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B.C., 5/12/16

A common and amusing thing you see in Victorian-era English translations of ancient Greek literature is that sexual terms are translated into Latin, the logic being that if you were educated enough to know Latin, you were presumably morally sound enough to read 2,000-year-old dick jokes purely out of literary or historical interest, but we don’t want the unwashed masses reading Aristophanes and getting aroused, now do we? Anyway, I have to assume that’s the logic behind this strip getting through the editorial process: by the time you’ve learned that “coprolite” is fossilized feces, you’re presumably past the age where this punchline would make you gleefully shout “It’s funny because he touched a doody!” at anyone within earshot.

Beetle Bailey, 5/12/16

You know how Beetle Bailey adds a new character every decade or so to glom in the most awkward way possible onto trends that the strip’s creators only half understand? What I’m saying is that 2016 is probably the year Camp Swampy gets its newest recruit, a vaping soldier named Private E-Juice.

Herb and Jamaal, 5/12/16

Yes, Uhuru is praying

praying to her insect god

SPREAD YOUR CHITINOUS WINGS, O CHITTERING ONE

I YEARN TO BE TAKEN UP TO THE GREAT HIVE

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Herb and Jamaal, 5/2/16

Aww, an old friend … like whatever beloved buddy Jamaal killed, cremated, put in that urn, and stone-cold pawned to save on columbarium fees? Watch your back, Herb. Nice to know he’ll visit, though — I guess that’s what old friends are for.

Andy Capp, 5/2/16

Considering all the sexual directions this conversation could have taken, I’m glad it turned out to be about soccer.

Momma, 5/2/16

Am I the only person put off when medical staff say ‘Doctor’ as if There Were Only One? It smacks of status signalling, the way even soi-disant “horizontal” organizations signal their actual hierarchies by calling staff by last names, managers by first, executives by initials or nicknames, and CEOs only as “he” or “she.” OK for employees, I guess, but I’m the doc’s customer, dammit.

Anyway, for years I thought Momma’s surname was Hobbes — with an “e” — because she’s “… solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” I guess “Doctor” will find that out soon enough.

B.C., 5/2/16

Six thousand years ago, just before evolution stopped, moose — even the well-endowed ones — sported delicate little bird-tails that provoked religious zealots into orgies of murderous rage.

– Uncle Lumpy

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Blondie, 4/23/16

There are any number of perfectly good reasons to resent the comic strip Blondie, but the one I’m going with today is that it’s forced me to become familiar with the fact that “He Sheds” are in fact A Thing, as are “She Sheds,” naturally. I guess I don’t resent the concept per se as much as I do the twee terminology. Anyway, now that there’s a TV show about the trend, we can look forward to it spiraling completely out of hand, as it clearly already has for the Woodleys, who apparently thought it was good use of time and energy to dig two or three feet down into their back yard to create a partially subterranean one-man he-shed where Herb can watch baseball in blessed isolation.

B.C., 4/23/16

I’m on the record as being baffled as to why B.C. will go with entirely new art for its highly structured jokes like “Wiley’s Dictionary” or “Advice” or really any of the several gags where the whole point is to provide a minimalist structure within the world of the strip for the characters to deliver some joke that doesn’t really have much to do with the characters or the world of the strip per se. The structure seems like it’s invented specifically as an opportunity to reuse clip art, and drawing a new panel to depict the scene at a new and different angle seems entirely pointless, like meticulously reconstructing a fast food hamburger out of fresh, organic ingredients. I mean, knock yourself out if you really want to do it, I guess, but maybe don’t do it in a way that emphasizes that Curls’s character design is dominated by his grotesque, protruding upper lip.