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Crock, 9/13/11

Usually it’s difficult to impossible to get more than basic plot information out of most of the squiggle-things that make up your average Crock, but I have to admit that the facial expression in panel two of today’s installment really sells the joke for me. Sigfried (side note: did you know that the librarian in Crock is named “Sigfried”? I didn’t! It’s always a joy to realize that the comics still has hidden gems like this to discover) looks genuinely stricken as he confesses his hatred of reading. His hypocrisy must really tear him up inside! It’s either that or, as near as I can tell from the relative heights of the characters in panel one, he’s in agony from standing on his knee-stumps.

Ziggy, 9/13/11

Hello, luddites across the world! Is there piece of modern-day technical wizardry that baffles and terrifies you? Don’t worry, the offending inscrutable character-sequence will be clumsily integrated into a Ziggy joke, for your amusement. Ha ha, take that, “http://,” whatever the hell you are!

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Shoe, 8/26/11

Today’s edition of “Overthinking It” comes courtesy of Shoe, because I can’t stop looking at the front left leg of that SNAX machine, dangling as it is just past the edge of the Treetops Tattler’s treetop newsroom. At first I thought the arrangements of all the legs might be a physical impossibility, but if you squint you can sort of imagine a twisting three-dimensional cylinder occupied by that tree bough that might allow the arrangement that we can see here. More difficult to picture is a scenario in which the Perfesser somehow managed to stand precariously on that narrow limb, his arms barely able to wrap around the truly obscene number of snax-pax he’s purchased, and still somehow manage to put coins into the machine and fish more bags of potato chips out of the bottom slot. Still, all of this shouldn’t take away from the hilarious punchline of the strip, which is that the Perfesser is a paranoid lunatic who resents and fears the newsroom vending machine even as he compulsively pumps his meager earnings into it.

Beetle Bailey, 8/26/11

Based on recent evidence, it appears that Beetle Bailey is attempting to appeal more strongly to its core audience of angry old drunks. I’m glad I didn’t have to run that focus group.

Crock, 8/26/11

Ha ha, it’s funny because … people … read electronic books now? No, wait, it’s funny because not a single person involved in the creation of Crock has any idea what a “download” is.

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Panel from Slylock Fox, 8/7/11

You really need to read the solution and think about its implications to this realize how gross today’s Slylock Fox is. That suitcase is full of stolen money and mammal milk, implicating the bear lady. (I wonder what will become of her cub when she’s sent to the slammer? Will it be sent to Ursine Foster Care, i.e., left in the forest to fend for itself?) Since we now know that a bird can’t be expected to have a milk bottle in her suitcase, we’re left to figure out for ourselves just how she’s going to feed her little chick en route. Is there hidden in that unopened suitcase a bottle full of fish guts that she vomited up? Or will she just be puking a portion of her airline-provided meal directly into her child’s mouth, disgusting all of her fellow passengers?

As a side note, the criminal bear’s bottle has not been placed in a ziplock bag and put through the x-ray separately from the rest of her luggage. I sure hope that’s what triggered the search of her suitcase, because it would be depressing to me if our human universe TSA’s regulations are even more pointlessly stringent than those in the world of Slylock Fox, which is a notorious police state.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 8/7/11

Parson Tuttle is a notorious grifter and fraud with little or no theological training, so it’s not that surprising that he’s desperately hitting up one of his community’s elders for some pearls of spiritual wisdom that he can drop into his Sunday sermons. I do love how incredibly put out he looks when Grampy finally gets to the point. “I can’t wait for my enemies to die, that’ll take forever! And killin’ ’em all just sounds like work.”

Crankshaft, 8/7/11

I’m not sure if either Abbot and Costello or The Who have really been victimized particularly badly here, but if Crankshaft wants to start apologizing for its terrible punchlines, I’m certainly not going stand in its way.

(Also, as faithful reader David Willis points out, today’s Crankshaft probably takes place a decade before today’s Funky Winkerbean, meaning that Crankshaft is dead, maybe! Hooray!)

Panel from Crock, 8/7/11

This right here pretty much says all you need to know about Crock.