Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/19/23

Sadly, due to the free availability of firearms and ongoing unchecked clan warefare, PTSD is endemic among the population of Hootin’ Holler.

Pluggers, 9/19/23

I’m not usually one to praise the art in Pluggers, but I think this panel is pretty evocative of an aging beast-man who, in a moment of solemn reflection, realizes he is slouching in only one direction now, and that direction will see him grow smaller and smaller until he ceases to be altogether.

Blondie, 9/19/23

That’s right, everyone! Please don’t stop subscribing to print newspapers, even though that’s how you learn about all the crazy stuff going on in the world today. Because without a newspaper, there’s no other way for you to read the comics! [Aide whispers something in my ear] Oh NO

Post Content

Mary Worth, 9/4/23

Folks! Mary Worth is taking a moment off from her tale of old people engaging in state-sanction monogamy in order to acknowledge that Hot Labor Summer is here and she is all in favor of it. Whether you’re a Hollywood celeb member of SAG-AFTRA or a hotel maid organized by Unite Here, Mary is happy to come to your picket line with delicious muffins, bottled water, and personal-sized bottles of sunscreen.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 9/4/23

Snuffy Smith, on the other hand? Snuffy absolutely supplements his chicken-stealing and moonshining revenue by occasionally signing up with the Pinkertons to help crack some skulls if the miners in the next holler over get a little too big for their britches.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/4/23

Rex Morgan, meanwhile, is focusing on the complex modern-day economy that complicates the traditional division between labor and capital and leaves various independent contractors and entrepreneurs entangled in their attempts to extract ongoing revenues from intellectual property. I’m kind of sad that we never got to see the conversation between Mud and Buzzy Cameron where Buzzy explains that they need to set up a trust account for Rene’s rightful share of his music revenues, in case the court decides to award it to his many victims or whatever.

Shoe, 9/4/23

What’s the age cutoff for a heterosexual woman who unselfconsciously refers to a platonic female friend as a “girlfriend”? 40? 50? Anyway, it’s too bad nobody younger than whatever age that is reads newspaper comics, because they might be briefly intrigued, though ultimately disappointed, by the idea that Shoe is about a pansexual bird polycule.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/28/23

Big news: in the presence of their beloved dogs, Saul and Eve have agreed to marry one another! Since their last attempts at matrimony involved a hated arranged marriage that ended with Saul’s dead wife buried in an undersized grave and Eve’s dog taking a bullet to protect her from her abusive husband, respectively, this trip to the altar can only go better for both of them. Saul’s the luckiest man in Santa Royale, or at least luckier than Tommy, Wilbur, or Dr. Jeff.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/28/23

The form of adoption that became common in the 19th and 20th century west, in which infants would be taken in by strangers and any connection to their birth family severed, is, historically speaking, an aberration; the vagaries of mortality meant that adoption has always occurred, of course, but much more commonly it involved orphaned or abandoned children being taken in by kinfolk or neighbors in the community (and in most pre-industrial settlements, those amounted to the same thing). One assumes that’s the process by which Snuffy and Loweezy’s have come to be the guardians of their nephew Jughaid, but his exact relationship to them is unclear — I’m not even sure if it’s ever established whether one of his parents was Snuffy’s sibling or Loweezy. At any rate, one wonders if Jughaid remembers his birth family, or if his adoptive parents ever think of their departed relations and hope they’re doing right by them in the way they’re raising the boy. Panel two here suggests that Loweezy, at least, is worried that they very much are not.

Slylock Fox, 8/28/23

Hmm, Slylock sets free the suspect identified by a forensics expert and instead just arrests the guy he had already decided was guilty? This one’s a little on the nose, in my opinion.