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Mary Worth, 4/19/22

Oh ho ho, our man Ian has finally found out what’s troubling his young-ish bride and isn’t going to fly into one of his trademark rages at all! No, he’s had enough red wine to be positively mellow about this whole Cal situation, though it’s not entirely clear what kind of mellow he is: the kind where he’s ruefully amused by the hilarious predicament his dim wife has gotten herself into, or the kind where he’s hoping that his wife and her new boyfriend will be open to letting him discreetly watch.

Dick Tracy, 4/19/22

The current Dick Tracy storyline involves a guy named “Matt” who is pretending to be a dead Dick Tracy villain named Tonsils, and also dating the real Tonsils’s former girlfriend, who knows he’s not the real Tonsils but is still into it? It’s not as sick as a guy getting eaten by rats, but, real talk: it’s not not sick, either. Anyway, Dick is trying to tell Matt about how Tonsils came to a bad end and he needs to stay on the straight and narrow, but I’m sorry, are you painting a word-picture of a guy waving a bottle of GASO[LINE?] around while terrified people shove money at him and you expect us to not think he’s awesome? Please.

Dustin, 4/19/22

This joke depends on the structure of the comics delivering us instantly from panel two to panel three and it works more or less fine on that level, but I’m still trying to visualize how this would play out in real life. I don’t care how fast you work, it’d take at least 30 seconds to wolf down each of these two full-sized donuts, and I’d like to imagine Dustin’s dad’s discomfited coworker staring at him silently the whole time, waiting for him to blurt out this punchline along with a shower of crumbs.

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Dustin, 4/16/22

Look, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a comic strip that makes fun of young people who move back in with their parents. We already have strips that make fun of the army, old minor league baseball pitchers who never make the big leagues and end up driving a school bus for a living well past retirement age, and vikings. I’m just saying that if you’re going to write a comic strip strip that makes fun of young people who move back in with their parents, you should have some idea of how young people operate in the world, or at least an editor willing to send you notes like “Young people in the year 2022 do not as a rule wear suits on first dates, particularly on dates where a venue has not been decided on in advance.”

Rhymes With Orange, 4/16/22

It’s Holy Saturday, folks, and your friends at Rhymes With Orange are to remind you not to jerk off onto the Easter eggs, no matter how much you want to.

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Marvin, 3/3/22

Man, Jeff’s facial expressions here are a real journey — and not, to be clear, a journey I enjoyed. In panel one he’s very excited, and if you didn’t know what this strip’s whole deal was, you might think he likes to cook and is happy to help out with tonight’s dinner. But, nope, it turns out he’s just thrilled to let his wife know that her cooking sucks in a new, hilarious way! His facial expression in the final panel is positively post-orgasmic. Obviously these two don’t have sex anymore because the last time they did they created Marvin, so I guess this is the only way Jeff can get off.

Crankshaft, 3/3/22

I touched on this last week, but, like — a year ago? two years ago? who can even say — there was an excruciating two weeks of Crankshaft strips where this one-armed guy with a beard, who apparently was the last employee at the local newspaper, went to New York and gave a long, indignant speech about corporate media control to the manager of the hedge fund who owned the newspaper and then quit. It was so boring that I never talked about it on this blog, and I’m reasonably sure we had never even met this character before, but I guess we’re finally getting the payoff to it because as I predicted the mysterious meeting was about launching a community newspaper, which is all well and good. But said meeting was organized (and the project funded?) by the historical society lady, and our ace reporter is about to learn that his new paymaster can be as controlling as any hedge fund. Is the Fire Department running a prostitution ring right of the firehouses? That can wait, because this lady’s rival for the PTA presidency is about to be destroyed by the free press.

Dustin, 3/3/22

“Ha, it’s funny, because we’re on the verge of financial ruin due to your mother’s neglect! Anyway, I’m just gonna keep eating this tiny cookie like a dipshit.”