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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 6/5/18

It’s hard to get a handle on exactly what the larger world of Snuffy Smith is supposed to be like, either geographically or chronologically. Is Hootin’ Holler a uniquely isolated community, surrounded by a modern flatlander civilization we would recognize, or is it simply one of a whole complex of adjacent hollers, each similarly cut off from mainstream American life but all connected to each other via a tenuous network of mountain roads? And if our protagonists were to wander beyond the hills, would they find the big-city denizens to be dressed more or less like us, or in garb as anachronistic as their own? What I’m trying to say is that I really want to be mad that this dude has old-timey prospecting gear and not, say, a metal detector, but I feel like I need to understand where and when he comes from before I get all worked up.

Mary Worth, 6/5/18

Why, look! It’s Mary’s beloved boyfriend Dr. Jeff! When we last saw this distinguished gentleman, he had just enthusiastically introduced Mary to his good pal Ted Miller, who then tried to rape her and so she cut off contact with him but never told Jeff about it. Now they’re getting together on Jeff’s lunch break and talking about … how lucky Wilbur is to know Mary? God, I just love the solid line of communication that keeps this relationship strong!

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Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/27/18

To be somewhat serious for a minute: when I joke about the grinding rural poverty in Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, which I do a lot, I hope I’m making it clear that my intention is make fun of the callous contrast between actual rural poverty, which is still very real and very grinding in the year 2018, and the weird “funny” play-acting version of rural poverty in Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, much of the iconography of which was developed during the vogue of hillbilly humor that was at its peak when this strip’s action pivoted from the big city to Hootin’ Holler in 1934. The characters are for the most part relatively untroubled by their circumstances, and, in a tradition that goes back through Sanford and Son all the way to ancient Greek comedies, are often depicted as being wiser and more content than their more sophisticated and less impoverished contemporaries, when they occasionally encounter them. Every once in a while, though, in some of the incidental background gags of the strip, you get a glimpse of something really depressing, like the fact that the Smiths live in a single-room shack with different ad-hoc living spaces created by patched curtains hanging from the ceiling. Or today, where the “joke” of the throwaway panels is that the Smith home has a leaky roof and so on rainy days their children are wet and miserable, even when they’re inside. That’s not a joke at all! It’s actually incredibly sad!

Mary Worth, 5/27/18

[earlier that week, in Mary’s apartment, Ian and Toby are reading off of scripts Mary has provided]

TOBY [haltingly]: Congratulations. We love … reading your work.

IAN [extremely sarcastic]: Fabulous news, my friend. I especially like your “Success Stories.”

TOBY: And I…

MARY [interrupting]: No, Ian, it’s “Survival Stories,” not “Success Stories.” We have to make him believe you actually read it. Do you want him to throw himself off a cliff?

IAN: Honestly, I’m of two minds about that, Mary…

MARY: Zip it. You’re going through this charade or I post to the local Nextdoor everything you’ve confided in me over the years. Capisce?

[sullen silence]

MARY: OK, take it from the top. And it wouldn’t hurt to smile a little.

TOBY [way too loudly]: Congratulation! We love reading your work!

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Crock, 5/23/18

A “favorite” joke format in Crock is “the troopers are getting so young,” which I guess is supposed to just be about how when you get older people come into the workforce who are themselves adults but who seem like children to you because the age gap between them and you is so big, but has the (I hope) unintentional effect of implying that France, beset by manpower shortages in its horrific and failing colonial war in the Maghreb, has been forced to deploy child soldiers. Fortunately, since e-mail has been a widespread and indeed in some contexts primary means of communication for 20 years, today’s strip is here to let us know that the Legion is now fully manned with adult recruits of prime military age.

Shoe, 5/23/18

“You know, Foster’s has a really effective advertising campaign in the States as ‘Australian for beer,’ but in fact it’s not particularly popular in Australia. No, my parents were really into beers like Carlton Draught and Tooheys New.”

“Is Foster’s a kind of beer? I was saying that the state put you in a foster home, because your parents were drunks.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/23/18

“I dug up his grave in th’ dead of night, cracked open his coffin, and cut off his beard for Jughaid t’ wear. He’s frownin’ on account of th’ smell!”