The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Family Circus

Comments are closed

Extremely sad Thursday

Post Content

Gil Thorp, 6/9/16

Holy crap, I’ve been reading Gil Thorp for more than a decade and I’m reasonably sure this is the first time they’ve actually killed off a character! (I’m not counting the time Coach Kaz punched a guy in the brain.) The victim was sassy, beloved Boo Radley, who briefly dated golden boy True Standish and just pitched a no-hitter; she died in a multi-car pileup caused by drunken Pa Bader, who decided that driving sober was for people who can’t close. Will his monster of a son still obnoxiously defend him now that he’s killed one of his own classmates? Probably not, since there’s only like a week or two left until the end of the spring storyline. Anyway, things are gonna get grim!

Family Circus, 6/9/16

This senseless tragedy really puts Billy’s petty problems in perspective, doesn’t it? Still, I appreciate the effort he’s going to here to really wallow in his gloom. He’s wearing all black, to commemorate the day he turned his back on the God who failed him and pledged his allegiance to Satan.

Blondie, 6/9/16

At least we can count on the solid, charming laughs of Blondie to cheer us up! Ha ha, poor people, am I right? What a bunch of scam artists!

Comments are closed

Meanwhile, over at Extremely Slippery Floor Yoga Studio

Post Content

Mary Worth, 6/1/16

Guys, I’m not very good at yoga, but I’ve been doing it semi-regularly, at home with videos and in classes, for nearly a decade now, and I can assure you that the amount of yogi smack talk that happens is minimal. Also, I mean, I don’t mean to doubt the yoga prowess of mustachio’d part-time substitute art history instructor Harlan Jones, but I’ve been trying and failing to do crow pose for nearly the whole time I’ve been practicing yoga, and taraksvasana seems, like, a lot harder, so I don’t think he’s gonna master that in one night? Don’t push yourself too hard, friend! Your body is your best teacher: if you feel a sharp pain, stop, pull back, try again later! I actually dearly hope Dawn discovers Harlan’s twisted body in his apartment days from now, after he accidentally breaks his back by taraksvasanaing too vigorously, and the lesson learned is that when you make a new connection you should always abandon all your other friends to hang out with them all the time.

Family Circus, 6/1/16

I’m not really sure what Dolly is getting at here. God is enlightening us … about the nature of electricity? I’m honestly more concerned about her body language, as she seems to just be blathering soothing nonsense to him to lure him somewhere, possibly the top of a tall, metal pole.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/1/16

“And it’d be crazy if I had to kill you, to make sure that you didn’t shoot your big mouth off about this! Oh, these gun fingers? I’m making them for, uh, no reason at all.”

Comments are closed

THE GOLD STAFF OF IMMORTALITY! No, wait mortality, it represents mortality, never mind

Post Content

Gasoline Alley, 5/26/16

Gasoline Alley seems a little too square to engage in metanarrative chicanery, but how else should we interpret today’s strip? After weeks and weeks of a boring, convoluted prison break storyline featuring some of the strip’s most irritating recurring characters, we suddenly switch back to Walt, complaining that the ceremony in which he received the Golden Cane Of Agedness from the mayor, which we never saw in the strip, wasn’t covered properly in the media. Poor Walt! Anyway, I’m very intrigued that whatever municipality he lives in has an expensive object that can literally only be taken from its owner by prying it out of their dead, cold hands.

Mark Trail, 5/26/16

OK, let’s be real: the last few weeks of “Mark ’n’ friends try and fail to escape from the cave” have been super boring. But today at least Chekhov’s rock-climbing gun, which was prominently mounted on the wall of the set in the first act, finally goes off. We also some mid-air derring do, as Mark and Carina almost tumble to their death off a cave waterfall but Mark saves them at the last minute by jamming his rock … climbing … axe … thingy into the cliff wall. And kudos to the strip for taking as much care to acknowledge the biology of Homo sapiens as it does for the other animals it covers; whereas most action movies feature characters grabbing onto things in mid-fall and suffering no ill-effects, Mark has saved himself and Carina at the cost of shattering his rib cage, just as he would in real life.

Family Circus, 5/26/16

Haha, I love PJ’s look of heavy-lidded disdain here. “God damn it, Jeffy, enough with this ‘everyone has a valid perspective’ bullshit. Kill the wolf! Kill it!”