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Crock, 6/22/17

I like the black smoke rising in the background of the strip; it implies that Poulet’s defeat has had devastating consequences, but gives you room to fill in the blanks about their exact nature. Has some Algerian village been reduced to a smoldering ruin by insurgents because the inhabitants were too accommodating to the foreign occupiers who, when it came down to it, were unable to protect them? Was the Legion’s fort overrun by rebels and burned to the ground as a hated symbol of French authority? Are Crock and Poulet standing on the quay in Algiers or Oran, awaiting the boat that will evacuate them to the métropole, watching the city burn in an orgy of retaliatory violence as colonial rule collapses into a nightmarish power vacuum? “I wish life had a backspace key!” Poulet quips, referring to 130 years of brutal conquest and exploitation.

Mary Worth, 6/22/17

Haha, whoops, looks like I was wrong and it’s Esme who’s going to be tumbling into the wine-dark sea, never to be seen again. This happened because the ship lurched, so Katie didn’t even have to make a choice or feel morally responsible! Remember, kids, smoking is bad, and so is attempted adultery, and so is violating workplace regulations about sexual relationships with customers. If you do any of those things, you’ll drown, probably!

Family Circus, 6/22/17

Are you asking if Big Daddy Keane has noticed that the forward progression of time has ground to a halt, and that he’s doomed to live an eternity with his children never aging, never growing up and leaving the house, just hanging around and saying the darndest things, forever? Look at his face; I’m pretty sure he’s noticed.

Hagar the Horrible, 6/22/17

Ha ha, it’s funny because Lucky Eddy thought he was going to die in agony, so he pissed himself!

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Pluggers, 6/14/17

Look, guys, I’m super cheap — like, super cheap — but it would never, ever, ever in a million years occur to me to do this. Does anyone do this? Do plugger friends just send the same blank birthday card back and forth year after year, forever? Why stop at birthdays? Why not send one of those cards that has generic art and no message inside for every occasion? You get one the mail and you have to derive the content entirely from the current context of your own life and your friendship with the sender. The more I think about it, this is actually a pretty high-concept practice for pluggers.

Family Circus, 6/14/17

I call bullshit on how happy everyone looks to see fucking Billy, of all people. The only way this makes sense is if he’s walking into an ambush, possibly one planned by Sam the dog.

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Crankshaft, 6/4/17

Earlier this week we got treated to yet another hint that Crankshaft is trapped in temporal amber, always on the verge of death but never quite getting there. That’s really something for comics obsessives like me and the readers of this blog to contemplate, though. Today’s strip gets back to the simple, core message the Funkyverse has for casual readers turning to the funny pages for a wistful smile and a little escapism: all of us are going to die, and some of us sooner than others.

Panel from Slylock Fox, 6/4/17

Solution — Count Weirdly still has a pre-animalpocalypse mindset. He clings to the old ways, where there was a hierarchy of species, with his own, of course, on top. “Max?” he thinks, typing various combinations into the password field with no effect. “Is Max his pet?” Sly and Max smile at him with mingled pity and contempt. This is the new age. The standings of various species have been dramatically leveled, and Slylock chose that outdated password hint to remind him of the social order he now serves. His password is “NO GODS NO MASTERS”.

Panel from The Family Circus, 6/4/17

“There, I just summarized the whole long boring sermon for you! Now let’s go to the dog track. Don’t tell your parents.”

Mother Goose and Grimm, 6/4/17

Well, let’s just see what these adorable bunnies are up to in this whimsical comic strip and AAAUGH AAUGH AAAUGH THEY’VE AMPUTATED THEIR OWN LEGS IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THEIR FORTUNE AND NOW THEY’RE HAVING REGRETS ABOUT IT, WHAT HELL-NIGHTMARE IS THIS