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Funky Winkerbean and Gil Thorp, 6/19/10

I do bring up the concept “Chekhov’s Gun” a lot in this space — the Russian playwright once noted that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” — but only because it works so well conceptually with the the painful plotting of continuity comics, in which you always, always see the horror/delight coming. For instance, every cell in every character in Funky Winkerbean is tiny microscopic Chekhov’s Gun, just waiting to burst into glorious deadly cancer. The title character’s own simmering alcoholism serves a similar role, with the question not being if he would backslide into a hateful downward spiral of boozing but when. And now the answer to that when has been revealed to be “twenty minutes after he put his dad into a nursing home.”

But sometimes you don’t see these things coming, and that’s always a pleasant surprise, even if the results are unpleasant for the characters concerned. For instance, I would never have picked Coach Mrs. Coach Thorp as one to drown her sorrows at her coaching failures in booze (though the booze in question is a nice glass of red wine, because she is classy, and a lady). Still, it makes sense, as her husband is pretty much drunk all the time, which is why he doesn’t care that he hasn’t won a championship in any sport in years. He seems pretty happy, so why wouldn’t she follow his example?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/19/10

Longtime readers of Snuffy Smith know that Parson Tuttle, Hootin’ Holler’s only clergyman, is a fraud who plays upon the simple hill folks’ earnest religious impulses to line his own pockets. Thus it should come as no surprise that the ministership of the local ramshackle church is actually a Tuttle clan sinecure, jealously kept within a single family whose members lost their faith generations ago, but refuse to give up a cushy gig.

Ballard Street, 6/19/10

It’s actually pretty rare for me to discuss Ballard Street, as it usually consists of insane people doing inscrutable things in a more or less amusing fashion, which doesn’t leave much room for commentary. As far as I can remember, it never, ever features talking animals of any sort, which makes today’s horror even harder to explain. The people in the comic sometimes dress up in elaborate costumes; are those meant to be people in cowsuits? If so, the business with the “udder” is even more nightmarish than what a plain reading of the strip would suggest.

Mark Trail, 6/19/10

When ordinary mortals lose a pet, they tape signs announcing the fact and the associated reward to lampposts throughout the area where the poor little critter might be. When Mark Trail loses a pet, the local daily paper runs an enormous picture and a two-column story about it in the A section. Why isn’t this on the front page? Was there a nuclear war or something?

Family Circus, 6/19/10

Big Daddy Keane will be using the crayons to depict himself as a member of a non-white ethnic group, so that he can look at the picture and pretend that he is not related to this gaggle of monsters.

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Dennis the Menace, 6/6/10

Let’s pass over for the moment the fact that if, as I’d guess, Mr. Wilson is around 75, he himself would have grown up with the first generation of comic book superheroes, and thus would not find Dennis’s own media consumption choices to be so sneer-worthy; let’s ignore too his seeming assumption that Dennis would view a world where basic services were performed by humans to be baffling and alien, as if he lived in a culture where people were tended at all times by advanced robots. Instead, let’s focus on the middle panel of the bottom row, in which Dennis imagines Mr. Wilson’s mail-delivery alter ego as a wild-eyed psychopath, who presumably used his job dealing with the public and the protection of his public employees’ union to go on a years-long killing spree that no doubt held the entire city in terror.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/6/10

When comics strips lavish loving energy on the depictions of the ass-cracks of adults, it can be kind of sexy! When they lavish the same amount of attention on the ass-cracks of prepubescent children, it’s just disturbing.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/30/10

Snuffy is admittedly improvising under pressure here, but I’m a little disappointed at his excuse-making’s failure to cohere into a satisfying whole. Since he was questioned about his intentions for that sack full of live chickens, surely all concerned could better pretend at the virtue of the situation had the subsequent bribe been offered in chicken form. Indeed, I’ve assumed that poultry is more or less the main currency in Hootin’ Holler anyway, a suspicion that is confirmed by the somewhat dodgy appearance of the note Snuffy is handing Sheriff Tait. It certainly doesn’t resemble a U.S. greenback, which makes sense as those probably haven’t been seen around town since the local TVA office closed down. My guess is that this is a piece of scrip issued by the operators of the nearest coal mine; though the mine and the accompanying company store have also been shuttered for decades, Hootin’ Holler residents still atavistically ascribe value to the crumbling pieces of paper.

Crock, 5/30/10

I’m also interested in how exactly the local economy works in Crock. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of permanent settlement associated with the strip’s Foreign Legion outpost, just a series of isolated retail establishments created as needed to support the lame joke of the day. I guess it’s understandable that the employees of “Dress Shoppe,” having no competition in the clothes trade, lack any sense of customer service. Maybe the next shop will do better, now that Grossie has destroyed this one.

Panel from Mary Worth, 5/30/10

EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! THE INDIVIDUAL KNOWN AS “BONNIE” (indicated) HAS HAD HER SOUL COMPLETELY DEVOURED BY MARY WORTH! SUGGEST IMMEDIATE MERCY TERMINATION OF HER UNDEAD CORPOREAL FORM!