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Sally Forth, 10/3/14

True Story: Sally Forth is the comic strip that first got me thinking seriously about comics time, the phenomenon by which characters in a long-running comic stay basically the same age, but the cultural signifiers surrounding them also stay current which implies that not only their present but their past is slowly moving forward through the space-time continuum. Because it’s hard to notice that strip-time present is changing to match real-life present, you tend to notice this most during flashback sequences, as I did when an early ’00s Sally Forth storyline about Ted and Sally meeting in college featured Ted wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt. I’d been reading the strip since I was a child, and so obviously Ted and Sally were my parents’ age, and this blew up everything I thought I knew.

Anyway, something about this particular storyline, about Sally and Alice meeting for the first time twenty years ago, has been nagging at me all week, and I finally put my finger on it: Alice is in fact sporting 1994’s hottest haircut, the Rachel, which works great for the milieu but makes the fact that her current-day character model still has the same Mid-’80s Business Lady Hair that she’s always had seem even stranger.

Spider-Man, 10/3/14

SUPERHERO: “I’m trapped! I’ve got to use my superpowers to escape!”

[SUPERHERO tries for, like, thirty seconds]

SUPERHERO: “Well, that didn’t work. Time to resign myself to death!”

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!!!!!!!!!!!

Beetle Bailey, 10/3/14

It’s funny because you can tell the chili is too hot because it’s on fire and also Beetle is literally cringing in pain and his face-flesh is covered with horrible burns

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Beetle Bailey, 10/1/14

I like the looks of surprise in panel two not just on Miss Buxley, but on the faces of the two passers-by at the bottom of the panel. There’s no particular reason they should be showing sudden horror at the gaping, angry Sarge-maw, but their epiphany mirroring Miss Buxley’s fits in with the dream logic of the whole strip, and by “dream logic” I mean “Jesus Christ this is a Freudian bonanza of sublimated psychosexual squick.”

Spider-Man, 10/1/14

Last week, Spider-Man battled Doc Ock the only way he could: by not battling him at all, but letting another villain he accidentally set free from jail do the battling for him. Today, he’s getting actively annoyed at this thrilling super-powered combat getting all up in his personal space while he’s trying to just relax a little.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 10/1/14

“The floors are cover’d in bird shit, jes’ like our house, though!”

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Beetle Bailey, 9/24/14

Hey, who says Beetle Bailey is behind the times? Look, there’s Miss Blips relaying the General’s capricious orders via cell phone, instead of by walkie-talkie or carrier pigeon or whatever long-distance communication method was most current when the strip started. And keeping up with General Halftrack’s slow decline into decrepitude, his new-style sexual harassment is indistinguishable from a request for a sleep aid, since nothing seems more erotic to him these days than a nice, comfortable nap.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/24/14

Speaking of new eras, New Era Funky Winkerbean features a pair of extremely sad sack teens who serve as our viewpoint characters for the teen storylines in the strip. I can’t be bothered to learn their names, so I just call them Sad Sack Hat Teen and Sad Sack Glasses Teen in my mind, when I have to think about them, which I try to do as little as possible. Anyway, Sad Sack Hat Teen has been forced by Bull to do time in the Westview Scapegoat mascot costume in lieu of detention, and I’m seriously wondering who exactly he’s talking to in these panels. Clearly the giggling cheerleaders already know about this head-rubbing thing. Does he think that they can’t hear him in there? Because I’m pretty sure they can hear him. Or maybe he just doesn’t think it matters, because after the game the High Priest will symbolically burden him with the sins of the entire people, and then send him out into the wilderness, never to return.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/24/14

Guys, Sarah, doesn’t just imperiously demand ludicrous things because she’s mad with power and people are terrified to tell her no, OK? She does it because she wants her family to live the opulent lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to even after her baby brother is born. And she wants a pony. Just look at her, wiping away a tear of joy, just thinking about the moment when someone up and gives her a pony for no good reason at all.

Lockhorn, 9/24/14

Leroy’s crinkly smile is usually supposed to represent “drunk” or “drunk and horny,” but here I think it’s supposed to mean … smug? Smug as in “haha, yes, I have thought up the perfect comeback here for her request that we travel sometimes, point: Leroy, and yes, I am keeping track of points, I have been keeping track of points for years and years and years”