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Mary Worth, 12/9/19

Say what you will about this “Wilbur & Estelle & Zak & Iris” storyline, but it keeps zagging when I expect it to zig, by which I mean I never in a million years would’ve guessed that Wilbur and Zak, both heartbroken because their ladyfriends dumped them for wholly baffling reasons (because they’re public embarrassments with serious alcohol problems who aren’t over their ex and menopause, respectively), would end up bellying up to Santa Royale’s one vaguely seedy bar together and engaging in some good old fashioned male bonding. Anyway, Zak is nursing what’s presumably a local craft beer and Wilbur’s obviously on day twelve of a scotch bender, so Wilbur having what’s Zak’s having will actually sober him up a bit, hopefully keeping him coherent enough so we hear every detail of the restraining order Estelle got against him post-boombox incident. “The Charterstone laundry room is less than 150 yards from her apartment so I haven’t been able to wash any of my clothes for weeks, Zak. Weeks!”

Gil Thorp, 12/9/19

Welp, we’ve wrapped up the Chance Macy/Chet Ballard/Charlie Roh story, and, uh, it seems the football team is not headed for the playdowns, despite the revival of the bonfire this year, because we’ve just rolled right into the winter storyline, which seems to be about … a girl named Alexa, like the popular electronic assistant from Amazon, and all the other kids are making jokes about it? This seems fairly realistic, as teens are generally pretty shitty and also much less funny than they think they are, but I’m not sure it’s actually that great a basis for a months-long comics plot.

Dick Tracy, 12/9/19

You know what is a great basis for a months-long comics plot? A washed-up narcissistic old actor, whose enormous office is decorated with larger-than-life posters of himself, following up his successful production of Our Town with a wildly ill-conceived plan for stage version of Metropolis starring a woman transformed via alien DNA. This is a million times better than Steve Roper and Mike Nomad tracking down rogue carnies or whatever.

Crock, 12/9/19

I’ve always understood “entertainment center” to mean a big piece of furniture that has spots for your TV, DVD player, stereo, etc., which more or less went out of fashion when flatscreen TVs came onto the scene in the mid-to-late ’00s, and never would’ve been much of a gift item anyway. But I guess I’m overthinking this strip, where the punchline is that the real entertainment center is an old man’s dick.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/5/19

Ah, finally, the reason Silas wears a red armband makes sense: He’s a socialist, here to spread the word that the factotums of electoral democracy are in fact enslaved to capital. And if you’re wondering “why is a socialist the only person in Hootin’ Holler who runs a store,” it sounds like you’re unfamiliar with Marxist theory, which insists that a civilization must pass through all phases of economic development before it can achieve a truely classless society. Silas isn’t going to try dragging this barter-based agricultural community straight into the dictatorship of the proletariat like some kind of common Maoist!

Crock, 11/5/19

I’m just gonna ignore the “what if telemarketers, but in an ill-defined North African setting, where incidentally we’ve previously acknowledged that phones exist” joke here and focus instead on Maggot’s bib. Does it make any sense at all to wear a bib when you aren’t wearing a shirt? If you’re living in a tent in the desert with no running water to wash the food off your chest, maybe? I guess we should really factor in the fact that the bib matches Maggot’s skin color so precisely that it’s almost certainly made from the flesh of a member of his immediate family.

Mary Worth, 11/5/19

The best part about today’s episode of Wilbur’s Drunken Double Date Meltdown is Zak’s genuine smile in panel two. Not only is he (unsurprisingly) not even remotely threatened by Wilbur, but he’s enjoying this is as much as we are!

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 9/29/19

Ha ha, yes, sure, Slylock abuses his law enforcement powers to force K-Rock to interrupt up their hot playlist of favorites from the ’80s, ’90s, and today to get an emergency message out to this crocodile car thief, but: what possible reason can there be for our fox detective to drive a car with such a insanely dangerous defect? And that’s not the sort of thing that just happens “accidentally” to an engine; no, I think Slylock actually had the mechanic introduce this feature quite deliberately. His clockwork mind can solve any problem posed to him, defeat any foe, and he feels like nothing challenges him anymore. Quite frankly he needs the sense of constant danger, needs to drive SLY 1 for four minutes and fiftysomething seconds, as Max becomes increasingly agitated, before abruptly pulling over to the side of the road and letting the engine cool and reset. It’s the only way he can feel alive.

Funky Winkerbean, 9/29/19

Speaking of people dying in car crashes, I guess someone in Funky Winkerbean … just died in a car crash? I suppose this is supposed to be Bull, as he spent a lot of the last week agitated because he couldn’t find the car keys (which Linda had hidden from him). The New York Times article about this said that we’d be seeing a “a five-panel sequence [that] shows Bull acting on the decision to take his own life,” but this seems a lot more ambiguous, like maybe he just found the car keys and shouldn’t have been driving and got muddled. Ha ha, it sure will be fun for Linda, having no closure and never really knowing was going through her husband’s mind in his final moments, whether he was trying to find peace or was just alone and confused and scared! This is a great, hilarious strip that people love to read!

Crock, 9/29/19

So … only one of the hens wasn’t aware she was living in a polygamous compound? And she learned because her shared husband was killed by incoming mail? A lot going on here, to be honest.

Family Circus, 9/29/19

Fine, Family Circus, you’ve done it. You’ve created a strip I laughed at unironically. I will always remember September 29, 2019, The Day The Keane Kids Soiled A Piano.