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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/26/21

I’m a big believer that most comic-strip level gags should include exactly the amount of information they need to make the joke work and no more, which is why it drives me up the wall that this strip includes the name of Loweezy’s sister. It would be bad enough that she just named her sister (whom we’ve never see in the strip) for no reason, since it creates the nagging suspicion that this sister, as opposed to some other sister, is important to make the punchline work for some reason. But then they go and name her “Zoney!” “Loweezy” is the post-apocalyptic Hootin’ Holler newspeak for “Louisa,” but what the hell is “Zoney” derived from? Arizona? Does the vague memory of distant Arizona live on in Holler-adjacent onomastics? Gah, the fact that they added this name to her word balloon means that we ended up with two exclamation points alone on their own line! GAH!!!

Blondie, 8/26/21

One has to wonder who the “I” in Dagwood’s proposed social media clickbait headline is intended to be. It’s clearly not Dagwood, who is the star of the video. In fact, one wonders who’s filming this obviously staged scene in the first place, and what sad benefits Dagwood promised them for helping launch him to TikTok stardom.

Funky Winkerbean, 8/26/21

Oh, wow, sorry I said yesterday that this Funky Winkerbean development was going to be about sex, when in fact it’s about the most obvious plot twist anyone could imagine. Don’t worry, thought: Les still had an orgasm.

Mary Worth, 8/26/21

WILBUR’S IN A PISS FIGHT WITH A CAT, EVERYONE

A PISS FIGHT

IT’S CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/20/21

The residents Hootin’ Holler were vaguely aware that some catastrophe had caused the collapse of the flatlanders’ Newnited States government, but in truth they had been isolated so long that it made little difference when they were cut off from the outside world altogether. But the older folks did have some poignant and unsettling moments, like when they realized that their entertainers were now doing performances based on their vague memory of an earlier generation of entertainers who were in turn imitating someone else who had been forgotten entirely.

Crankshaft, 8/20/21

As if living in a city devastated by war weren’t bad enough, imagine how awful it must feel to pick through the shattered ruins of your home, looking for prized possessions or maybe your even your loved ones, and knowing that somewhere, thousands of miles away, Crankshaft is doing wordplay about it.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/20/21

“Oh yeah. I’m going to have to invite Buck, aren’t I? I can’t even remember if he and I have ever met in this strip, but this is a Rex Morgan plot so I guess I have to pretend I find him tolerable or interesting.”

Mary Worth, 8/20/21

YES LIBBY

RISE UP

KILL

KILL

DESTROY

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/5/21

It is truly amazing the way this strip has retconned its Sarah storyline from 2014, in which she made a lucrative book deal with the art museum, in the course of which she did a public event at which another kid was briefly mean to her but mere seconds later she rallied an army of the oppressed to turn the tables on her attackers, and also in an unrelated turn of events befriended a mob boss and acquired a brutal gangland enforcer as her babysitter’s chauffeur. At the time, Sarah seemed to be having a blast, but apparently the syndicate got an angry letter about the impact all this might have on a real child, because now it’s something that Rex and June talk about in hushed tones as the worst thing that ever happened to their daughter, worse than the time she got hit by a car, which erased year of her memory. Anyway, thank goodness we’re recapitulating this now and learning how a child can become a big creative success “the right way”: anonymously, after sending unsolicited fan fiction to their favorite author.

Shoe, 8/5/21

Not sure why, but for the many years I’ve been reading Shoe I’ve always assumed Roz’s was primarily a lunch spot? But the characters seem to be hanging out there more and more after hours, and this is clearly an end-of-the-day gripe session the Perfesser is having. Say, what do you think Skyler, the Perfesser’s nephew and ward, is doing at home while the Perfesser eats dinner after work by himself? What is he, like … ten, eleven? Does he know how to cook, do you think?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/5/21

Snuffy Smith is the only comic in which I will accept a joke about how someone swapped two different kinds of bells as a prank and then everyone has a good hearty chuckle over it. Bells are Hootin’ Holler’s only source of artificial noise of any kind, so of course the inhabitants are going to be able to distinguish the subtle differences between the various types!