Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/7/19

I regret to inform you that Barney Google is not only interacting with Beetle Bailey but is in fact crossing over with the entire family of trusted King Features comic brands. His whimsical journey got real dark today, as he and Spark Plug encounter the secret holding room — a drab holding cell, without any art or decoration of any kind — where all of the syndicate’s babies are warehoused in between bouts of saying or thought-ballooning the darndest things. Yes, PJ, Trixie, Marvin, the (I think) baby from Baby Blues and, uh, some other baby are left alone for days at a time, presumably stewing in their own dirty diapers. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t bring horses inside, for, uh, diaper-related reasons? Jesus, years of making fun of Marvin have really damaged my brain.

Marvin, 6/7/19

Speaking of which, here’s today’s Marvin, which is about pissing yourself! But, more importantly, it’s also about the fact that in the Marvinverse, the Army’s officer corps has become a sort of hereditary aristocracy, with ranks handed down from father to son and a military ethos pervading every aspect of members’ lives, right down to bathroom stuff.

Post Content

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/5/19

Just about every animator and cartoonist eventually dabbles with a “Duck Amuck“-style plot where the characters grapple with the nature of their own reality. Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm is a particularly disturbing take, though, with Mother Goose going bug-eyed with panic as she realizes she’s dissolved her beloved dog’s body into nothingness. Only his eyes remain, hanging in mid-air, leading to an important question: are eyes the soul of a cartoon character? Makes you think!

Shoe, 6/5/19

I’m extremely put off by the way Shoe is making direct eye contact with the reader in the second panel, as if to say, “Get it? I, Shoe, the title character in this comic strip, walk around naked at all times, and maybe you’ve been reading this strip for years and just assumed it’s a weird visual quirk that everyone involved in the strip’s production has long forgotten about, but: nope! I’m naked, other characters in this strip wear clothes, I’m violating every in-universe social norm, but they can’t stop me. Nobody can stop me. It’s now official Shoe canon that I’m a sick pervert bird-man who likes making everyone feel uncomfortable, because that’s how I get off.”

Gasoline Alley, 6/5/19

Please sign my change dot org petition to require that every Gasoline Alley strip end with one of the characters saying “Huh?”, thus assuring the reader that they aren’t meant to really understand anything that anybody is saying.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/5/19

WELP HERE IT IS

BARNEY GOOGLE HAS STUMBLED INTO CAMP SWAMPY

IT’S THE COMICS CROSSOVER EVENT THAT NOBODY WANTED OR ASKED FOR BUT WE’RE GONNA GET IT ANYWAY, BY GOD

Post Content

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/31/19

Changes to health care policy are both politically contentious and incredibly complex to implement, with lots of unanticipated results both good and bad. For instance, increasing the number of insured in poor rural communities has documented benefits in terms of improved medical outcomes. But it also results in increased blood feuding! Can the social fabric in our beloved hollers withstand the increase in violent hillbilly-on-hillbilly crime that would inevitably follow in the wake of universal healthcare?

The Lockhorns, 5/31/19

You might be tempted to focus on Leroy’s puzzling assumption that a uniform shape is somehow a sign of a good set of pancakes, but I can’t stop thinking about who these people are and what they’re doing in the Lockhorns’ dining room at what we must assume is breakfast time. My guess is that they finally worked up the nerve to answer a personal ad on the local swingers website, and as their faces clearly show, have experienced an evening of harrowing discovery as a result.