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Hagar the Horrible, 8/20/22

What do you think the origin is of “grotesquely exaggerated cleft chin” being a comics shorthand for “handsome”? Was it a Cary Grant thing? Or did Cary Grant’s fame emerge from the same early 20th century cultural/aesthetic mileu, chin-wise, that the comics are also drawing from? It’s been several generations since a big chin cleft has been considered stereotypically attractive in real life (I’m talking about society’s hegemonic ideal of handsomeness, here, I’m sure some of you freaks are personally horny for chin clefts and that’s fine) so the images in the comics have become increasingly detached from reality and anyway, Handsome Hans has an ass for a chin? C’mon, that’s clearly an ass. He has an ass for a chin!

Crock, 8/20/22

Speaking of asses, I spent way too long trying to figure out what’s going on with the statue in today’s Crock. Is he not wearing any clothes at all? Because if that were the case, I’m pretty sure we could see his dick in panel one. The piece of paper he’s holding is not adequately positioned to hide his dick! Or is he just wearing really tight pants, so tight we can see his buttcheeks? Or has the Lost Patrol sculpted a version of their hated leader who’s naked but lacking in genitals of any sort, as a cruel commentary on his impotent leadership? Never thought I’d spend a good portion of my day wondering “What’s the deal with this statute’s junk,” but I guess this is the life I’ve chosen for myself.

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Crock, 6/13/22

Crock has been in perpetual reruns ever since its creator died and his son decided that doing the thing so many people in this industry do where they continue putting out their father’s strip would be not that much fun, actually, so despite the up-to-date dates on these they were all published years or decades ago. Generally this doesn’t matter much because Crock is “timeless” (detached from any kind of reality as we know it so it can indulge in its elaborately unfunny internal universe) but every once in a while you get a strip like this, with an out-of-nowhere SLAM on some long-irrelevant bit of pop culture detritus. The big question here: is this a wholly justified attack on The Da Vinci Code, the novel from 2003, or on The Da Vinci Code, the movie from 2006? And is its selection as the rerun strip for today meant as an attack on The Da Vinci Code, a stage play that will be running in London for most of this year, or is that just a coincidence? (Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon would, of course, say there are no such thing as coincidences.)

Curtis, 6/13/22

Speaking of out-of-nowhere slams, Curtis has this intermittent running bit where Curtis wildly overestimates the edginess of some webcomic and it feels like a beef with a specific webcomic but I’m not sure which one? I hope they’re aware of Curtis’s laser focus on them, though. I hope they opened the comics pages today and saw Curtis saying to them “Are you just doing Crankshaft jokes? We already have a Crankshaft, buddy, we don’t need you” and felt that burn deep in their soul.

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Beetle Bailey, 3/26/22

Not sure why but my immediate thought upon reading this was that the Halftracks are fairly old and their parents are almost certainly all dead. That adds an extra frisson to this strip, right? General Halftrack looking in horror at his dead parents’ portraits hanging over the toilet? Halftrack Hate Each Other Saturday is really going all in this week.

Crock, 3/26/22

“Computers, Macs, cellphones, and DVDs” — yes, this is a great string of elder-baffling technological advances for a Crock character to use as a punchline. I would’ve ideally liked to have seen an iPad included in there — written as “iPAD” of some reason, obviously — but other than that, really strong work here.

Dennis the Menace, 3/26/22

Damn, looks like Dennis is out here menacing heteronormativity