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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/22/21

Look, I thought we had a consensus here: Cartoonists draw the people and animals in their strips in all sorts of whimsical, silly ways that look funny on paper and we think it’s cute, even though if we actually saw a being in the flesh with those proportions, we’d recoil in horror and disgust. But when the actual cartoon character acknowledges his freakish, unnatural form, it quite frankly breaks the spell and forces us to imagine these nightmare beings. Like, can you imagine a horse with no neck? Horses are all neck! Their long, muscular necks are one of the defining features of their body plan! But try visualizing a horse — not a cute cartoon horse, but a real flesh-and-blood thoroughbred — with its head just jammed onto its shoulders. What a nightmare, right? It’s real sick shit, and I’m mad at Barney Google and Snuffy Smith just for making me think about it.

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/22/21

You know some real sick shit I’m not mad thinking about? Mother Goose (specifically the title character from the popular syndicated newspaper strip Mother Goose and Grimm, to be clear, not just the generic folklore character) down at the blood bank, just wheeze-coughing into blood bags while the nurses there desperately try to get her to stop. Call me mercurial, I guess, but that’s the sort of thing I sincerely enjoy!

Crankshaft, 6/22/21

Another thing I’m enjoying today is Crankshaft’s emotional journey in this strip. “Christmas? In June?” he seems to be thinking in panel two. “Did they move it? Is nothing sacred now that the damn libs are in charge again?” But then in panel three, he’s like, “Ohh, I get it now. It’s wordplay! I love wordplay!”

Important correction to yesterday’s Mary Worth post: When Shauna said that she was working at Santa Roymart, I assumed this was the supermarket where Tommy and Brandy also worked. In fact, as several faithful readers pointed out, those two work at Freda’s, Santa Royale’s upscale market with a personal touch. Santa Roymart is a big box store where Tommy refused to work, possibly because it was the scene of a botched drug raid. Is Shauna in league with the drug dealers who use Santa Roymart’s warehouse as their HQ? Keep reading this blog to find out!

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/21/21

Ha ha! It’s funny because Orville in his grief has been forced to part with his ancestral home, his one asset that can raise cash in his crushingly poor community thanks to the interest of a relatively wealthy outsider, but now he’s about to be fleeced of all his money from that outsider’s friend!

Hagar the Horrible, 5/21/21

I’d like to imagine that this strip as originally submitted featured Lucky Eddie sitting astride his centaur steed, but the syndicate editors deemed that “too horny” and demanded that it be redrawn. The revised version, with Eddie riding demurely sidesaddle, is just horny enough.

Mary Worth, 5/21/21

Jeff, you want to live, don’t you? You want to keep on living on this Earth? Then I’m going to need you to choose your next words very carefully.

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Mary Worth, 5/19/21

“I certainly would not have formed a romantic liaison with this family had I known about the lapses in judgement lurking in your bloodline!” [throws on life jacket, pinches nose, pitches backwards out of the boat and into the sea]

Gil Thorp, 5/19/21

You ever think that the staff of the Milford Star, a non-student newspaper produced and read by adults, are a little too up-to-date on what the local teenagers are up to?

Pluggers, 5/19/21

Sure, it would make a plugger’s life easier in some ways if he allowed himself to form professional or personal relationships with people with non-Anglo-Saxon surnames. But a man has to have a code, you know?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/19/21

DAMN IT THIS JOKE DOESN’T WORK IF WE CAN’T SEE INSIDE THE CAVE

IT COULD BE REAL NICE IN THERE