Post Content

Slylock Fox, 2/15/21

Here’s my hot take on this supposed “crime”: who gives a shit about a little light fire alarm prankery? Yes, it’s annoying, and theoretically a waste of the fire department’s time, but you know what else is a waste of their time? Taking meticulous notes and pacing around trying to figure out who pulled the fire alarm in the first place, instead of just yelling at everybody and then getting back into the fire truck and taking off! And sure, Walter Weimaraner probably wasn’t actually bowling when the alarm went off, but let’s be honest: a guy hanging around a bowling alley in a double-breasted suit and fancy little boots, conspicuously not bowling, is probably up to no good anyway. Slick Smitty alone can see the truth, even if he needs to lie a bit to open our eyes to it!

Mary Worth, 2/15/21

Sometimes, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, the best incentive to get out of the house is that your house will be full of dog poop if you don’t. Saul and Eve are here to testify!

Dennis the Menace, 2/15/21

Honestly, I’m more concerned about the broken heart of whatever poor soul was supposed to be the recipient of that box of candy. Each scenario I come up with as to how Dennis and Joey got their grubby little hands on it is more menacing than the last!

Post Content

Crankshaft, 2/7/21

I’m not such a stickler for detail that I’m opposed to a comic strip being established via in-strip dialog as taking plance on a different day of the week than the strip actually runs in the real world, but I do think that you sort of have to have a good reason for doing so, because it’s going to cause a little niggling of dissonance for the reader. Take today’s strip, for example; it’s a Sunday strip — something the format makes impossible to ignore — but within the world of the strip itself, it’s taking place on Thursday. At least the joke it’s in service of is very funny, right? Well, no, not really. But doesn’t the joke require the full muti-panel treatment that only a Sunday strip can provide? I’m afraid that’s not true either.

Dennis the Menace, 2/7/21

When margarine was first introduced to the U.S. in the late 1800s, the butter lobby pushed to undermine sales of it. For a while, it was mandated that pink food coloring be added to it to make its artificial and presumably less appetizing nature clear; though that law was struck down by the Supreme Court, other laws taxed margarine that had yellow food coloring added to make it look more butter-like. What I’m trying to say is that I wonder if today’s Dennis the Menace was the end product of a long, tortuous negotiations that ended with the editors saying that yes, fine, you can do an entire Sunday strip about Dennis picking his nose and even graphically depict boogers, but you have to depict said boogers in a bright yellow color found in no booger that has ever been extracted from a human nose.

Post Content

Pluggers, 2/2/20

There is a surprising amount to unpack in today’s Pluggers! Let’s start with the idea that Groundhog Day is some kind of national plugger holiday, like the Oscars is for us coastal elites, and they get up early to catch all the shadow-seeing action on TV — or, if they live in DuBois, PA, a mere thirty minutes from Punxsutawney, drive to see the event in person. Then you have a thought balloon from the poor groundhog, indicating that he’s capable of sapience, which reaffirms all our worst fears about the blurry lines between “humans” and “animals” in the world of Pluggers. Finally, there’s the content of that thought ballon: Punxsutawney Phil feels like he’s done this before, implying that he’s stuck in the same hellish time loop that ensnared Bill Murray in the 1993 film Groundhog Day, only he doesn’t have access to the possibility of the redemptive love that freed Murray’s character. Real grim stuff!

Dennis the Menace, 2/2/20

Not only does this panel feature Dennis engaging in actually menacing behavior — and with malice aforethought! it’s menace in the first degree! — but it also features a movie theater worker who isn’t some teenager who can laugh this off as a story to tell his buddies because fuck this stupid job anyway, but a man who looks like he’s in late middle age, probably lost his full-time job due to outsourcing or computers or apps, who can even keep track, and who took a minimum wage job to put food on the table, just while he’s looking for other work, just so he can keep a little dignity. But it’s hard, man. It’s hard to hold onto your dignity when they make you wear that hat, and it’s even hard when you have to deal with little shits like this. Real grim stuff!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 2/2/20

Ha ha, it’s funny because … Hootin’ Holler, economically impoverished and physically isolated, has only one medical professional serving the community, and it turns out he’s a fraud? And nobody cares? I’ve said it before, but: real grim stuff!