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Gil Thorp, 6/26/19

Welp, the softball team failure to advance in the playoffs went, as predicted, largely unnoticed (especially on this blog, heyooo) and now we’re onto a summer storyline! For those of you too young to remember, summer in Gil Thorp used to be a time when anything could happen, when the strip was freed from the rhythms of the school athletics calendar and could explore truly zany scenarios (e.g., “Coach Kaz, Rock and Roll Bodyguard,” “The Day Marty Moon Got Grifted At Golf,” “Gil Wrestles A Man With Dementia, For Charity“). But lately we’ve just had to endure Gil half-assing it even more than usual as a golf coach, with only the occasional Beloved Character From The Past returning to liven things up. And this year we’re getting a second-order Beloved Character From The Past: Jaquan, a pro basketball player who improbably tagged along for a trip back to Milford two summers ago with his personal trainer, Mudlark alum Trey Davis, and whose mid-career ennui was cured with the suggestion that he get a master’s degree in history. And folks, I’m allowed to say this because I have a master’s degree in history: I assume he’s returned to town to have his awful revenge on everyone who allowed him to make such a terrible decision, because getting a master’s degree in history sucks and carries literally no advantages whatsoever.

Dick Tracy, 6/26/19

Dick Tracy just jettisoned its vaguely exciting tale of Little Orphan Annie being kidnapped mid-week and instead demands that we pay close attention to this scene: a faceless, cigar-smoking man surrounded by a cloud of flies sings a little tune about banana bread and admonishes a yokel for gawping at his late uncle’s vast library. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, it probably won’t come as a huge shock that I find this much more interesting than a little light orphan-napping.

Dennis the Menace, 6/26/19

So Dennis is just straight up stealing stuff now? Even I have to admit that that’s reasonably menacing.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/23/19

I know we all complain about how generally dull Rex Morgan has been since Woody Wilson retired as writer, but have we considered that maybe this is all at Rex’s request? Like, you try dealing with stripper subletters and MRSA epidemics and funeral brawls and helping your nanny defraud her stepson out of his inheritance, twice. You’d probably want a few years of low-stakes medical practice too! But hopefully for our sakes things are going to pick back up with a case of poisoning, or at least maybe factitious disorder, and a patient capable of producing a pissyface worth of Rex himself.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/23/19

Ha ha, check out the answer to this “mystery”: Slylock knows that no Great White shark could survive in a cage for three days, but he and Max still swam away, because they “didn’t want to take chances.” What’s the matter, Slylock? Not willing to stake your life on your endless supply of nature facts? Do you lack the courage of your convictions? I guess Weirdly is safe in his undersea hideout, with his probably but not definitely fake shark, to plot against us!

Pluggers, 6/23/19

I guess if you had asked me “Hey Josh, you wanna see a dead plugger,” I would’ve said “Sure, absolutely,” but it turns out that stumbling across the actual depiction of a plugger corpse in the funny pages actually unnerved and upset me. Sorry, everyone! I don’t want to see the dead body of some folksy animal-human hybrid abomination given the trappings of a decent funeral! Keep this business out of the paper, in my opinion!

Funky Winkerbean, 6/23/19

I’m no Ken Burns, but I would definitely start my Butter Brinkel research into finding out how Brinkel managed to make a career out of blatantly ripping off Buster Keaton.

Panel from Dennis the Menace, 6/23/19

The actual punchline was about video games or something, but I firmly believe that the absolute funniest image the comics will have to offer for 2019 will be a furious Mr. Wilson, having just been alerted by some article in the paper to the existence of people born after 1982, barking “Martha! You ever heard of these millennials?” at his wife while she brings him the cocktail that will hopefully spur his typical three-hour afternoon nap, when she can finally get some peace and quiet.

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Mary Worth, 6/13/19

This is a full time Wilbur/Estelle (Wilbstelle? Estbur?) fanblog now and you can just deal with it. Today I am mesmerized by the massive burger looming in the background, which I guess is an image on the window of Delicious Grill(e?) but looks like some kind of hovering alien being, whose research on Earth determined that hamburgers were plentiful and therefore an inconspicuous form to take, beaming love rays into Wilbur and Estelle’s brains and convincing them to head back to Estelle’s apartment for piano playing and sex, for whatever inscrutable reason (presumably the alien’s spacecraft is powered by the energy produced when two middle-aged people settle for one another).

Dennis the Menace, 6/13/19

I’m not even going to bother assessing Dennis’s menacing level here, and instead I’m just going to point out the truly bizarre arrangement of furniture in the Mitchells’ living room. Like, did Henry or Alice deliberately move one of the chairs so that they could sit angrily near each other like this? Or is this the permanent arrangement, acknowledging that their amity could shatter into mutual animus at any moment, but their fundamental attraction precludes either of them from just storming out of the room?

Six Chix, 6/13/19

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that the new owner of your favorite bakery is extremely cheap — he’s skimping on the lemon bars so that it’s like eating all dough and no filling; you order them all the time and you can tell. Sure, you could call a friend on the phone to tell them about it, and that has its satisfaction. But what if you had a syndicate newspaper comic? Then you could tell thousands of people all over the country your tale of woe! Admittedly, that story wouldn’t contain a “joke” per se, but years doing a syndicated newspaper comic will have taught you that if this was once a reason to stop a comic strip from being published, it no longer is and hasn’t been for some time.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/13/19

Check out Rex’s thinkin’ face in that last panel. “Wait, you can just pay people to go away? Because I’ve got plenty of money and I don’t like people very much. This could really work out for me!”