Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/15/24

Geez, man, what kind of weird Slylock Fox-ass riddle-telling meteorologist do these Snuffy and Lukey listen to. “Frozen precipitation,” oh ho ho, you’ve really tricked all your listeners. Jerk. Oh, if King Croesus crosses the Halys River, a great empire will be destroyed, is that it? I guess I forgive these guys for living in a violent culture where civil society and independent information sources are regarded with suspicion and paranoia if this is the kind of shit they have to put up with.

Mark Trail, 12/15/24

Oh, not much to see here, just Mark and Cherry Trail urging you to go out and buy some GROW LIGHTS for your indoor “herb garden.” That’ll spice things up, will it??? This is clearly about DRUGS and you two should be ASHAMED.

Post Content

Mary Worth, 12/10/24

I guess (for once) Wilbur leaving town is providing us with an opportunity not to see what Wilbur gets up to outside of town but rather to see what happens in the Wilbur-shaped hole left behind. What happens is that Mary is going to make dinner for Dawn literally on her first night alone, which seems a little overprotective, but she might as well learn now that Dawn is now … [extremely dramatic music sting] … VEGAN???? Or, at least she “started a vegan diet,” which implies that she’s doing this as a weight loss thing or a “cleanse” or whatever rather than out of ethical concerns over animal welfare. I know, Dawn doing something wacky for self-interested reasons would be a real shocker. Anyway, Mary was last seen eating a nice salad herself, but presumably it was well-dusted by bacon bits and drenched in a creamy dressing. Could she create an even vaguely edible meal without such crutches? This will be her greatest challenge yet!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/10/24

Speaking of vaguely edible meals, I do “Ha ha, it’s funny because the residents of Hootin’ Holler are crushingly poor!” riffs on this blog not because I think it’s actually funny, but because I find it fascinating that there’s a longstanding syndicated newspaper comic where that’s the background radiation of the worldbuilding (see for instance: patched curtains forming the “walls” within the Smifs’ one-room shack) but it isn’t usually directly addressed, because that would be depressing. But today’s strip, where Loweezy attempts to extend her family’s meager food supply for another day to stave off both boredom and starvation, is a little too on the nose.

Marvin, 12/10/24

“Wait a minute,” I said to myself as I said this. “Why would Jeff have a bunch of pictures of Marvin on his phone? He hates Marvin!” Based on his facial expression in panel three, he’s coming to the exact same realization.

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/2/24

I had never really thought about it, but if you had asked me before today, I would’ve told you I was pretty sure that the chickens Snuffy steals from his neighbors by stuffing them into a patchèd sack in the dead of night were still alive when he got home. Like, obviously they get killed eventually but, I dunno, I assumed it was right before the Smifs ate them. But surely if the lumps in that bag represented a live chicken, it would’ve been prompted to move around and squawk a bit by all the commotion in today’s strip, so I guess Snuffy just strangles the birds before they even leave the coop he’s stealing them from, the better to make a silent getaway. Not sure why that makes this whole scene so much grimmer, but I think you can agree that it really does.

Dennis the Menace, 12/2/24

I’m on the record as hating the running joke where Dennis slags on his mother’s cooking all the time. I thought I hated it because of its underlying gender politics, but it turns out I hate it even more because it set up today’s panel, in which Margaret is acting out an ambiguous wife/mother role as she and Dennis “play house” and Dennis experiences good cooking for the first time ever, and it’s so baffling to him he doesn’t even have a coherent vocabulary to describe it, which will change the nature of their relationship forever.

Hi and Lois, 12/2/24

Ha ha, we all know that regular guys (old) are constantly avoiding listening to their wives by watching the “big game” on TV. But what do younger guys (45 and under, a demographic into which Hi Flagston falls) do when their wife wants to “talk about her feelings or experiences that are meaningful to her” or whatever? What if I told you that they avoid all that by watching the “big game” on their [record scratch] PHONES????