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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 12/2/14

Parson Tuttle is a well-known fraud: he’s largely ignorant of spiritual and theological matters and presumably came to Hootin’ Holler, a community abandoned by actual clergy, to bilk its inhabitants out of their meager savings. But today we learn that this long-term grift has managed to trouble even this con-man’s conscience. What right does he, as a fraud and bearer of false witness, have to tell his parishioner-marks that their minor transgressions mark them out for eternal damnation? As an unbeliever himself, how dare he fill these poor souls’ minds with awful visions of Hell? Can the slim, ill-gotten rewards of this life he’s chosen really be worth it?

Pluggers, 12/2/14

Boy, today’s Pluggers caption is really pretty long, huh? Usually they’re short and sweet, but I’d be down with seeing the walls of text expanding to show us what’s really going on beneath the down-home folksy surface of a typical Pluggers panel. “You’re a plugger if you get your ladder out of the garage in the morning to clean out your gutters and it’s still leaning against the house at dusk, because what’s the point, really? It’s just a task you’re going to have to do year after year, again and again. Maybe your gutters will clog up if you don’t do it, boo fuckin’ hoo, it’s not like the roof doesn’t already have three leaks in it, it’s not like the storm windows really shut properly. The whole rotten place is drafty all winter. It’s not like you know how to fix any of that stuff, or can afford to pay someone who does know. You remember the last time you cleaned out the gutters, when your friend Hank was there to help. Hank’s job transferred him to another city eight months ago. You haven’t talked to him much. Men don’t spend all day gabbing on the phone, the way your wife does with who knows what. Sure would make it more fun if Hank were here, though.”

Herb and Jamaal, 12/2/14

Haha, it’s funny because women in service jobs often need to perform “emotional labor” to maintain their tip income, leading to blurred emotional boundaries with customers!

Dennis the Menace, 12/2/14

“OH MY GOD,” thinks Alice, “MY SECRET REVEALED: I POOP OUT MY BUTTHOLE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN DOES”

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Mary Worth, 12/1/14

Despite Mary’s professed friendship for Hanna, she and her new beau were conspicuously absent from last week’s Thanksgiving feast. Apparently they spent the holiday at Sean’s assisted living unit, bantering about toast. “It’s the simple details that make all the difference,” Hanna says, pleased that the tasteless, pre-sliced white bread that Sean has pulled out of a plastic bag will be made vaguely edible by the toasting process.

Note that Sean has a top-of-the-line, four-slot toaster. He knows what the ladies like.

Dennis the Menace, 12/1/14

Having written a blog post more or less daily for ten years, I have come to have a certain degree of sympathy for the longrunning comics I mock, and to understand that not every day’s effort can be a winner: some days, you just sort of run with the joke you have and hope for a better tomorrow. And yet I don’t think that justifies pulling out a joke that was already ancient when it appeared in the first Bill and Ted movie 25 years ago, Dennis the Menace. I really, don’t. Do better.

Gil Thorp, 12/1/14

The t-shirt joke in panel three is probably similarly ancient, but I have to admit I kind of love it. I’m willing to overlook the fact that teams from public and Catholic high school rarely play against each other, in my experience, or that it’s rare for a football team to score 11 points. Any sports trash-talk that involves papal regnal names and Roman numerals is entirely acceptable to me.

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Heathcliff, 11/21/14

So Heathcliff being depicted as hanging in the mid-air, on the verge of descending onto some hapless soul with claws unsheathed, is a thing in Heathcliff that happens semi-regularly! This is the first time Heathcliff’s owner-grandma and owner-boy have gotten in on the action, though. Ha ha, it’s funny because Heathcliff’s owner-grandpa has money, and his family is going to tear his flesh from his bones in order to get it!

Funky Winkerbean, 11/21/14

Haha, remember when Bull got offered a job as a college coach and was so rapturously happy that he and his wife threatened to spend the week fucking? Well, instead they spent the week gloating about how much more money he was going to make, but now the job has been cruelly yanked away from him. This is why I think Funky Winkerbean is pretty savvy about its sadness-brand: when you make all your characters intensely unlikable, your readers don’t really mind knowing that only bad things will ever happen to them!

Dennis the Menace, 11/21/14

So … we’re not going to talk about the fact that Margaret is just wandering the streets dressed up as an angel? It’s not Christmas pageant season or anything. She’s obviously experiencing some kind of psychotic break, and all Dennis can do is make a joke about being a “bad boy.” I dub this whole scene pretty menacing in its callous neglect of her mental health.