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Slylock Fox, 3/21/16

Ha, Slylock, this is pretty much the lamest anti-drug campaign I’ve ever seen. “No!” he shouts at the glassy-eyed hordes, eager to hand fists full of money over to Wanda. “Don’t you understand? She isn’t using honey at all!” The animals stumble back to their homes, or just lie down on the grass, chemically fueled happiness shooting through their veins. Slylock runs from prone form to prone form. “Honey is created by bees in hives! At best, she’s using honey that bees created after gathering nectar from lily and cactus flowers. At best!” Nobody listens. Nobody hears. They’re thinking happy thoughts! Nothing but happy thoughts! Your honey talk isn’t happy, Slylock, and they can’t even hear it.

Gasoline Alley, 3/21/16

Good news! Gasoline Alley’s Mildly Irritating Appliance Salesman Guy, who you might remember from strips like these, is back! And he’s a … police officer? Sure, why not! I don’t really understand why Gasoline Alley thinks Frank Nelson’s character from Jack Benny’s 1940’s radio show is someone that modern people yearn to see in cartoon form, but you could argue that if The Simpsons did it, it can’t be the worst idea in the world. You could also argue that this is a comic strip that just wrapped a multi-month story arc about scrapbooking, so clearly nobody involved gives a shit about what you or I or anyone else thinks!

Crock, 3/21/16

Since Crock is nominally set in early 20th century French colonial North Africa, if I had to identify the religion held by most of its characters, I’d have said “indifferent Catholics.” But clearly, in its decades wandering the desert, the Lost Patrol has fallen into some odd polytheism.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/21/15

“Your body is strong and robust and will go on living for years as your brain turns to goo and you lose every shred of the memories and personality that makes you you! This will only be a problem for your loved ones and people who talk to you, though, and I’m gonna stop talking to you right … about … now.”

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Crock, 2/19/16

“Hello, children! I’m the ghost of Charles Darwin! I’m here to explain one of the foundations of evolutionary theory, which is that animals better able to survive in their environment would experience greater reproductive success! In a relatively behaviorally advanced species such as camels, females ought to instinctively recognize the advantageous nature of a male’s large hump for water storage, and … wait, take your hands off me! What do you mean, this is a dumb joke about a how a camel can’t get laid? I … I’m a very important ghost, and I insist … I insist that you … my word!”

Crankshaft, 2/19/16

In this era of commonplace Throwback Thursdays, is there a person alive who would somehow be so panicked about people being privy to his cute baby photo that he would aggressively back his relatively new girlfriend up against the wall, demanding that she keep his secrets? The only way Max’s behavior makes any sense is if the picture in question depicted baby Max murdering someone, or if it was originally a dick pic and Crankshaft’s editors made them change it to something more innocuous at the last minute.

Beetle Bailey, 2/19/16

Sarge’s rapid cycling from crestfallen in panel one to manic joy in panel two is a heartbreaking depiction of disordered eating. Get help, Sarge!

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/15/15

Call me a speciesist if you will, but it seems to me that the animals who rose up and took over the planet in the Slylockverse haven’t quite matched our levels of achievement, have they? I mean, they apparently seized control of a human research station at the North Pole, an event that was presumably quite bloody and involved several polar bears, and they’ve been operating it in a sort of cargo cult fashion ever since, but now they’re in trouble. “Which way did they go?” the polar bears ask, poking their claw at the scavenged compass. “South? It’s all south.” The thief rides away and the bears, already growing soft in their warm enclosure, have forgotten they once were the fastest things on the pack ice.

Mary Worth, 11/15/15

This is an amazingly prefect Mary Worth Time-Killing Strip! Mary exchanges pleasantries with the cabbie, who is enough of a pro to not react to whatever meagre tip she’s giving him; then we get four solid action-packed panels of Mary thought-ballooning about the mechanics of letting her hosts know she’s arrived, a little retrospective on how she got there (not in any soul-searching or philosophical way, just the actual travel mechanics), and some platitudes about New York and how it’s Always Different! Slap a successfully completed phone call on at the end and a fabricated quote from St. Augustine on at the beginning, and you’ve got a Sunday!

Crock, 11/15/15

The answer to “how dark does Crock have to get before I laugh at it with respectful wonder” has now been established, and it is: botched suicide. I thank you for your time.