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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/17/21

YOU, A SIMPLE CLOD: “Wow, this joke doesn’t work at all. It’s a real stretch for something that’s not even funny.”

ME, A COMICS-ANALYZING INTELLECTUAL: [paralyzed by the choice between posting a map of the pin-pen merger in order to narrow down Hootin’ Holler’s location and writing up a rant about how Silas is the most educated person in Hootin’ Holler and the least likely to misspell a simple word like “tint”]

Rex Morgan, M.D., 7/17/21

Hey, remember Kyle’s terrible case of writer’s block, which set this whole plotline in motion? Well, it got solved, off-panel, somehow. Bet that takes a real load off your mind, huh?

Blondie, 7/17/21

“No, my husband just flings food around the kitchen. Look at this shit! You think anything vaguely palatable is going to come out of this process?”

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/16/21

Wow, I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen a Snuffy Smith before where Jughaid has doffed his coonskin hat, revealing his horrifyingly lumpy and be-stubbled noggin. I was thinking about searching my archive for previous examples, but then I realized that if I found them, I’d just have to look at more pictures of his weird, gross head. No thanks!!!

Mary Worth, 7/16/21

Wait, hold up, Drew just got to be a doctor because he was born a doctor’s son? Like, he didn’t have to go to … med school, or anything? This explains a lot, actually.

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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!