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Mark Trail, 1/16/20

DRAMATIC MUSIC STING!!!!!! Much like Captain Ahab of literary fame, Dr. Camel has been on a single-minded mission of bloody vengeance ever since one of nature’s magnificent, savage creatures took his leg. And, sure, you’d think Mark or someone else would’ve noticed that Harvey has a prosthesis as they hiked together for miles through the foothills of the Himalayas, though maybe technology has advanced far enough that it isn’t really noticeable, making its revelation at this narratively opportune moment possible, or maybe Mark is so free of ableism that he noticed but didn’t find the fact remarkable so it never got worked into the strip’s narrative, who can say, but the point is that we now know how this is going to end: with Harvey’s corpse lashed to the yeti’s massive body, his arm seeming to beckon others to follow, and Genie, Mingma, and Pemba eagerly pursuing the monster into the forest while only Mark remains behind to write the tale, Ishmael-like, except unlike Ishmael he’ll be writing it for a glossy magazine with a fancy New York HQ, which will recompense him handsomely for his troubles.

Crankshaft, 1/16/20

Over in Crankshaft, we’re in the midst of a storyline where Ed and Lillian are in competition to see who can get more birds at their feeder, and today is the day we learn just how seriously Lillian takes this whole thing, since she’s clearly willing to sacrifice everything to win. Although perhaps she aims for a double victory: to escape by means of sweet death the unending sorrow of life in the Funkyverse, leaving Crankshaft, still alive and suffering, to watch the birds flock to his neighbor’s yard instead of his.

Crock, 1/16/20

We all know, of course, that Crock is in a twilight of endless reruns, and I have to assume that the same economic pressures that encourage syndicates to just rerun outdated comics instead of paying for new ones also preclude hiring much by way of editorial staff to supervise said reruns; perhaps the publication of old Crocks is entirely automated — I’m visualizing a robot arm pulling paper copies of strips out of a filing cabinet at random here. But let me gently suggest that it would be worth it to have someone to give these strips a once-over before they go out, if only to ensure that you don’t publish one where a punchline about some seemingly futuristic technology has now, a decade or two it was written, just become a straightforward description of a thing people do all the time.

Family Circus, 1/16/20

The Family Circus knows how to keep up with modern technology without much effort, simply replacing the earlier punchlines that ran with this panel (“See? I photocopied her” and “See? I bedoubled her once and then again, with the aid of my master, the Devil”) with something slightly more up-to-date.

Funky Winkerbean, 1/16/20

Oh, now I get why Les was withholding his emotional approval from this project: he was waiting for someone to explain that he could have more unearned praise heaped upon him, in the form of major awards, if it went forward! It’s a good thing that Mason doesn’t think the Oscars are a joke anymore, or, conversely, that he believes so firmly that they’re a joke that he thinks Lisa’s Story can win one, because it’s a sad story about a regular lady who died of cancer.

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Six Chix, 1/10/20

Folks, I’m honestly impressed by how much “a lot going on here” this relatively sparsely drawn Six Chix packs in today. Let’s start with all the ways in which the ostensible “joke” doesn’t actually work: the term “red-handed” is a reference to a murderer being caught with literal blood on their hands, not a reference to the color of human hands themself, most of which are not what you’d call “red”; nevertheless, I guess the punchline here is supposed to be that gray poodles tend to have gray paws, which is severely undermined by the colorist’s choice to make the arrested poodle yellow. Unless there’s some kind of … gray evidence of crime that dogs are known for? Pretty sure dogs don’t have gray blood, though I admit I’m not a scientist or anything. Anyway, I feel bad because all this distracts from what I think is the real horror here: it’s normal for animals to not wear clothes, and it’s fine if your anthropomorphized animals wear clothes, but if you have an animal wearing only a hat and a police badge, I’m going to imagine him as functionally equivalent to a naked person wearing only a hat and a police badge, and honestly the way this dog’s tongue is hanging out and his tail is wagging really isn’t helping with the whole vibe.

Crock, 1/10/20

Speaking of colorist errors, I kind of like that whoever was coloring today’s Crock decided “look, Crock takes place in the desert, we always make the ground bright yellow sand, and I’ll be damned if I figure out what the inside of a salt mine looks like, you hear me? I’m not Google image searching this shit, life is far too short!”

Marvin, 1/10/20

Gotta give credit where it’s due: could you spend the last 38 years, as the comic strip Marvin has, coming up with increasingly weird and off-putting scenarios in which the title character makes eye contact with one or both parents while shitting? I’ll bet you couldn’t. I’ll bet you don’t have the stamina.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 1/10/20

Whoops, looks like in addition to having a big personality and a tendency to show up unannounced, Aunt Tildy is … a comical drunk? More on the exasperated facial expressions Rex makes about this as events warrant.

Mary Worth, 1/10/20

“Please, doctor! I’m literally melting from panel to panel! Test that thyroid and test it now, with all your might!”

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Crock, 1/2/20

As a Buffalo native, it’s a constant source of both amusement and mild irritation to discover that many, many people don’t know that Buffalo wings are called that because they were first invented at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, a mere 15-minute walk from where my father lives today! Very few people are so misguided as to make the Jessica Simpson-esque mistake of believing they’re actually made from buffalo (the animal), but lots of folks seem to think that the particular type of sauce we associate with Buffalo wings got that name because of some vague association between the power of a rampaging buffalo and the power of, uh, spiciness?

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: good job, today’s Crock, for getting this basic fact correct. However, that isn’t going to distract me from pointing out all the other problems with this comic, which include, but are not limited to:

• I think the strip’s structure encourages us to read more into the implied metaphor than it can actually support. I guess it’s supposed to mean “Grossie can’t cook, so having Grossie pack my lunch sucks, just like being a chicken born in Buffalo sucks,” but my brain keeps wanting to make it about how she’s, like, fattening him up so she can cook him or something.
• Thanks to the supply chains of modern agriculture, most chickens are born, raised, and slaughtered thousands of miles away from where their remains will eventually be cooked and eaten, and Western New York has no real poultry industry. A chicken born in Buffalo is in fact more likely to live in some hipster’s backyard coop where it will happily live out a relatively long life providing eggs than to end up as wings.
• Buffalo wings have in fact become a staple of bar food across the United States, and so honestly the whole geography question has very little do with it. The plain fact is that the huge majority of chickens born in the world are destined for slaughter, which quite honestly ought to put the whole business of the bologna sandwiches your wife packs for you being subpar in perspective.
• This isn’t directly pertinent to the joke per se, but it’s well established that Maggot digs latrine pits for a living, right? And that’s what he’s standing in, eating his lunch? He’s up to his waist in a latrine pit? Pretty unpleasant, in my opinion.

Anyway, here’s a last Buffalo wing fun fact for you: in Buffalo, we just call them “wings” or “chicken wings”! Interesting, huh?

Six Chix, 1/2/20

I’m excited to see all six of the chix offer their own takes on the Chicken Little mythos one by one, and I gotta say that while I don’t on any level like this joke, I at least recognize that it more or less is a joke, which gives it a leg up on whatever it is that’s going on here. Might we get to a laugh-provoking Chicken-Little-themed punchline by the end of 2020? Dare to dream!