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Judge Parker, 2/14/20

Well, it looks like Judge Parker is about to descend into meta-narrative as our soap-opera-strip town becomes the backdrop to an in-universe soap opera TV show, at least until April gets mad about lack of creative control and emerges from hiding to murder everybody. Mostly I’m excited because I’ve just realized that the Netflix exec in charge of all this looks uncannily like Amy Klobuchar, which makes sense considering her main role in the story so far has been to be mean to everyone around her.

Family Circus, 2/14/20

I don’t know why, but it bothers me so much that these kids have only sort of vaguely touched Ma Keane’s Valentine’s Day chocolates with their teeth. Does anyone think these two melonheads have the self-control and discipline necessary to not gobble down the candy as soon as they put it in their mouths? I definitely don’t, and you expect me to believe that Jeffy does? Jeffy? Please.

Blondie, 2/14/20

I don’t know, man, stopping in mid conversation to put on a coat, walk outside, and then engage in a performative display of affection for a specific audience doesn’t say “spontaneity” or “pizazz” to me so much as “desperately trying to prove something to others, and maybe in so doing proving something … to yourself.”

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Crankshaft, 2/11/20

Ahh, who could forget Butter Brinkel, the silent-era film comedian in the Funkyverse whose career was ruined when a starlet died under mysterious circumstances at one of his parties? Well, due to the Crankshaft/Funky Winkerbean chronological disjunction, the shocking documentary revealing that the real murderer was a talking chimp is still a decade off, which means that Butter Brinkel is still universally loathed at the time of today’s episode. Maybe holding this comedy festival was a bad idea, and not just because you scheduled it for mid-February in northeast Ohio! But thank goodness Crankshaft is here. I was going to say that Crankshaft doesn’t care if some movie star is “problematic” but actually, Crankshaft cares quite a lot. Crankshaft is frankly only interested in art created by murderers. Being that close to death makes him feel alive, which honestly explains a lot about why he still drives a schoolbus despite being demonstrably bad at it.

Blondie, 2/11/20

Hey, would you like to do a joke about how Kids Today are soft, with their lawsuits and their trigger warnings and their asbestos-free lungs, but also want to do a joke about how kids today have access to dangerous technology like drones, and you worry that they don’t really go together in the same strip? The wildly popular newspaper comic strip Blondie would like to urge you not to overthink it and just go for it. That’s what they’d do!

Curtis, 2/11/20

Or you could do a strip about modern-day technological culture that both pokes fun at its foibles but also recognizes the real warmth and human connection it can foster, like a coward.

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Mark Trail, 2/5/20

Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date with recent developments in Mark Trail, but they go something like this: Dr. Camel thought he heard the tell-tale whistle of a yeti and so he just bolted out of his tent into the Himalayan night, and also into what appears to be an avalanche in progress, and now Genie, his lover (?), is running after him. If Mark Trail ends up standing dispassionately over their frozen corpses tomorrow morning, snaps a picture of them for the cover of Woods and Wildlife, says to nobody in particular “I guess the yeti will just have to remain a mystery,” and then starts heading back down the mountain, I admit I will be kind of impressed.

Blondie, 2/5/20

I have now reached an age when I see incomprehensible tech jokes in legacy comics and have the nagging feeling of “are they out of touch or am I?” Like, on the surface this all makes no sense to me, but … maybe deleting pics off each others phones is how the prepubescent set flirts these days? Like it’s the equivalent of a mischievous boy dipping a little girl’s pigtails into an inkwell, except it’s up-to-date, and gender-neutral, and also causes you to lose your cherished memories? At any rate, Elmo has learned a tough lesson about regularly syncing your devices with the cloud, and Dagwood has learned that maybe he should take pictures of things sometimes, with one of these new-fangled “cameras” everyone’s talking about.

Mary Worth, 2/5/20

Wilbur is, of course, referring to that time he decided to travel the world for his dumb column and Iris dumped him, which led to her very successful and happy relationship with hot young millionaire Zak, and also led to Wilbur getting sex-grifted in Colombia. It’s still not entirely clear to me whether Dawn ever learned about the latter episode, and now I dearly hope she didn’t so that when Wilbur describes the whole thing to Hugo in graphic and erotic detail, she’ll be hearing about it for the first time.

Family Circus, 2/5/20

Is … is Big Daddy Keane actually smiling at his son’s ignorance? “That’s right,” he’s thinking, “this is America. No son of mine will be pressing anything but 1 for English.”