it, boo fuckin’ hoo, it’s not like the roof doesn’t already have three leaks in it, it’s not like the storm windows really shut properly. The whole rotten place is drafty all winter. It’s not like you know how to fix any of that stuff, or can afford to pay someone who does know. You remember the last time you cleaned out the gutters, when your friend Hank was there to help. Hank’s job transferred him to another city eight months ago. You haven’t talked to him much. Men don’t spend all day gabbing on the phone, the way your wife does with who knows what. Sure would make it more fun if Hank were here, though.”

Herb and Jamaal, 12/2/14

Haha, it’s funny because women in service jobs often need to perform “emotional labor” to maintain their tip income, leading to blurred emotional boundaries with customers!

Dennis the Menace, 12/2/14

“OH MY GOD,” thinks Alice, “MY SECRET REVEALED: I POOP OUT MY BUTTHOLE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN DOES”

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Wizard of Id, 11/17/14

Happy 50th birthday, Wizard of Id! You’ve spent half a century churning out quasi-medieval whimsy to the delight of several, and show no signs of stopping, so by all means let your mildly beloved characters pause and take a bow. Many of today’s other strips also paid tribute to this testament of syndicated comics longevity!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 11/17/14

Mother Goose and Grimm decided to celebrate Wizard of Id’s penchant for using the literal torture of human beings as a punchline. I was going to say that torture was “a big part of the Wizard of Id brand” but that was a little uncomfortably on the nose.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/17/14

Looks like all this devilish wizardry in the newspaper is tempting Hootin’ Holler’s youth into lives of service to satan! This is what you get when the federal gummint overstretches its reach to outlaw local traditions like stoning blasphemers.

Family Circus, 11/17/14

The Family Circus rather ungraciously implies that the strip is best enjoyed by babies and other illiterates.

Blondie, 11/17/14

Meanwhile, Dagwood doesn’t even bother to acknowledge the cake-gratulations (I JUST INVENTED THAT, © AND ™ JOSH FRUHLINGER, DO NOT STEAL) this bakery is offering because he’s so focused on buying his wife precisely the gift that he wants to eat.

Hi and Lois, 11/17/14

Finally, the Wiz looms in the background in panel two here as some sort of pop art painting, as Chip realizes that his parents’ dysfunctional marriage will forever compromise his ability to love.

Some strips did bravely ignore this important industry anniversary, however:

Judge Parker, 11/17/14

Our heroes in Judge Parker have decided to hunker down and get as drunk as possible, in the hopes that once they sober up all their problems will have resolved themselves.

Funky Winkerbean, 11/17/14

And Funky Winkerbean promises that the next week will consist entirely of hardcore Bushka family sex scenes. Stay tuned!

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Apartment 3-G, 10/22/14

Oh, look, we’re revisiting the other key aspects of the Margo was and I guess still is a publicist storyline, which are that when Margo cruelly rejected Skyler as a potential client, Skyler was cast as the new Bond girl, in a James Bond movie, opposite Margo’s boyfriend, who was playing James Bond, one of the highest-profile movie roles in existence. Naturally she did such a lousy job as his publicist that her own roommates didn’t realize he’d landed the part, and his mom didn’t want to hang out with him on Christmas. Anyway, he went away to England to film the movie and then they … stopped dating? I guess? I guess Skyler is supposed to be gently ribbing Margo on this point — “I don’t have to tell you that, because you ‘worked with’ him, by which I mean your genitals ‘worked with’ his genitals, in a sex way.” I’m not sure if Margo is being haughtily sarcastic in panel two or has just genuinely forgotten what this plot was about. It was all a long time ago!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/22/14

The tragic illiteracy of so many of Hootin’ Holler’s voters goes a long way towards explaining why the community is so poorly governed.

Pluggers, 10/22/14

Pluggers only make the same four recipes over and over again, because they fear change and anything that seems even vaguely exotic. They’re also going to die soon!