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Spider-Man, 10/2/13

You can tell that Spidey’s become fully part of Tarantula’s desperate guerrilla army because he’s willing to participate in ethically dubious shenanigans like this. Sure, war is hell, and fake surrenders can help you achieve tactical victories, but at what cost? Once El Condor’s soldiers stop respecting the white flag of truce for their own safety, the bloody insurgency will reach truly gruesome levels of carnage.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/2/13

Lukey looks rightfully horrified as he realizes that the time is quickly approaching for his Reaping, the day when the inhabitants of this desperately poor community decide that he’s not worth keeping alive anymore and ritually tear him to shreds so they can put his remains to whatever use they can. That tongue depressor the doctor’s using? It’s made out of human bone!

Dennis the Menace, 10/2/13

So Dennis heard a new word in school today, but instead of paying the extremely minimal amount of attention necessary to the linguistic context to try to figure out what it meant, he instead came up with an interpretation that would lay the groundwork for an awkward and vaguely sexually charged question for his mother and called it a day. Pretty menacing, all in all!

Marvin, 10/2/13

Never let it be said that Marvin isn’t innovative! It’s not just a strip about urine and feces, you see. Sometimes it’s about vomit! Copious amounts of vomit! Foul-smelling hot dog vomit, washing over people and furniture like an endless flood, like a natural disaster. Ha ha, the vomiting baby’s name was “Hurly,” you see, because of vomit!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/31/13

And so this week has been bookended by strips demonstrating the confusing effect that Hootin’ Holler’s poverty and isolation have on the very language its inhabitants speak. Cliches and turns of phrase filter in from the outside world, but are based on things that most of us take for granted and yet are complete mysteries to Snuffy and his kin. And so, just as the old saying “hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk” is a confusing word-jumble to people who travel by foot on dirt paths through the woods and fields and have never seen a sidewalk, so too is the phrase “fresh as a mountain stream” meaningless to people who have no experience with indoor plumbing and who get all their water from mountain streams as a matter of course. (The stream also doubles as the town sewer, so you can see why Snuffy seems particularly puzzled by the use of “fresh” in this context.)

Momma, 8/31/13

I’m preeeeety sure Momma has been a 43-year-long exercise in establishing that our mothers are responsible for all our emotional problems, actually.

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Funky Winkerbean, 8/26/13

Oh goodie, it’s been far too long since the main characters in Funky Winkerbean have faced an existential threat that will provide them with an opportunity to wax self-righteously! Since many of Westview’s teachers depend on these subjects’ funding for their livelihood, we should be treated to a delightful melange of “Our children won’t receive the cultural education they need” and “We will be forced to beg for change and live in a cardboard box under the elevated highway on the outskirts of town.”

Much as I support full funding for arts education, I do feel it necessary to point out that lunch is somewhat more important in the hierarchy of needs than the other subjects facing the axe. Don’t worry, teachers, they’ll be enough cash to restore your classes, once the weaker students have been strategically starved to death!

Gil Thorp, 8/26/13

Sorry I sort of dropped the ball on the end of the Gil Thorp summer wrestling storyline, everybody! Gil and Herk had their wrestling match and everyone had a good time and then as he headed out of town Herk called Gil by his real name, implying that his tragic dementia was actually just a wrestling angle and thus bringing the blurred line between artifice and reality out of the squared circle and in to everyday life. But now summer’s just about over, and two local gals are on a mission … a mission for man tip. Haha, just kidding, I’m deliberately misconstruing the dialogue in the third panel so it sounds like they’re talking about a penis, but really if you give your kid a name that is or can be shortened to “Tip” you need to be prepared for this sort of outcome.

Slylock Fox, 8/26/13

Slylock Fox has never been a more shameful and transparent shill for the universal surveillance state than it is today. Remember, everyone, evil-doers might be holding adorable penguins captive in horrifying basement freezer-prisons! That’s why the staff of utility companies need to monitor everyone’s energy usage and pass any anomalies on to meddling fox-cops and/or heavily armed SWAT teams, for freedom.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/26/13

Ha ha, it’s funny because Hootin’ Holler is so impoverished and isolated from mainstream American life that its residents are wholly ignorant of basic civic infrastructure that most of us take for granted!