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Slylock Fox, 5/16/12

Here is a sad story from Josh’s past: When I was in seventh grade I had a big crush on this girl in my class, but being a terrifically shy nerd I never actually tried talking to her or interacting with her in any way; I just looked at her all moon-eyed for most of the daily duration of our Social Studies class, during which she sat just a row ahead of me and one seat to the right. One day after about five months of this, instead of rushing off as usual she hung back after class, came up to me, and looked at me intently. With my heart pounding, I could barely believe it when she finally said the words I had been waiting for: “I want you to stop staring at me.”

It turns out that, according to the scientifically unimpeachable facts presented in Slylock Fox, staring intently at someone is not considered an appropriate mating habit among primates! In fact, it makes you a creepy weirdo. I can only hope that this cartoon equips the awkward seventh graders of today with information they can use.

Blondie, 5/16/12

Call me dumb, or slow to pick up on insulting canine metaphors, or something, but it took me a minute to parse the “Ha ha, Blondie is talking about Dagwood like he’s a dog” joke here, primarily because I don’t believe that a “great sense of humor” is considered a dog stereotype? I mean, I understand that the rule of comedy threes requires Blondie to wedge something in after “loyal and well-groomed” that isn’t the punchline “terrific hearing” but might still be said to apply to both potential husbands and potential pets. I admit that coming up with one is tricky. Could it be something about ball-licking, maybe?

Anyway, kudos to the artist for realizing that the off-panel ARF! wouldn’t work if it weren’t clear that the Bumstead family pet weren’t the one ARFing. Daisy looks as if she were actually intended to be in the background from the strip’s conception, or at least has been composited in later with a reasonable amount of skill.

Garfield, 5/16/12

Yes, he exists in the service of a (blessedly subtle) poop joke, but I have to admit that I’m really charmed by this fly-prophet, crazed in messianic ecstasy and willing to invite anyone of any species to the promised land.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/16/12

Good Lord, Smifs, you didn’t think these insatiable chew-rodents would really obey your so-called “laws,” did you? In retrospect, mankind wished a more effectively organized community had been on the front line in the first phase of the bloody Human-Beaver Wars.

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Hi and Lois, 5/14/12

An old standby in comics (or any other medium where corny jokes happen) is to have someone feign an inability to parse a completely standard turn of phrase any way but literally. Extremely minor kudos to Hi and Lois for at least portraying Lois reacting with wide-eyed bafflement and distress, exactly as an actual normal human would in this situation. “Wait, did … did Hi really not understand what I was getting at? Oh my God, is he having a stroke?”

Mark Trail, 5/14/12

“So I shot him! Wait, did I say that last part out loud?”

Just as individual Mark Trail strips are created by combining archival clip art, so too are whole plotlines now being generated by mashing previous plots together. In this case, we seem to be in for some combination of “Mark’s friend Johnny Malotte is not guilty of murder even though all the evidence is against him” (which ran from October 2007 to March 2008, and which among other things featured Mark getting this same sort of jailhouse interview, which is usually the privilege of lawyers and clergy) and “Competition between rival fishing camps turns violent” (which ran from December 2009 to April 2010, and in which two forest ruffians beat up a senator). These were of course two of the more awesome storylines of recent memory, so we can only hope that hybridization produces increased vigor so as to provide us with even more entertaining mayhem.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/14/12

Sadly, Snuffy only managed to inspire Li’l Tater with a passion for justice, racial equality, and human rights. Everyone in Hootin’ Holler was outraged.

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Mark Trail, 5/9/12

There is a famous rule of the Internet, and that’s Rule 34, and it goes like this: If it exists, there is porn of it — no exceptions. That means that somewhere out there someone has created a porn version of Mark Trail, by the use of advanced pornographing equipment that can break through the brittle shield of asexuality that surrounds the strip at all times. I’ve never had the intestinal fortitude to seek any such material out, but for two and a half panels I thought I was getting the setup to some canon in-strip Mark Trail erotica today. The mysterious call from the past on Mark’s bakelite handset that isn’t connected to anything in particular, the gratuitous use of “honey,” the sexy-for-Mark-Trail name “Trish,” the easy banter … and then bam, your arousal is crushed because this is about a young girl’s sick father, you pervert. And this is how that brittle shield of asexuality is kept in place.

Gil Thorp, 5/9/12

OK, let me preface the following by saying that I am fully aware that I am now someone who complains about the “good old days” of Gil Thorp, and that therefore I have become everything that I most despise. That having been said, remember the good old days of Gil Thorp, when they had a homeless kid playing on the team, and crowds at rival schools taunted him by dressing up like hobos, and it was amazing? That’s a pretty high bar when it comes to Important Social Issues-based taunting, and it looks like the Goshen girls aren’t going to reach it. “Hey, Darby, how many kids you got now? Because we heard you know how to have sex, and that’s how kids are made. Sex-having kid-maker! Go back to the obstetrics ward!”

Archie, 5/9/12

I don’t want to exaggerate too much, but I’m reasonably sure this is the greatest Archie ever made? See, Miss Grundy knocked the kids out of their thoughtless world of casual socializing, and just forcing them to change locations has caused them to re-evaluate everything they know about the world and each other, and now they’re just standing there, staring silently into the middle distance, terrified.

Crankshaft, 5/9/12

“Plus you know there’s nothing I loathe so much as buying gifts or otherwise bringing joy to others. My mind is so resistant to the idea that I always forget about it.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/9/12

“Haw, Lurleen, that is an amusin’ bit o’ wordplay! But still, you know the penalty for talkin’ to menfolk from other clans is death by stonin’.”