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Six Chix, 5/2/19

Hey guys, remember the Smurfs? I do! Sort of! In the sense that I know I watched the show obsessively as a kid and was super into it but honestly couldn’t really recount the plot of a single episode, but I do distinctly remember that Gargamel, the show’s primary antagonist, wants to eat the Smurfs, which I found fairly shocking as a child but honestly Gargamel was a pretty incompetent villain so he never got particularly close to achieving this goal. But these random children sure have, as part of their campfire fun! I’m not sure if that smurf in the s’murf the orange-shirted lad is proudly holding is already dead and nobody’s had the decency to close his eyes, or if he’s alive and trapped between the graham crackers, his screams muffled by the marshmallow goo holding him in place. And what about the guy just sitting there at the lower right, looking stunned? Is he drugged? Is he too frozen in terror to flee? Did he betray his friend, thinking, incorrectly, that the children would let him live? This is without question the most horrifying thing Six Chix has ever presented us with, and this is a strip that once did a joke about having sex with bigfoot.

Mary Worth, 5/2/19

Oh my goodness, “Arthur” has a dog! This changes everything. Maybe Arthur isn’t a bad man, he just needed money for his dog’s expensive operation! That fancy hotel he was staying at was just the equivalent of a Ronald McDonald House for people who need to come in from out of town to go to a high-end vet!

OK, fine, we all know this isn’t true and that Arthur is a bad man, and the way we know is by his dog’s expression of profound ennui. He’s heard all this before, man, and too many times. Sure, it pays for the kibble, but at what spiritual cost?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/2/19

I was going to make a joke along the lines of “Ha ha, Snuffy’s being left alone in his cell to starve to death!” but honestly, look at how rickety that jail is. The door Sheriff Tait is walking out of isn’t even on a hinge! He’s just kind of moving it out of the way! I’m reasonably sure Snuffy will be out chicken thievin’ again before you know it.

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Judge Parker, 4/29/19

“The question is what will we do next?” briefly interested me, because often when one half of a couple abruptly quits their job, that results in hard financial choices that need to be made, especially when the other half of the couple is already retired and they’re both already rather, er, free-spending. But this, of course, is the Drivers we’re talking about, where fat royalties from Judge Parker Senior’s inexplicably universally beloved book and the occasional slot machine jackpot supplement Judge Parker Senior’s comfortable pension from whatever level of the judiciary system he worked in, which in turn is just icing on the cake of what I feel I’m safe in assuming is his substantial generational wealth. So don’t worry, Alan will never have to give up his absolutely enormous home office desk or his scowling Lincoln bust or any of that, and instead this tense discussion is about how the Parkers did bad things and now they might have to suffer some kind of consequences for it (SPOILER: they won’t).

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/29/19

The sad thing here is not that Snuffy has decided unilaterally that it’s Loweezy’s turn to sacrifice some of her dinner to feed the dog; no, it’s that she’s got practically a full plate of food in front of her and he’s putting on his hat to head out for the night. Presumably he wolfed down his food while she was still tidying up after cooking for him, and now he’s going to go steal chickens or cheat at cards or whatever it is he does for fun. At least she still has Ol’ Bullet for company!

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Mary Worth, 4/28/19

Havin failed to convince Estelle with some random article she found on her phone, Mary’s been forced to break out the big guns: Saint Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, and four-time NBA champion Earl “The Pearl” Monroe.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 4/28/19

The poker players are all shocked because they know that sawmill’s been closed down for years. After years of reading this strip, I refuse to believe there’s any large employer within sleepwalking distance of Hootin’ Holler.