Post Content

Six Chix, 8/17/18

The best thing about today’s Six Chix is the knowing smile on the bartender’s face. She’s thinking, “Heh heh, this guy’s right, and it’s great to work in a place where you get the ‘inside scoop’ from people who can provide insights you might not have thought of yourself!” The worst thing is everything else, it’s a horror-nightmare in which gigantic, sloppy-drunk fly-monster from some hell-dimension is yelling out of its uncanny proboscis at the television about one of the current administration’s dumber ongoing storylines.

Mark Trail, 8/17/18

Oh, hey, remember earlier this week when I couldn’t remember who Becky was? Well, it turns out she’s Dr. Carter’s assistant, who we all thought was a diligent archaeologist who insisted on cataloging every artifact they discovered for future scientific study, but in fact is running an artifact smuggling ring! I mean, if you consider walking ten feet away from a tour group in a different temple than the one you found the artifacts in and then pulling an ancient artifact out of a sack and handing it to some other dude who also has a sack a “ring.”

Mary Worth, 8/17/18

Haha, check out Brandy’s face! That is definitely 100% the face of someone who completely believes in her boyfriend and believes in us too! Yep, gonna be smooth sailing from here on out.

Crankshaft, 8/17/18

If you ever wonder what it’s like running the most popular newspaper comics blog on the internet, imagine looking at this Crankshaft comic and thinking to yourself, “Is there a joke here? Is it supposed to be character-driven, like we’re supposed to have enough of a feel for Max’s personality that we think it’s funny he did this? Or maybe it’s … wordplay of some kind,” and then you say the phrase “Max Axelrod loves my arugula” out loud, to nobody, in your home office, multiple times, and finally you just throw it up on your website and say I DUNNO, MAN

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 8/12/18

In this fallen age where we’re all overworked and underpaid and comic strip revenue is dropping and endless digitized archives are out there for the reuse and remixing, I’m always slightly suspicious that anything I’m looking at as a comic strip could be a rerun with new dialogue and slightly updated art. Take today’s Hi and Lois. Obviously the core joke is very of the moment. And I’m not sure if we’re supposed to understand Chuck Green’s “my” as meaning “I invented this” or “I just downloaded it.” But is there any world where the visual stereotype to go with either of those things is “guy with white pants, spray tan, and shirt unbuttoned to display chest hair”? Anyway, feel free to imagine whatever extremely 1982 hijinks were going on here before the phone got dropped into the panel.

Crankshaft, 8/12/18

Today’s strip, combined with this weird storyline from a few months ago, indicates to me that someone on the Crankshaft creative team has finally noticed that low-margin retail banking is no longer a profit center for financial institutions and that they’re increasingly trying to cut costs through automation. Unfortunately for the financial services sector, they pissed off someone with access to the unparalleled reach of syndicated newspaper comics. Feeling that burn, Big Banks?

Spider-Man, 8/12/18

Shout-out to Peter Parker for taking time out of his busy being-tied-up-and-ineffectual schedule to notice that Suwan has a feisty nature and a great ass. “Oh, yeah! Shake that thang while you argue with your uncle! Daddy like!”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/12/18

Thanks for putting quotes around “Elvis,” Rex Morgan, M.D., narration box! Without them, we might’ve briefly wondered if we were looking at the real Elvis Presley, and that would’ve been exciting, or at least interesting!

Post Content

Mary Worth, 8/11/18

I can’t really tell if Brandy is doing a jokey “Ha ha, I certainly hope you’re not gonna dump me” thing or is genuinely on a real emotional roller coaster here with Tommy. I also know Tommy is nervous about starting this conversation with Brandy, but I think that asking her to suddenly sit on the ground in the middle of this running path isn’t really the best of all possible ideas. It’s also possible that he’s abruptly decided, upon being called “lover boy,” that he is going to break up with her afer all.

Crankshaft, 8/11/18

I thought I was going to be mad that Lillian is covering like a solid 10 percent of her laptop screen with Ann’s card for no good reason (hey, Lillian, did you know you can put someone’s contact information inside the computer???) but then I realized that her word processor (?) has for mysterious reasons truncated her book’s title page? And has truncated it using three periods to represent two letters???? RAGE … RAGE …