Crankshaft, 6/14/20
Ha ha! It’s funny because Crankshaft is an old man who has to pee a bunch in the middle of the night!
Blondie, 6/14/20
Ha ha! It’s funny because … Cookie has more than one ex-boyfriend? Or maybe because a teen is trying to reach another teen by calling a landline number? Is that the joke?
Panel from The Lockhorns, 6/14/20
How can that car be such an uncomfortable fit for you two, neither of you is more than three feet tall
Mary Worth, 6/1/20
Finally, our long national nightmare is over! No, not that nightmare. Not the other one either. No, I’m talking about the interminable Dawn love story plot, which has finally wrapped up (for now [ominous music sting]) so we can move on to something important, like … a Toby plot? Sure. Absolutely. I will accept a Toby plot, fine. She’s going to fail at something, right? Baking, this time? I will definitely accept a Toby plot where she fails at baking.
Funky Winkerbean, 6/1/20
Newspaper comics are a weird medium — at once ephemeral but also in many ways demanding years of accumulated reading to truly understand the characters. For instance, you know and I know that Les is supposed to be the sympathetic protagonist of this strip, but … how would you expect anyone else to know? How is this not the beginning of a story where the wife murders her husband and all the readers at home root for her to get away with it?
Blondie, 6/1/20
Ha ha, that sure is a topical joke! I guess you two have given up on trying to not to give coronavirus to each other, though, huh? Just breathing droplets onto each other’s faces and whatnot. Anyway, is someone going to explain why the bird is wearing fuckin sunglasses or what.
Blondie, 5/25/20
If you had asked me to make a list of Dagwood’s trademark “things,” obviously sandwiches would be at the top, but I’d also say sleepiness, being a slacker at work, insatiable hunger (if we’re thinking of that as a separate thing from the sandwiches), his constant physical abuse of the mailman, and his weird passive-aggressive relationship with his supposed “best friend” and next door neighbor. “Classic TV” wouldn’t appear anywhere on the list, and while as written for the last decade or two Dagwood has embodied powerful boomer vibes and I’d definitely believe that he’s into classic TV, all the TV jokes in this strip are about made-up shows with food themes that he’s obsessed with (see “insatiable hunger,” above). This strip, in other words, has shaken me to my very core.
Gil Thorp, 5/25/20
“If you hadn’t imposed a life-altering punishment on a student for an extremely minor infraction, you could’ve been fired and reduced to penury yourself! Remember, in this totalitarian panopticon, we are simultaneously the enforcers of arbitrary rules and subject to them. It’s very grim!”
Marvin, 5/25/20
Man, it took me a lot longer than it should’ve for to realize that by “poor loser” the girl baby whose name I refuse to learn or look up means what a normal English speaker would call a “sore loser”; I thought she meant someone who was a loser because they were poor, and I actually started getting indignant on Marvin’s behalf. He’s not poor at all! Have you seen his bathroom? It’s a fucking palace!