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Crock, 3/20/17

You might think this is just a typical cartoon where a lonely desert-dwelling child’s only friend is a freakish buzzard. But, not so! Check out Little Otis’s blank, pupil-less stare in the second panel. That buzzard isn’t his friend at all; it’s hypnotizing him. Imagine “How should I introduce you to my mom, Wadsworth?” spoken in an eerie monotone. The only introducing that’s going to happen will come once Otis, under Wadsworth’s mesmerizing gaze, murders his parents and “introduces” the foul carrion eater to their delicious corpses.

Slylock Fox, 3/20/17

Hey, sinister grinning bear (?) lumberjacks: instead of stealing this poor beaver’s trees, have you considered recruiting him, for a good-paying job in the lumberjack industry that apparently still exists in this animal-ruled world? Honestly, how is it that in the animal economy there’s a single lumber company that isn’t entirely beaver-staffed?

Family Circus, 3/20/17

It’s bad, in the sense that it’s supposed to be “on fleek” (and I’m 100% sure the Family Circus isn’t clever enough to intend this to be an error either on Billy’s or Big Daddy Keane’s part), and also in the sense that the Family Circus shouldn’t be doing jokes about the phrase “on fleek.” Just bad all around. Bad bad bad.

Spider-Man, 3/20/17

Given that Rocket Raccoon isn’t well known on the version of Earth that has the misfortune to be depicted in Newspaper Spider-Man, I love that the lower word balloon in the second panel ends in an exclamation point. You’d think that the cop would say “Spider-Man — and a raccoon???? [comical BOI-OI-OING sound effect],” but nope, he’s just accepting this as yet another one of life’s passing mysteries.

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Panels from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and Crock, 11/20/16

Just a quick one today as we roll into Thanksgiving week. Are you getting ready to enjoy a hearty meal with your family? Well, these long-running, middle-of-the-road comic strips would like to remind you what turkeys are doing: spiraling into paroxysms of anxiety about their impending brutal dismemberment. Happy holidays!

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Spider-Man, 11/16/16

You know that normally I’d be very in favor of a punchline panel in Newspaper Spider-Man where our heroes mope wordlessly. But as a transit rider and advocate, I must protest against a train ride being used as visual equivalent of a sad trombone. Especially in the New York City region! Why, Peter and Scott will be back home in Queens while Jonah and Hank are still stuck on the Long Island Expressway, Jonah shouting furiously at his driver and other cars while Hank scrunches down in his seat and pretends not to notice.

It’s also obviously way too soon for the first Daily Bugle under J. Jonah Jameson’s new regime to have come out, so I assume the banner headline in the paper Scott is reading is over a story about how New York is now for the first time in years entirely free of Ant-Men. Gonna be an awkward correction at the bottom of page C-12 tomorrow!

Crock, 11/16/16

It does take some warming up to, but Wadsworth is laying out his people’s philosophy in a nutshell. Vultures don’t believe in fairies or make believe. They believe in each other, and their own ability to make this world a better place for themselves and their families. They believe they’re capable of anything, even getting money when their baby teeth fall out despite the fact that they don’t have any teeth.

Pluggers, 11/16/16

One of the longstanding mysteries of Pluggers can be summed up pretty simply: what is a plugger, exactly? Today’s strip I think encapsulates it nicely: a plugger is someone young enough that they still know people who move and old enough that they know a lot of people who are dying, and also someone who hasn’t figured out that you can put addresses into your computer now.