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Curtis, 6/9/20

Obviously strips like Curtis where the focus is more on the kids’ lives tend to give short shrift to the parents, but it’s 100% true that we never see Greg interacting with any adults other than his wife in a non-work context. At least Diane has her church group friends to occasionally have meetings with so Curtis can disrupt them! It’s absolutely heartbreaking for Greg to say, without hesitation, that what he misses most is his friends, as he closes his eyes and smiles wistfully, contemplating another, better world where he was emotionally fulfilled.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/9/20

It’s funny because we’ve seen Mason Jarr play exactly two roles in his time in the Funkyverse: Starbuck Jones, in the big-budget Starbuck Jones production, who is some kind of superhero spaceman and thus could not be the subject of this kind of “get in his head” exercise, and Les Moore, in the first abortive attempt to film Lisa’s Story, at which point Mason wasn’t even aware that the guy he was playing was same guy as the screenwriter! But I don’t want to dwell too much on that, because I’m too busy dwelling on the image of a second, smaller Les Moore, possibly implanted in Mason’s digestive tract by some sort of facehugger creature who rammed its ovipositor down his throat while he was unconscious, bursting out of Mason’s ribcage during dinner, leaving Les and Cayla’s dining room a mess of blood and viscera. Would the pleasure we’d all derive from this gruesome scenario be mitigated by the fact that, at the end of the process, we’d have two Les Moores?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/9/20

Rex is telling Sarah the story of how he and June met, which mostly seems to be the story of how back when he first started his medical career he had to deal with a lot of patients and their illnesses and their human problems, gross. Now he runs his own clinic and he doesn’t have to do shit! It’s great!

Judge Parker, 6/9/20

“The honest truth is that I probably would’ve lost the mayoral race, and badly, but this mug? They can never take this mug away from me. Not without a warrant.”

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Gasoline Alley, 3/31/20

I’m going to ignore panel three here, which makes the frankly offensive suggestion that Snuffy Smith somehow has an ownership claim over entirely common turns of English phrase, and instead focus on panel two, which I love very much. “Figure out an equitable way to cushion family farmers, who are committed to an increasingly economically unviable business model today, at the tail end of a century-long process of agricultural industrialization?” says Boog. “I doubt it! I’m, like, twelve years old!”

Dennis the Menace, 3/31/20

There’s actually a couple different kinds of menacing happening here, as Dennis dreams of a machine that can control the weather and thus impose its master’s will upon a terrified world, but is also stupid enough to think that that’s what he’s looking at right now.

Curtis, 3/31/20

While it’s not quite explicit here, I think we have to give Curtis the award for the first syndicated newspaper strip to acknowledge the coronavirus pandemic and the prolonged social distancing necessary to fight it. I don’t really have much of a joke here, other than that Curtis and Barry are definitely going to murder each other before this thing is done.

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Dick Tracy, 3/25/20

Wow, I’m not sure if Quiver’s little scheme here, which I assume entails having down-and-out folks collect spare change for a nonexistent charity, deserves the noble appellation of con. I expect a con to consist of complex wheels-within-wheels trickery as depicted in the movie The Sting, not a sad little attempt to make rent with a pile of quarters and nickels. Still, it’s nice to see that Shaky wants to get involved — clearly he’s one of those guys who always needs to be productive and can’t sit still and relax a little, despite the fact that he is (and I can’t emphasize this enough) dying.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/25/20

Man, I remember when weddings between members of two rival Hootin’ Holler clans resulted in violence, not passive aggression. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Snuffy Smith is losing its edge.

Curtis, 3/25/20

Not sure what denomination church the Wilkins family attends, but making up fake scripture for personal financial gain is pretty much always considered heresy, right? Never would’ve pegged Curtis for a heretic. You hate to see it.