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Marvin, 7/31/18

It’s weird how the Marvin cast of babies walk around unsupervised, talk, can grasp object permanence, etc., and really the only thing that marks them out as infants is that they’re short and aren’t potty trained. Almost as if someone just really likes the idea of functional adults shitting themselves deliberately on the regular, and who am I to judge! Ha ha, just kidding, I judge constantly, and in non-shitting judging news, why would a baby be at all interested in a fountain of youth? I guess maybe as a baby he recognizes the extreme jealousy his youth inspires in others and seeks to monetize it; or, conversely, maybe to him “youth” means young adulthood, and he aims to accelerate his fellow babies’ aging process until their physical development matches their mental state. They’re still gonna shit their pants, though! Just a hunch I have about that.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/18

I’d always just pegged Parson Tuttle as an uncomplicated grifter, but now I see he has a much darker design: to use Scripture as a recruiting tool to raise an army of child soldiers, like an Appalachian Kony. Can the women in this community hold the line against the total violent breakdown of their community?

Family Circus, 7/31/18

I have to admit that seeing a sugar-drunk Jeffy announcing that he’s discovered he can just guzzle syrup straight from the bottle and plans to continue to do so made me smile. The only way this panel could be even better would be if, instead just a single demure droplet of syrup at the corner of his mouth, he was completely covered in the stuff, like he had poured it over his head and let ooze down and form a delicious, sticky mask. Can’t even open his eyes because of the syrup and happy as a clam, a dumb, gross, syrup-soaked clam.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/20/18

Today’s Snuffy Smith offers a lot to think about — from Snuffy’s inability to differentiate between dissimulation and imaginative escape, to the thought of some unfortunately door-to-door salesman forced to try to squeeze blood from the stone of impoverished Hootin’ Holler. But primarily, I’m just thinking about Snuffy’s beachwear, and the tan lines it would produce.

Funky Winkerbean, 7/20/18

Good news, everyone! Les’s mopey book about his dead wife didn’t win that Eisner it was nominated for. Bad news: everyone at their table still got unlimited cheesecake. I want these creeps to receive zero rewards, do you year me? Zero.

Shoe, 7/20/18

There’s never been a “Farmer Frank” character in this strip and the fact that he’s a farmer doesn’t have any kind of relationship to the punchline of this joke and that all bothers me so much

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Dick Tracy, 7/4/18

Citizen! Share your Fourth of July with this steel-jawed law enforcer, literal red-headed stepchild, and alien halfbreed, arrayed before a monochrome American flag! Comply!

Crankshaft, 7/4/18

All week long, Ralph has been flirting with both myocardial infarction and Sandy here, to the dulcet strains of jazz classic I Can’t Get Started — doubly ironic because even if he does, there remains the matter of finishing.

P.S. In California we have fires, and our air really does look like that. I don’t know Ohio’s excuse.

Mary Worth, 7/4/18

Tommy and Brandy emerge from some kind of hostage drama, and the foreshadowing is thick: Tommy will demand sex on threat of murder, and Brandy will gladly opt for death: “Humanity, schumanity — a girl’s got to have standards!”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/4/18

Every year around this time I become insufferable on the subject of fireworks. Growing up, we had the good, real kind — the ones that fly, flash, and most of all explode. I once got arrested for pitching an M-80 into the lagoon at a public park, and I can’t say I regret it.

But now the runup to every Fourth of July brings a week of TV-news moralizing about how awful fireworks are and police BS about how THIS TIME the department will be REALLY SERIOUS about enforcement. The spokespeople are hilarious: “Yes of course we will totally send our officers charging into drunken parties in private backyards, risking their lives to keep lawbreakers from injuring themselves. It’s our top priority. Youuuuuu betcha.”

But the highlight is the late news on the Fourth itself, when every station stops their tut-tutting and backdrops the news desk with a live feed of the Oakland skyline — a lacework of smoke trails silhouetted against a sky lit bright as day. AMERICA, dammit!

Still and all, I wouldn’t put explosives in the hands of Hootin’ Holler’s most belligerent drunk.

— Uncle Lumpy