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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/16/11

When I saw the first panel of this strip, I thought, “Wow, it’s a representative of the Hootin’ Holler law enforcement apparatus who isn’t Sheriff Tait! You almost never see them!” Then in the second panel I realized why. Sheriff Tait may have come to some sort of modus vivendi with the violent criminals who inhabit his jurisdiction, but those scofflaws won’t hesitate to murder one of Tait’s employees in cold blood when he tries to do the basics of his job.

Hagar the Horrible, 1/16/11

This wizened Viking chieftain may no longer be physically fit enough to join in on his murderous clan’s annual expeditions of rape and plunder, but he still has enough social standing to demand that the raiders bring him back the sex slaves that are his right.

Six Chix, 1/16/11

I may be revealing my failure as a plugged-in consumer of popular culture here, but I’ve never actually seen the Saturday Night Live “More Cowbell” sketch. My understanding is that it involves Christopher Walken as a music producer, demanding more cowbell over the course of recording a song? I don’t really see how that relates to the scene here, which makes me suspect that the reference was a last-minute nonsensical substitution for the original text, in which this beady-eyed cat expressed its contempt for and violent intentions towards its sleeping family in terms that simply could not be published in a family newspaper.

Panel from Mary Worth, 1/16/11

Oh, and hey, is Mary Worth using her recent kidnap-foiling to demand that everyone kiss her ass even harder than usual? You’d better believe it!

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Mark Trail, 1/9/12

There’s so much I have to learn about the dog-training biz, apparently. For instance, having a hunting dog that can see is crucial to the whole operation, somehow! It draws in the customers! Is a blind dog considered a bad omen? When people bring their cockapoo or Havanese or whatever down to Tommy’s Dog Training Service to make sure it doesn’t poop on the rug any more or try to eat the baby, do they see ol’ blind Butch and think “Jeez, Tommy trains his dogs to be blind, that’s what he trains them to do,” and then head elsewhere? Truly Mark is the only one who can help Tommy finally realize his dog-training dream and avoid gainful employment once and for all.

Gil Thorp, 1/9/12

Huh, so it turns out that last week’s off-hand “Sheilas” wasn’t a misguided attempt at hip slang but was actually supposed to indicate that Ransom Hale (wait, what?) hails from the Antipodes. Do people from New Zealand actually say “Sheilas”? Do people from Australia actually say this? Feel free to discuss that amongst ourselves while I try to figure out which of these young ladies is about to have a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio’s frozen corpse tattooed onto her lower back.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/9/12

Never mind the hilarious golf joke: I’m trying to figure out why exactly Truman Capote is impersonating a substitute rural doctor.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/27/11

The throwaway panels of today’s Snuffy Smith shed light on a perennial interest of mine and nobody else’s: the economy of Hootin’ Holler. Though I’ve never spotted him as one of the strip’s cast of characters, apparently “Farmer Johnson” lives in this blighted hamlet, attempting to make a living from agriculture. Since the chickens and sausage he produces are invariably stolen by his parasitic neighbors, one wonders why he hasn’t pulled up stakes long ago, or at least given up working hard like a sucker.

If anything, the rest of the strip is even more unsettling, in that we learn that Snuffy, had not his neural circuits been overloaded by visions of chickeny pleasure, would have killed and devoured his hapless nephew. Jughaid’s pleas for mercy would have only registered in Snuffy’s mind as clucks as the thieving hillbilly lived out his great fantasy of eating an enormous angel-chicken. I assume the first throwaway panel depicts one of these divine fowl, which leads us to a sad question: Are chickens killed, dismembered, fried, and eaten, even in chicken heaven?

Crankshaft, 11/27/11

C’mon, Crankshaft, there’s plenty of room for another word-balloon lobe there, so why not end Ed’s musings with “…and, finally, your coffin?” The general vibe of the Funkyverse would seem to demand it. I mean, I’m assuming the family is intending to wall up their hated matriarch in that room Cask of Amontillado-style anyway.

Panel from Mary Worth, 11/27/11

We’ve had a few thousand years of YHWH trying to guide our morals, but we haven’t really taken the lessons to heart. A much crueler God will be handing down the commandments from now on.