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Beetle Bailey, 2/14/14

Kudos to the King Features colorists: this is a joke about how Miss Buxley has placed small pieces of plastic directly onto her eyeballs (already one of the most unnatural acts I can possibly imagine) that are covered with so much filth that her normally blue irises appear to be a sort of mud-brown, and in order to sell it we really need to see those dirty specks in the middle of her wide, terrified eyes. And we do! I also like the way that Killer has suddenly stood upright in disgust between panels. “I, uh, I have to be going now. Hope you don’t go blind!”

Crock, 2/14/14

There’s an obvious horror to final panel in today’s Crock, in which a grinning camel invites us to contemplate the fact that he’s managed, through sheer force of will, to shape the fatty deposit on his back into a grotesque parody of a human heart and then urges us to enjoy “humptine’s day,” something that we might associate with the enjoyable pastime of humping a loved one if not for the profoundly unerotic vision on display. But still, for me the most awful vision here is panel two, as the hump jiggles and throbs and extends, all while this eerie sentient camel maintains unbroken eye contact with us. HAPPY HUMPTINE’S DAY EVERYBODY

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Crock, 1/24/14

Ha ha, the joke is that they’re using “database” as a double-entendre to refer to a sexy part of a lady’s body! This is the sort of joke that would be funny to someone wholly unfamiliar with computers and only passingly familiar with sex. What’s really of interest to me here, though, are the weird black squares floating around our sassy legionnaire’s head in panel two? What are these mysterious, featureless intrusions into ordinary reality? My guess is that computer expert Billie Jean has long ago subsumed all of human existence into a vast computer simulation that she can watch and control like a god. Those blocks are a brief glitch in the Matrix. Her erstwhile paramour and his comrade, their bio-existence snuffed out uncountable digital eons ago, now endlessly replay this scene for Billie Jean’s amusement.

Herb and Jamaal, 1/24/14

“Ha ha ha, just kidding, I’m exaggerating because of how much time I spend on my cell phone! But seriously, I need something to help me take the edge off a little, if you know what I mean. Drugs. I’m talking about drugs. SELL ME DRUGS, HERB”

Mary Worth, 1/24/14

“Also, I had sex with Broadway legend Ken Kensington seven times! Well, one of those times we just did oral. It was a little too exciting, if you know what I mean. That’s why I came back to you and Santa Royale!”

Funky Winkerbean, 1/24/14

THE FUNKY WINKERBEAN MISSON STATEMENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

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Funky Winkerbean, 12/10/13

FUNKYQUEST, EVERYBODY! Cory Winkerbean has been assigned to dangerous mine-clearing duties in Afghanistan, so to give him strength his mother is attempting to fill in some gaps in his comic book collection. You’d think this would be fun and exciting to Comic Book John (a) because he enjoys the hunt through the world of comics for its own sake and/or (b) because he’ll be able to charge a finder’s fee of 20 to 100 percent on whatever issues he discovers through his network of contacts. And yet he looks pretty depressed in that final panel! Probably because he knows this is the Funkyverse, and and any “journey of Biblical proportions” will end in one of several Biblical ways, e.g., crucifixion, eyes gouged out, killed by she-bears, murdered in a temple with your co-religionists that’s then torn down and turned into a public toilet, etc.

Crock, 12/10/13

Say, did you read the obituary last week for the French general who blew the lid off of torture and other atrocities the French committed in Algeria? In unrelated news, here’s a zany cartoon!