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Marvin, 7/31/19

I guess i’s a step forward that today’s Marvin absolutely infuriated me for entirely non-poop related reasons. No, I’m just furious about how badly this punchline is botched! There are actually two perfectly good ways this basic joke could be done:

JOKE STRUCTURE #1 (kinda basic, but still very effective)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
THERE IS NO PANEL THREE BECAUSE THE FIRST TWO PANELS ACTUALLY CONVEY EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW! THE MEDICAL BUILDING IS WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS BERNIE’S NAME, BECAUSE HE’S OLD AND SICK A LOT! JOKE OVER!

JOKE STRUCTURE #2 (maybe a little daring for a comic strip, but I think it would work)

PANEL ONE:
BERNIE: Remember that old TV show Cheers, where everybody at the bar knows your name?
ROY: Yeah

PANEL TWO:
BERNIE: Well, it’s like that when I go to the medical building

PANEL THREE:
BERNIE: Everyone there is a drunk!

But no, instead, we just get a third panel that doesn’t add any more twists to the punchline, but rather just explains what the punchline was. It doesn’t work! It doesn’t work at all! I almost wish Marvin had shit his pants, to distract us!

Dick Tracy, 7/31/19

Don’t worry yourself, Vitamin: I’m sure that the theater, which you literally own, felt absolutely free to make a decision as to whether to cast you in the role you so transparently and desperately want based entirely on artistic criteria. If you don’t believe me, believe the adoring, much younger woman you knocked up!

Six Chix, 7/31/19

I’ve been staring at this for a long time and trying to figure out why all the action is a circle in the middle of the panel surrounded by blackness. I guess it’s supposed to be like we’re looking at the scene through a camera, with the implication being “Sure, we live in a society where in order to afford the most basic necessities we might need to leverage our ability to inspire pity on social media, but at least we’re also under continuous surveillance”?

Dennis the Menace, 7/31/19

I accept that Dennis’s menacing levels have waxed and waned over the years, but I have to draw the line at this sort of wide-eyed sub-Family Circus-ism delivered while cradling a teddy bear. The only way this is at all appropriate if it’s part of a larger plan to send Joey spiraling down a dark path experimenting with hallucinogens too young and too often.

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Mary Worth, 7/28/19

Hey, Hugo, “joie de vivre” is a phrase, not a “saying,” first of all, and you know what? We do have that phrase in the English language, and it’s “joie de vivre”! Because English just incorporates whatever words and phrases it wants from other languages, and then English speakers use them in day-to-day conversation, so they become part of English! Coup d’etat? Deja vu? Those are English now! Our language grows and changes because we don’t have a government-appointed commission trying to keep it pure, like French does! And that’s why we’re number one! [gets a chant started to the rhythm of “USA USA”] ANGLOPHONES! ANGLOPHONES! ANGLOPHONES!

Beetle Bailey, 7/28/19

What’s your pick for the most unsettling part about this fantasy Beetle has about being unable to escape the drudgery of Army life even after death? To me, it’s the fact that, even though he and Miss Buxley are married indicating this is in some indefinite future, he seems to have died at more or less the same age he is now, not when he was old or anything. What did he die of? What did he die of???

Panel from The Lockhorns, 7/28/19

“It’s ridiculous! There’s no context where ‘hard time’ designates a length of time! It’s a reference to how you spend your time, or where (like in prison). This isn’t clever wordplay at all! It’s just a confusing non sequitur and you need to cut it out.”

Dennis the Menace, 7/28/19

So, uh, Dennis got into a fistfight with a kid up the street! Like, I’m not even sure if I have joke to make here but I feel like it’s worth bringing to your attention. He punched that kid right in the face!

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Dennis the Menace, 7/13/19

Usually the whole deal with this strip is that Dennis blabs something unpleasant that one of his parents said directly to the person who his parents blabbed unpleasantly about behind their back, and they always look real embarrassed about it but they never stop talking shit about other people in front of their big-mouth kid, now do they? The shy little smile on Henry here today shows that he’s finally admitting to himself that he secretly loves it when Dennis says the things that he dares not, and now he’s instigating these episodes deliberately, starting with Mr. Wilson, who seems safe because if he were going to attack Dennis or Henry physically, wouldn’t he have done it years ago at this point?

Funky Winkerbean, 7/13/19

“So he was only an accessory to murder, which is barely being a criminal at all!”