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Curtis, 12/14/16

Curtis is a strip that I have many, many soft spots for, even when it comes to its eternal running gags, and since I admitted that I basically found this hemorrhoid joke in Crankshaft funny, I will admit this: I always laugh when Barry does something childishly disgusting to annoy Curtis. Panel three, with its extremely vivid nose-picking sound effects and motion lines, is all the more a marvel in that it managed to get past whatever remains of the comics pages’ editorial oversight.

Mark Trail, 12/14/16

Oh, in case you’re wondering, Mark and Abbey successfully leapt off that exploding island, into the ocean! Probably they’re about to be rescued by Cal, in Abbey’s stolen borrowed boat, but Abbey is taking no chances, and is clearly attempting to evolve into a magnificent cetacean, adapted to permanent life at sea, in the final panel.

Gil Thorp, 12/14/16

Ah, at last we get to the meat of the Gil Thorp basketball season storyline: the trial and tribulations of Aaron Aagard, who’s always first in alphabetical order for everything! Riveting stuff, I’m very excited.

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Judge Parker, 11/28/16

The characters in Judge Parker, who have spent the last few decades as the unquestioned lords and masters of all they survey, with people just handing them money and power for no good reason, have now been abruptly brought low by a series of tragic events. Frankly, we’ve all been so focused on Neddy’s factory disaster and Sophie’s kidnapping that we’ve neglected another damsel in distress: April, Judge Parker Junior’s CIA assassin wife, who actually vanished before the change of writers, after being sent to do One Last Job in Belgrade.

Anyway, Randy’s been pretty broken up about it, obviously, and today’s strip reminds us of a reality of the newly grim Parkerburg: our heroes are so emotionally bereft as to be incapacitated, but they’re still in charge, which means that vital decisions are going unmade. Look at that huge stack of paperwork! Randy hasn’t heard a case in weeks, which means probably there are some people in jail who have no idea if they’ll ever get to trial, or maybe some businesses in limbo because lawsuits they’re involved in can’t move forward. Is Randy a criminal or civil judge? Who even knows? The point is, he’s sad about his wife, and the rest of you people will have to wait.

Curtis, 11/28/16

Curtis’s dad is giving his son a crash course on what life is like in this fallen world, where a constant stream of resources are needed to extend the lives of anything, from an advertising agency to an apartment building to a human body. Of course, all this effort still won’t stave off your inevitable death, but that’s a story for another day!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/28/16

“Shhh, June, no. I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t true. Sarah isn’t the way she is because you worked when she was a baby. She’s that way because we summoned her into existence via unholy, forbidden science! I swear to you we have the procedure refined now!”

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Curtis, 11/13/16

I’m going to start out by saying something nice about a comic, for once! Say what you will about Curtis, but, unlike a lot of the strips I talk about on this blog, it never phones it in. The gag here is one we’ve seen a lot in the strip, but I really enjoy watching the little details of Curtis assembling his three-sandwich stack over the course of this conversation, up to and including him licking mayo off his knife, like you do (or at least like I do). The realism is a nice setup for him to dash off in the final panel, leaving a cartoonish cloud of sandwich debris in his wake.

Dennis the Menace, 11/13/16

It’s weird that everyone’s acting like this is Joey’s brand new baby sister despite the fact that she’s clearly at least 18 months old, right? Of course, her eyes are a terrifying, milky, pupil-less blue, so she’s also clearly a space alien or a demon from hell. Presumably she hatched from a leathery egg twenty minutes ago and has used her awful mental powers to convince the children that she’s always been here and that her nightmarish agenda for our planet is “wonderful” and “so cool.”

Spider-Man, 11/13/16

So when earlier this week we learned that Spidey had webbed a camera to the ceiling of Egghead’s den, I assumed that the writers were working with a vague memory that he had set a camera up at some point earlier in the storyline but had forgotten that in fact that camera was in a tree out in the front yard. But, nope! Turns out that in fact Spidey just ran outside and got said camera moments after JJJ bonked Egghead unconscious. This is hilarious in and of itself, but it’s even more hilarious that experienced newspaperman Jameson is just now putting together how suspicious that all is. I’m looking forward to how this plays out, what with the NEXT narration box giving Spider-Man the exact opposite of standard good advice.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 11/13/16

This is definitely one of Slylock’s most giggle-worthy mysteries to date, from the crime itself — do we want to live in a world where it’s illegal to mess with dandyish beavers by forcing them to watch televised chess? — to the puzzle’s solution. Look, Count Weirdly is weird! It’s right there in the name! Maybe he likes to eat his soup with a fork. Maybe that’s why it’s taken him 15 minutes to eat a single bowl of broth!

Shoe, 11/13/16

Wow, I’m not sure what strip I expected to see discussing the corrosive effects of corporate capitalism on the human soul today, but it sure wasn’t Shoe!