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Pluggers, 6/13/14

Boy, pluggers sure are getting in touch with their own inevitable and rapidly approaching death, aren’t they? I certainly hope that the first draft of this panel featured our dog-man hero holding up the suit in question and giving it a good, long stare; maybe there was a thought balloon in which he visualized this last good suit on his embalmed corpse, while well-wishers stood around, not looking at him, telling each other in hushed tones that it was better this way, that he was done suffering and in a better place. This panel was of course sent back to Pluggers HQ by the syndicate with “WAY TOO GRIM DUDE” scrawled across it, but I like to imagine it’s still hanging up over the drafting board, as a reminder.

Funky Winkerbean, 6/13/14

Oh hey Wally and Rachel got married this week, everybody! As you can see, the God of the Funkyverse cannot allow any happy occasion to emerge unscathed, so their outdoor wedding has been disrupted by a sudden freak thunderstorm. They tried their best to finish the ceremony, but as panel two reveals, their friends and loved ones gave up on the event a while ago.

Beetle Bailey, 6/13/14

Beetle’s primary and defining characteristics are that he’s extremely lazy and does a half-assed job at everything, so I refuse to believe that whatever desultory, fumbling, fully-clothed sex act just happened in that parked jeep merited any kind of souvenir.

Edge City, 6/13/14

There are plenty of off-putting running gags in Edge City, but obsessive neurotic Abby Ardin’s occasional attempts to get her husband interested in BDSM are among the off-puttingest.

Wizard of Id, 6/13/14

At last, it’s the Wizard of Id–B.C. crossover strip you’ve been waiting for! It’s a golf joke about getting hit in the nuts.

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Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/19/14

Mary Beth announces her plans t’ butcher and wed Jughaid based on wildly inaccurate folk anatomy. Upside: plenty of sausage t’ serve at th’ reception!

Crankshaft, 3/19/14

Hey, remember that one summer we rented a lake cottage but it rained all week so we scoured the bookstores and sat at the kitchen table passing around Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks and eating popcorn? And I had to explain to my sister how Ice-9 worked, and felt vaguely uncomfortable watching my Mom read Welcome to the Monkey House?

You DON’T? You mean it wasn’t part of your experience, and hearing some jackass narrate his private recollections isn’t compelling entertainment? Wow, somebody explain that to Jeff here, wouldja?

Mary Worth, 3/19/14

Or maybe these three things are actually just one thing? Hey, I know! Tell him if he had a job he could buy one of those adorable flat cars with the greywall tires!

Funky Winkerbean, 3/19/14

In Westview, smoking is an aspirational vice — the stylish path to a miserable death. The losers who can’t afford $5.67 a pack have to chug contaminated groundwater or huff radon.

Curtis, 3/19/14

Sorry, Greg — once those quotes go up on your “cool,” they never come down.

Edge City, 3/19/14

Hey, Len — that’s pretty “cool”!

Words to live by: “Life is just too damn short to go around carrying store-brand tote bags.”

— Uncle Lumpy

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Edge City, 8/6/13

Oh hey it’s Edna and Morris Not-Ardin, off to visit America’s battlefields in their new RV. I hope they have fun and all, but what is the deal with this guy’s face? Has he got two mouths? An extra ear, with teeth? Is he some kind of weird Mr. Magoo/Popeye hybrid? Is that an enormous chaw of Mail Pouch parked in what just might be his cheek? For me, his image keeps flipping back and forth like one of those ambiguous figures from Psych 101:

Edna lets it all pass. She’s got her own problems, coping with the oral aftermath of her horrific trombone accident.

Hi and Lois, 8/6/13

And then one day, Hi Flagston just gave up. “Fetch me the gin, Lois.”

Apartment 3-G, 8/6/13

Margo snuffs out an alarming flicker of empathy as she spins around the room.

Judge Parker, 8/6/13

I only read Judge Parker for the articles, but here’s some eye candy — and a challenge — for the oglers in the audience. The challenge is this: do oglers of pretty comic-strip women ogle other representations of pretty women, such as mannequins? If so, would they ogle drawings of mannequins, such as those presented in panel one? Are features like heads and knees essential to this exercise? And how far does it go, the ogling: would it extend to a photo in a cartoon of a sketch of the shadow of a statue of a woman? What role does the quality of representation play, relative to the attractiveness of the original subject? I have to say, Judge Parker wouldn’t have been my first source for a deconstruction of male gaze theory, but there you have it.

Rhymes with Orange, 8/6/13

Lady, your problem is not the obsolete phone — it’s the renegade car.

— Uncle Lumpy