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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.”

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Panels from Slylock Fox, 2/20/22

Today’s Six Differences offer an even more disturbing and nightmarish world than usual. The vision of a giant bottle containing four enormous and very much alive flies, which presumably this frog is going to somehow suck out through the nipple, is extremely disturbing to me. Plus you’ve got to take into consideration the fact that an actual baby frog would be a tadpole, so this is clearly an adult engaging in some kind of weird infantilization fetish play with the “nurse” cat. And all out in public to boot! That owl and that rabbit are absolutely correct to be angry about this.

Dustin, 2/20/22

God, look at Dustin’s dad’s hooded eyes in that final panel: he is so unpleasantly proud of himself for coming up with this bit, which I guarantee the car scammer heard exactly two words of before he realized his grift wasn’t working and hung up the phone. Dustin’s mom is loving it, though! These two deserve each other.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/20/22

I’m posting the whole strip here just so you can see the latest legally dubious plot developments, but all I want to talk about is Rene striding into this room like a king and confidently bellowing “Rene Belluso is here. Let the meeting commence!” This would absolutely set a great tone for any meeting of any sort, whether held in person or on Zoom, and I urge you to try it at the next opportunity. You can say your actual name or just say “Rene Belluso,” I’m sure either would work great.

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Crock, 2/13/22

“Trooper Megan” was added to the case of Crock years ago in an attempt to mollify the woke mob who threatened to cancel this widely beloved strip because its gang of scrappy, lovable French people imposing colonial rule on Algeria were all, sexistly, men. Unfortunately, we can see that true equality has not been achieved in the Foreign Legion, because Megan is primarily in charge of the occupation’s emotional labor.

Dustin, 2/13/22

Dustin is, of course, a strip about put-upon old people and the young people they have to deal with in their lives, who are, a result of their youngness, terrible. And you might ask: what are young people supposed to take away from this? Why should they get on board? Well, today’s strip makes it clear: there’s always someone younger and more terrible than you to look down on.