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Slylock Fox, 1/10/22

This is at least the third time this mystery has appeared in Slylock Fox: it showed up in 2013, with exactly the same art albeit with different coloring, and had previously appeared in 2011, with different art but the same basic mystery and solution. My earlier commentary on those strips in both cases was predicated on the same scenario: that Shady Shrew had enslaved sapient silkworms and was forcing them to manufacture clothes from which he profited. But I must be mellowing in my old age, because my first thought today on reading the strip was “But wait! What if Shady has actually developed a new plant-based silk substitute, liberating his fellow animals from toil? Did you put that possibility into your ratiocination calculus, Slylock? Of course not, but Shady doesn’t need your approval! Society will hail him as a hero, at least until the plants become sapient too.”

Dick Tracy, 1/10/22

Not much to say specifically here, I just think this is a pretty good Dick Tracy fight panel, with the moody shadows and the KRAKing and BLAMing and such! I don’t really expect either of the participants to die in some baroquely violent way like in the good old days, but I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy this!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/10/22

You ever get a bunch of annoying car warranty scam calls and think of a great joke for your hillbilly-themed comic strip, then remember that your hillbilly characters don’t actually have access to phones, but you don’t feel like coming up with a new joke so you just kind of work around it? Because if you did, the result would look a lot like today’s Snuffy Smith. Also, does Snuffy think that mules live forever? If so, he’s in for an extremely rude surprise, possibly soon.

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Marvin, 1/8/22

I know what you’re thinking: How could Jeff possibly be this theatrically disgusted by his dog’s poop, when we know (we know because it’s literally the topic of like 75% of all Marvin strips) that he has to constantly deal with his son’s noxious poop-filled diapers? Shouldn’t he be inured to these odors at this point? The only possibility explanation is that in fact Bitsy has, through horrible gastronomy or forbidden science, worked to create a turd even more disgusting than the ones output by Marvin. Yes, that’s right, everyone: it’s a poop-off. How will Marvin respond? Extremely unpleasantly, one has to imagine.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/8/22

I guess it’s not a surprise that Snuffy lives in a ramshackle compound surrounded by barbed wire? But I have my doubts about how truly effective this fortification is. If I were leading a band of Barlows attempting to breach the perimeter, I would simply attack at the weakest point, the gossip fence.

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Crankshaft, 1/6/22

I didn’t watch Netflix’s Bridgerton, but there was a brief window in late 2020 and early 2021 when online discourse about it was inescapable, and so I somewhat against my will became aware that a lot of the plot (which takes place in Regency England) revolves around a Duke insisting on using the withdrawal method of contraception with his young, sexually naive wife, and she slowly over the course of the show learns what semen is and why she’s not getting pregnant. What I’m saying is that the potential for classic Crankshaft wordplay here is absolutely horrifying, and Pam needs to put a stop to this is as soon as possible by throwing her television into the ocean.

Pluggers, 1/6/22

No. No. Absolutely not. This is the sort of thing a plugger would claim a little kid would do, because they spend all day on their iWhoosit or Android telephone or whatever. No self-identified plugger would admit to doing this. I refute this. I refute this.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/6/22

“Haw haw! We’re treatin’ our bodies like a garbage disposal! What d’we got to live for, anyway?”