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Six Chix, 10/26/20

Look, I know it’s “spooky season” or whatever but I honestly did not want to spend a lot of my day thinking about how ghosts interact with physical matter, ok? Like, we all know they can pass through solid walls at will, but also apparently lounge on furniture if they want. But what’s their relationship with gasses like? Do they have the ability to detect vibrations in the air and process them as sound, the way we do? When they “talk” to one another, are they doing it via audible noise or direct mind-to-mind (soul-to-soul?) communication, and thus maybe the “ears” in this statement are metaphorical, or a memory of what it was like to have a physical body, who knows how many centuries ago? Anyway, I’m not sure if I’d be obsessing about this less if any of these ghosts had visible earholes or anything, but I would’ve liked to have found out.

Dick Tracy, 10/26/20

There’s a been a lot of hilarity in this weird Dick Tracy vampire storyline, but the fact that Professor Stokes is swinging off the roof on a JAZZ FEST banner is the absolute funniest thing we’ve seen in this strip in a long time. I can’t quite explain why I’m sure a biology professor who’s into extremely chintzy mechanically-assisted vampirism would also be very into jazz, but I’m very sure that he would be. Professor Stokes is probably sad that his artificial bat wing apparatus is still in the prototype stage at the moment, but if he can’t fly away, at least he can make his escape with an assist from his beloved jazz fest.

Dustin, 10/26/20

God, I love that Dustin’s dad is absolutely seething in the second panel. He went through all this trouble of buying a big suburban house, just like society says he was supposed to, and now he finds out he has to maintain it, just like he has to maintain his failing body? This is bullshit. Bullshit.

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Mary Worth, 10/21/20

OK, I had to go back to last week to make sure I understood the timeline here so that I can anticipate the exact level of hilarity we’re about to encounter. After Tommy’s failed onion ring proposal, Brandy cut the date short, claiming she “wasn’t feeling well,” which we all assumed was code for “was just proposed to by a guy she wasn’t ready to marry, and also he used an onion ring to do it,” but I guess she really wasn’t feeling well, and now is about to leave the house, after what I assume is only a few minutes, and head down to the drug store. Speaking of drugs, Tommy only seemed to walk a block or so from Brandy’s house before being waylaid by his old drug buddy and offered some delicious drugs. Clearly this means that Brandy, who you’ll recall has a lot of semi-unresolved issues about her own dad’s struggle with addiction and who was assured that Tommy’s problems in that department are thoroughly in his past, is about to stumble upon her boyfriend enjoying a big hit of the ol’ crack cocaine — or, better, looking like he’s about to enjoy a big hit even though he’s actually about to turn it down. I’m very excited about this!

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/21/20

I’m sure whatever bad thing Sarah has done is extremely low stakes, but please let me cling, just for a moment, to the idea that Sarah has succeeded where Nancy has repeatedly failed and is throwing an absolute rager of a COVID party in the rec room right now.

Dustin, 10/21/20

I honestly enjoy Dustin’s dad’s wry little smile in the final panel. It’s like he’s thinking, “Huh, I would’ve guessed me and the rest of our family were the things she was most grateful for, but at least we both hate it when other people have fun.”

Marvin, 10/21/20

God, I’m not sure what I would’ve come up with if you had asked me what the grimmest possible thing for a fish to say might be, but “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a fish” has got to be pretty high on the list.

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Marvin, 9/27/20

It’s become something of a cliche for me to complain on this here blog about how the widely syndicated newspaper comic strip Marvin is just obsessed with poop, but I have to say that I can’t remember of an instance of them actually just showing a steaming turd in the strip? (Other than the noxious title character, of course! [ba-dum-dum]) That’s why I confess I’m vaguely intrigued that the punchline (“punchline”) panel here depicts snowdrift-thick piles of bird shit on Jeff’s car. Why do you suppose they can get away with that and not actual Marvin poop? My guess it’s because bird crap looks just different enough from our own excrement (since this is a Sunday strip, it’s colored by the original artist and really captures that real-life white-brown tinge) that it’s not quite as taboo, but … I dunno man, I feel like this is testing our boundaries and we need to launch a prim letter-writing campaign about community standards or things could get very, very dark in this strip. (Dark brown, I mean, because we’re going to be seeing lots of drawings of Marvin’s feces.)

Hagar the Horrible, 9/27/20

Hagar has come back from a long voyage robbing and pillaging, and his house seems to have been abandoned — maybe his family has left him, or maybe they’ve been kidnapped and enslaved by a rival raiding Viking band. Or they could just be dead! Hagar doesn’t seem to care much, though. Ha … ha?

Dustin, 9/27/20

I’m choosing to believe that Meg overheard yesterday’s stupid conversations about redundancies, got as mad about it as I did, and is now just rubbing her dad’s nose in it so he never, ever brings up the subject again.