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Rex Morgan, M.D., 4/17/16

At long last, the day we’ve all been waiting for: Sarah Morgan’s book is available in print! As near as I can tell this strip from May 2013 is the beginning of that saga, so the whole project from genesis to execution took … just short of three years? In the soap opera comics, which move at a notoriously glacial pace? And it took me, a real adult human who lives in the ordinary timestream three and a half years after my Kickstarter to get my book out? Ugggh. Anyway, come to my book tour April 26 in Washington, DC or April 28 in Baltimore or May 2 in Brooklyn or May 5 in Buffalo, so I can outsell this terrible sphere-headed child-golem, at least!

Archie, 4/17/16

I’m sorry, Mr. Lodge, but nobody wearing that red-and-yellow nightmare has the right to criticize anybody else’s clothing choices. It’s really too bad for him that having a servant entirely for the purpose of dressing the master of the house has apparently fallen out of favor amongst the ultra-rich.

Family Circus, 4/17/16

I absolutely love how furious Jeffy looks in the rightmost panel here. I know Billy’s statement is supposed to be a response to his sour face, but it looks like it’s the other way around and he’s just so mad about this dumb aphorism. “Grandma isn’t here, Billy. The best part about Grandma not being here is that we don’t have to listen to this shit.”

Pluggers, 4/17/16

Pluggers remember when they used to be able to guide their grandchildren away from Darwin’s Satanic lies, back before their damn daughter-in-law started pitching a fit because she and the public schools knew better than the Bible.

Funky Winkerbean, 4/17/16

Remember, If Your Strip Ends With Even The Vaguest Play On Words, That’s Technically A “Punchline,” Even If It’s Incredibly Depressing: The Funky Winkerbean Story

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Family Circus, 4/7/16

I would feel sorry for that angel too! Imagine you’re a supernatural, superhuman being, and you suddenly find yourself in combat with a human being, of the sort that your kind hasn’t experienced since the days of Jacob — and this tiny troglodytic creature not only manages to overcome you, but through some unknown power steals your voice. Why, the whole structure of the universe must be under threat! You must warn God — but how, when you cannot speak or scream or even whisper?

Beetle Bailey, 4/7/16

For a strip that takes place entirely within the context of the U.S. military, Beetle Bailey has remarkably little to say about wars, which is interesting considering that the U.S. military has been engaging in one or more wars non-stop for the entirety of the last fourteen and a half years. So when you get strips like today, where warplanes shower Camp Swampy with flowers to let everyone know they’ve had a “successful mission,” which presumably means showering some other country with high explosives — well, it’s hard to know if this is some kind of biting commentary or rah-rah boosterism or just, “Hey, you know how planes usually drop bombs on people? Well, get a load of this.”

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Family Circus, 3/29/16

I’m usually pretty meh on the art in the Family Circus. Still, the trailing shoelace in today’s panel is a nice idea, despite the fact that those shoes look to be loafers and the lace is sort of emerging out of nowhere. It gives a nice air of childhood whimsy and innocence to the drawing; it also gives hardcore Billy haters like myself hope that he’s soon going to trip and break a tooth, or, even better, his watch.

Crankshaft, 3/29/16

Tom Batiuk famously writes Funky Winkerbean almost a year in advance, which I assume is also true for Crankshaft. So it’s actually just a total coincidence that this storyline is running the same week a guy in North Carolina was stopped because he had a broken taillight and then literally handcuffed and taken to jail for not returning Freddy Got Fingered to his local video store in 2002. (The local video store, I think it goes without saying, closed down years ago.) Anyway, if we live in an absurd world where decades-old civil judgements for very small amounts of money can lead to actual arrest, maybe you should be careful, Lillian! The cops in the North Carolina case were nice enough to let the guy drop his daughter off at school first, but they didn’t have to! Probably they could just drag Lillian off to jail and leave the twins in the car, miles from anywhere. (Is Lillian even supposed to be driving these kids around?)

Mary Worth, 3/29/16

Looks like Dawn’s starting to make a bolder personal effort at school! Step one: just don’t do things you don’t want to do! If she were being a little bolder, she just would’ve said “Nahh, not my scene. Later, blondie!” But this is definitely an improvement over signing up and pretending to enjoy it.

Funky Winkerbean, 3/29/16

“…what if I looked him up … on the Internet? And so I did. He’s got a Wikipedia page. Turns out he’s dead! Cool story, huh?”