Post Content

Dustin, 1/25/21

Dustin of course has a core mission of depicting the life of the shiftless, no-good kids today, as interpreted by someone who’s only heard anything about the lived experiences of any human being under the age of 35 second- or third-hand, which is how you get recurring bits like “Young people today definitely meet prospective romantic partners primarily at fern bar, right?” I was briefly intrigued that earlier this week Dustin appeared to have given up on his intermittent work through a temp agency and instead chose to join the “gig economy” in an actually Zoomer-appropriate storyline. But virtually all my interactions with people delivering for Grubhub and its competitors involve getting a text that they’ve left it on my porch, or at most waving at someone through my front window as they book it to their next delivery scheduled by their cruel algorithmic taskmaster, so I’m going to go ahead and say the Dustin creative team also thinks that “Those food apps the kids use today are just like pizza delivery, right? Probably you pay the guy in cash after he hands you the food?” Anyway, usually a strip like this would put a cutesy faux-app name on Dustin’s hat, so this is a really great opportunity for Grubhub to sue somebody.

Mary Worth, 1/25/21

I love the way that Dawn is grappling with the problem of evil — “why would God allow something bad to happen to someone good?” — and Estelle’s response is that “Oh, actually, your father’s a hair-trigger drunk, sorry if you were somehow unaware of this. It’s my fault, really, except not, if you think about it. I’m definitely crying for real though.”

Funky Winkerbean, 1/25/21

“Sorry, no, I was too busy dwelling on the fact that nobody has ever suffered the way I’d suffered, so I couldn’t be bothered to do a few minutes of token labor to keep alive some creatures that really brought a great deal of joy to your mother, the person I was ostensibly mourning, until I started having hallucinations. Anyway, in a related story, remember how you ate mostly cracker crumbs out of the couch cushions for all of second grade?”

Post Content

Dustin and Funky Winkerbean, 1/13/22

The general vibe of the newspaper comics industry is small-c conservative — that is, it’s mostly created by older middle-class people who, whatever their opinions on electoral politics, generally assume that society will and should remain more or less as it is today or was in their youth. Therefore, it’s a little surprising to see the comics pages go in hard today on the proposition that heterosexual monogamy is a soul-crushing prison, but here we are! I feel like I can respect both these approaches: Dustin offers a younger character’s viewpoint as she watches her parents pick at each other’s weak spots and realizes that their lifestyle choice is unsustainable, whereas Funky Winkerbean really swings for the fences and takes what could’ve been a bland depiction of a tiny bit of marital friction and elevates it by having Funky say one of those trademark Funkyverse things that are something that nobody would ever, ever say and are also apparently supposed to be a punchline.

Slylock Fox, 1/13/22

Meanwhile, today’s Slylock Six Differences is about a little boy who’s surprised to find himself sitting in a puddle of his little sibling’s piss! That’s definitely supposed to be piss, right? This would maybe be a little less graphic in the newspaper, where everything would be in black and white, and I feel for the syndicate colorist who got this file in their email, sighed heavily, and starting hunting through the Photoshop color wheel for just the right shade of yellow.

Post Content

Shoe, 12/12/21

I honestly, and shamefully, would be down for Shoe to mine for laffs the relationship between Treetops’ one newspaper and its (presumably) one local television station. In such a small community of bird-journalists, one assumes that there’s a certain amount of social mixing going on, which probably includes an uncomfortable portion of slovenly print journalists harboring lustful feelings for the more camera-ready TV types. So I’m disappointed that this is all just a setup for a “hot air mass” punchline, and am all the more disappointed that said punchline is delivered in a way that doesn’t really make sense. Shouldn’t Shoe be saying “Watch out, she’ll recognize…” or something like that? In his defense, I guess, he’s probably pretty drunk.

Dennis the Menace, 12/12/21

Dennis truly menaces us today by illustrating that whatever high-minded beliefs we have about living in a functioning society as enlightened beings who work towards the greater good, in truth it is only “the Santa clause” — that is, the belief that correct actions will be materially rewarded and transgressions punished — that keeps us from degenerating into a state of total anarchy.

Dustin, 12/12/21

Welp, looks like you can add Dustin’s parents to the list of comic strip characters who fuck that I assume you diligently maintain. I take no pleasure in reporting this.