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Pluggers, 5/18/16

I have very mixed feelings about this caption/cartoon combination. In general, I sneer at shortcuts that allow the artist to pair up an extremely generic cartoon that can be endlessly reused, such as “Chicken Lady dyspeptically looks at a calendar while talking on a landline,” with an extremely specific caption, such as “Chicken Lady has gone past whatever the equivalent of menopause is for monstrous human-avian hybrids.” In this case, though, I’m pretty glad that we haven’t been presented with a visual depiction of, say, Chicken Lady about to get it on with her spouse and gleefully announcing that contraception won’t be necessary, or, conversely, Chicken Lady weeping sadly to herself because she can never have children.

Dennis the Menace, 5/18/16

“Get it, wreck-creation? Like they’re creating wrecks? Wuh-recks. It’s a silent w. I realize now I should’ve thought this through better.”

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 5/18/16

I’m so excited to casually drop the phrase “Mistopher Drama” into everyday conversation that I’m almost willing to overlook the fact that the plot of this strip is basically “The Boy Who Cried Child Abuse.”

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Judge Parker, 5/15/16

Honestly, I could take or leave Rocky and Godiva talking increasingly explicitly about all the make-up sex they’re going to have, and have very soon, but I could look at Neddy and Abbey feeling increasingly uncomfortable as they stand awkwardly nearby and listen to them all day. It is now clear that steak is an integral part of Rocky and Godiva’s mating ritual. Neddy looks a little sad that the hardhat she had made with Godiva’s name on it isn’t.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 5/15/16

Oh hey what’s up, just a store that sells animals in a world where animals are sapient, nothing to recoil from in absolute horror here!

Panels from Dennis the Menace, 5/15/16

Mr. Wilson, perhaps unsurprisingly given his utter helplessness to maintain peace and quiet in his own home, is very keen to decide who lives and who dies.

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Andy Capp, 4/22/16

On October 20, 2004, a mere three months after I launched this blog, I received an email that consisted entirely of “ANDY CAPP!” repeated 44 times, plus 10 times in the subject line. And now, eleven and half years later, I’ve finally decided: why not Andy Capp? So I’ve started reading Andy Capp, which is a strip that I’m not entirely unfamiliar with. The domestic violence laffs seem to have been excised, but all the other markers of stereotypical working-class British loutishness are still there: “Andy spends all his time at the pub,” “Andy is unnecessarily violent during pickup soccer games,” “Andy is drunk constantly,” “Andy can’t hold a job,” etc. As an American, of course, I yearn for the window into this culturally specific milieu, but then you have episodes like today’s, where the joke mainly seems to be “Andy is an asshole.” It was smart to to put “GB” on Guitar Bob’s guitar case, so there’s no doubt as to what’s going on. It took three people to make this strip!

Momma, 4/22/16

Wait, Momma, don’t be so quick to cut off whatever explanation is being offered here, as I definitely don’t understand what’s happening. Is that lady … trying to give her children to Momma? I don’t know what’s sadder: the look of desperation on this other woman’s face as her attempt to rid herself of parental responsibility fails, or her children’s expressions of utter indifference, as if this were just one more baffling episode in a chaotic and confusing life.

Dennis the Menace, 4/22/16

I was going to write a long, elegiac paragraph about Alice’s sly facial expression and how sometimes we have to tell lies to the people we love in order to get them to do the things they need to do to thrive, but then the phrase “the anus is the ear of the butt” popped into my head and I can’t stop giggling about it, sorry.

Pluggers, 4/22/16

Pluggers only get “participation trophies” when all their friends are dead.